Since its launch in 2020, more than 1,000 tonnes of food have been redistributed through the service across Milton Keynes and London, the equivalent of over 2.5 million meals.
Helen Innes, creative partner at Hubbub, said: “When Hubbub launched Food Connect in 2020, we wanted to address the five biggest challenges our community groups had outlined as barriers to sharing surplus food successfully.
“These were reliability, quality and quantity of food, timings, travel and costs. By creating Food Connect, Hubbub has been able to work with communities to create a streamlined approach to food redistribution that is proving to work.”
It is estimated that 35% of the UK’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions come from food and drink production, with ‘huge amounts’ of resources going in to growing, processing, packing, storing and transporting food. Despite this, 6.4 million tonnes of edible food is wasted in the UK every year by retailers, manufacturers, caterers, restaurants and in people’s homes.
Jude King, project manager at Sustainable Merton, added: “Our Food Connect e-bike, trailer and riders have enabled us to increase our weekly food collections and reduced the number of short car journeys to nearly none.
“With two dedicated riders we have been able to build better relationships with the stores who donate and also look at other ways in which we can help the local community without burning petrol. With dedicated riders we are able to respond quickly to last minute offers of food and requests for help.”