Fighting food poverty and waste by offering fresh produce at Eastbourne’s first community fridge

A new project to help fight food poverty and waste is coming to Eastbourne.
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Volunteers Network, the new team managing Langney Community Centre, will be opening Eastbourne’s first community fridge on December 1.

It will be called Langney Larder and offer refrigerated items as well as packaged food, tins, fresh fruit and vegetables and tinned items.

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Community fridges are a national initiative and the idea is to share food for free that might otherwise go to waste.

It’s all good food, in date and is the surplus from supermarkets and food businesses.

The first fridge will be situated at Langney Community Centre and the centre will serve as a distribution point for others in Eastbourne too.

Helen Burton, the project’s organiser and an borough councillor, said: “Our volunteers served free school meals to the community during half term, and it highlighted the need locally.

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“Food poverty is an issue nationally, and so is food waste, so we want to tackle two issues at once by opening Eastbourne’s first community fridge - redistributing food that would otherwise go to landfill.

“We will turn one of our meeting rooms into a distribution centre for excess food - available to anyone who needs it five days a week.

“It’s a practical solution to two problems, and we hope it will be well supported locally.”

Helen says the project is gathering pace quickly, and although it doesn’t currently have any funding, local business DB Domestics has donated a fridge freezer.

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Other organisations are also on board and Seaside Community Hub will now be collecting food from the centre and opening their community fridge in December too.

If you would like to support this project or set up a fridge in your own church, community centre or another public venue, please email Helen Burton at [email protected].

You can also make a donation to this project at www.volunteersnetwork.co.uk and follow the progress at Langney Community Centre on Facebook.

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