FareShare (Manchester)

Another brilliantly inspiring project I witnessed on the Manchester market was the FareShare scheme which takes unwanted food and distributes it to those in need from womens refuges to sure start childrens centres.

Fareshare are a national charity which runs as a franchise.  The local Northwest franchise holder is a social enterprise called Emerge which offers sustainable waste management services, including recycling collections and eco-educational services.
 

Obviously they are limited, with the amount of fresh food they can take from the market (although they do run an industrial fridge freezer and refrigerated van).  So they also hook up with the big warehouses and food producers who supply the supermarkets to take alot of their unwanted stock off their hands. 

You would be amazed with some of the stock they have though.  Literally pallet loads of whole boxes of quality street, tinned soup, long life orange juice which has years left on its date and yet isnt of sufficient quality for the mainstream supermarkets.

Part of the problem of course stems from rediculously tight specifications laid down by the supermarkets which means a slightly dented tin of Quality Street goes from being worth a fiver to actually being (in there eyes atleast) a waste product which they would pay to dispose of.

Thats where FareShare comes in and transforms waste into something useful, simply by redistributing it.  Nationally FareShare now has projects in London, Birmingham, Brighton, Bristol and Manchester is now keeping 20,000 tonnes of food out of landfill every single year.

For more information on the project visit their website by clicking here.