How a mission to prevent food waste ended up feeding hundreds of thousands of Brits

Helen Innes didn’t set up a community fridge to tackle food poverty. She wanted to fight food waste, and provide a space for people to socialise around food. 

“I just hate food waste,” Innes said. “I just hate the thought of food going in the bin.” 

But now, five years on, more and more people come to her who couldn’t afford food otherwise. Her community fridge, operating out of The Old Bath House & Community Centre in Milton Keynes, used to get busy at the end of the month, when pay was being stretched. With the cost of living crisis meaning there’s little hope of stretching things out, it’s busy all the time. 

“We regularly get new visitors who are in a fairly different position to those not wanting to waste food and to do the right thing. It is about them needing food,” she said. 

Up to 100 people come to each of the two weekly sessions. Innes describes it as a “buzzing atmosphere”. 

But behind it is a growing level of need – with people turning not just to foodbanks but to other means of help, like community fridges.

Innes’s fridge is one of 280 community fridges run by Hubbub. A fridge might be based in a church or a community centre, and is typically manned by a part time leader and a couple of volunteers.

They’re not foodbanks. Instead, they were set up to make sure perfectly good food finds its way onto plates instead of into bins. But the situation around the country is the same as in Milton Keynes – the network is becoming increasingly vital for those struggling with the cost of living. 

Aoife Allen, a director of Hubbub, estimates that the network got 800,000 visits from the public in 2021, and stopped the equivalent of 7.5 million meals from going to waste. 

“Frankly the fridges are meeting a lot of need in the community. Our preference is that everybody has enough income to meet their food needs adequately and with dignity,” Allen said.  

“We know that’s not the case with the current cost of living crisis, and the benefits situation in the UK.”