Community Fridges are a great way for communities to help reduce fresh food waste, they’re popping up across the country and the first one in Wiltshire is due to open in Westbury soon.
You set up a fridge in a safe, accessible place in town, find local shops and businesses happy to give surplus food they can’t use or that’s past its sell by or best before date and put the food in the fridge so that it’s available to anyone who can take it and make use of it. This simple idea can really help reduce food waste locally. In Frome, the Community Fridge saved nearly 24 tonnes of food from being thrown away in 2017 – that’s about the weight of three African elephants.
Keen for Westbury to have a community fridge, last year Westbury Town Council set up a group with community partners including the Waste Education Team from Wiltshire Wildlife Trust, funded by Wiltshire Council, and Crosspoint on Westbury Market Place who have agreed to host the fridge initially. An induction and training session for volunteers to help run the Fridge is taking place on Thursday 28th February at 10am at Westbury Town Council – if the Community Fridge sounds like something you’d like to get involved with, please come along – contact Kieran at Westbury Town Council kieran.thor burn@westburytowncouncil.gov.uk or Tel: 01373 822 232.
The main regular volunteer tasks are likely to include checking the temperature of the fridge, cleaning the fridge, collecting food from suppliers (you may need a car depending on which store you collect from), stocking the fridge and removing any food that has passed its use by date. These tasks may be weekly or fortnightly and it’s estimated they would take less than a couple of hours to complete, depending on how many volunteers sign-up.”
