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5000 to Receive Free Lunch in Manchester to Fight Food Waste!

news release

Manchester Feeding the 5000 event – Piccadilly Gardens, Manchester, 12noon – 4pm on Saturday 15th June

What’s happening?

Five thousand members of the public will be served a free, hot, nutritious lunch in Manchester’s Piccadilly Gardens on Saturday 15th June between 12noon and 4pm. The meal will be made entirely from ingredients that would otherwise have been wasted, such as fresh but cosmetically imperfect vegetables and fruits.

Over the course of an afternoon, volunteers will serve a free lunch to 5000 people and share information about simple solutions to food waste. The menu will include a delicious curry made from fresh, nutritious, and “wonky” produce that would otherwise have been wasted. The public will be invited to participate in cooking sessions as well as meeting a range of organisations tackling food waste in and around Manchester.

Why is it happening?

Feeding the 5,000 is an international campaign that seeks to highlight how easy it is to reduce the unimaginable levels of food waste in the UK and around the world, and how governments, businesses and individuals can help. A number of partner organisations, charities and community organisations will be present at the event to share information about how to reduce food waste, and to offer fun food related activities for adults and kids. The event has been organised by Manchester Friends of the Earth, FareShare North West, Cracking Good Food and the Feeding the 5000 team.

What are we asking for?

So, is there ever such a thing as a free lunch? In return for a lovely meal, the event will urge the public to take in some information about food waste issues, reduce their food waste, and demand that businesses do the same. There will be a focus on practical solutions to food waste at home, and we’ll be asking people to learn about, and take steps to, reduce food waste at home, including planning ahead, and learning how to cook with leftovers.

We’ll also be asking the public to sign up to the international Feeding the 5000 pledge, which calls for action from governments, retailers and food businesses. Members of the public can pledge at any time on the Feeding the 5000 website (www.feeding5k.org).

The event will offer the chance to find out what is happening in Manchester and the North West around food waste, with a variety of organisations presenting information, ideas, and activities for kids on the day.

Tristram Stuart, founder of Feeding the 5000 and author of ‘Waste, Uncovering the Global Food Scandal (Penguin, 2009) whose campaigning on food waste won him the international environmental award, The Sophie Prize said:

We are delighted to be bringing Feeding the 5000 to Manchester where we will invite everyone to join us for a delicious free lunch all made from food that otherwise would have been wasted. It will be an opportunity for the people of Manchester to send a strong message to food businesses that they want a stop to the unacceptable levels of food waste in the supply chain. That is why we want everyone- businesses and the public to sign the Feeding the 5000 pledge. Feeding the 5000 Manchester is part of a global campaign with upcoming events in cities including Amsterdam, Lisbon, Sydney and New York where we will be filling bellies not bins!”

Corin Bell, Lead Food Waste Campaigner at Manchester Friends of the Earth said, “We’re really excited to be putting on a Feeding the 5000 event in Manchester. In the current economic climate, with so many people struggling to afford basics like food, it is scandalous that perfectly nutritious food is wasted because it isn’t the right shape, colour or because it’s the “wrong” size”.

Sebastien Serayet, Development Manager at Fareshare North West said: “At FareShare North West, we believe good food should not be wasted especially when so many local people are struggling to afford to feed themselves. We work all year long to capture edible food and give it away to charitable organisations who feed those in need. Feeding the 5,000 is a great event to highlight these issues to the general public and show how local communities are tackling these problems.

Key Facts About the Event;

More than one tonne of food will be used to make a meal for 5000 people, and all of this food (and a good deal more besides) would have gone to waste. As well as highlighting this issue, the event seeks to build new relationships between food businesses and charities like FareShare, who distribute food to charities working with vulnerable people who might otherwise go hungry.

Over 100 volunteers will work together to deliver this event, washing, peeling, and chopping the fresh ingredients will take 40 volunteers over 3 hours!

ENDS

Photo opportunities:  Friday 14th June: 10am – 2pm, volunteers will be preparing 1 tonne of vegetables/fruit at catering facilities in the City Centre.

Saturday 15th June: cooking will start from 9am, Saturday 15th June in Piccadilly Gardens.

Tristram Stuart will be signing copies of his book ‘Waste: Uncovering the Global Food Scandal’

Contacts for comments;

Manchester Friends of the Earth, Food campaigner, Corin Bell, mobile: 07912 509665

Fareshare North West, Sebastien Serayet, Development Manager, Mobile: 07917 237537

Feeding the 5000, Niki Charalampopoulou, mobile: 07837 118970

Cracking Good Food, Adele Jordan, mobile: 07910 673 113

Profile of Partner Organisations;

Feeding the 5000 – founded by Tristram Stuart, author of Waste: Uncovering the Global Food Scandal (Penguin 2009), whose campaigning on food waste won him the 2011 international environmental award, the Sophie Prize. The events have been used to launch Feeding the 5000 food waste campaigns in the UK, Ireland, France and in partnership with the UN and the EC, are now being replicated across the globe from New York to Sydney. More details at www.feeding5k.org

FareShare North West –part of a national network of operational partners who distribute in-date food to organisations who in turn support people in food poverty, such as homeless shelters, day centres, breakfast clubs and sheltered housing units.

http://www.emergemanchester.co.uk/fareshare-north-west.html

Manchester Friends of the Earth – An award-winning environmental campaign group, taking action on a range of local, national and international issues including climate change, corporate responsibility, food, trade justice, sustainable transport & aviation and waste & recycling.    http://manchesterfoe.org.uk/

Cracking Good Food – a Manchester-based social enterprise which promotes cooking from scratch sustainably and seasonally through value-for-money classes for the general public, free hands-on sessions and courses with community groups, pop-up sessions at festivals, bespoke events and wild-food foraging workshops. http://www.crackinggoodfood.org/

Cracking Good Food will be running a series of free hands-on cooking sessions alongside the main event, working with three groups at a time, from 12 noon – 4pm, using some of the same ingredients from the main meal that would otherwise have gone to waste, teaching people how to cook up a storm with short-dated or limp veg…. and you get to eat what you cook!

Key Facts About Food Waste;

  • UK Households waste around 20% of all the food we buy – but the good news is that this suggests a 17% reduction since 2007. We’re improving!

  • All the world’s nearly one billion hungry people could be lifted out of malnourishment on less than a quarter of the food that is wasted in the US, UK and Europe. 

  • An estimated 20 to 40% of UK fruit and vegetables rejected even before they reach the shops – mostly because they do not match the supermarkets’ excessively strict cosmetic standards.

  • The bread and other cereal products thrown away in UK households alone would have been enough to lift 30 million of the world’s hungry people out of malnourishment.

  • An estimated 15 million tonnes of food wasted in Britain from the plough to the plate.

  • 10% of rich countries’ greenhouse gas emissions come from growing food that is never eaten.

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