A surplus food distributor has celebrated providing its 100,000th meal from London’s Borough Market.
Plan Zheroes is an online food redistribution initiative, connecting food waste leftover from businesses and restaurants that’s still good to eat to the charities who can then distribute the food. This week the organisation was camped out at Borough Market in London, turning food vendors food waste into delicious dinners.
Its milestone meals were distributed to members of the Healthy Living Club – a Lambeth community group for elderly people with dementia. The food is also regularly collected by volunteers and given out to 30 charities in London, including those that support homeless people such as St Mungo’s.
This work is so important, as 8.4 million people, the equivalent of the entire population of London, have uncertain or insufficient access to food in the UK as of 2016. And, in addition to this, only 17,000 tonnes of the 270,000 tonnes of the edible surplus food in the grocery supply chain is redistributed to charities annually.
We want to encourage the food industry to eliminate food waste by making sure that leftover produce can reach those most in need
This needs to change. So, Borough Market is calling on the food industry to focus on assisting charities to make use of surplus produce, through the allocation of suitable storage and dedicated volunteers.
Borough Market managing director Darren Henaghan said: “One of the issues we’re trying to address is the redistribution of this surplus produce – some smaller charities just don’t have the manpower to collect or store food, and we want to encourage the food industry to eliminate food waste by making sure that leftover produce can reach those most in need.”
