Community projects in the Liverpool area are helping people to cut food waste, eat healthily and save money.
The projects have been given a share of £110,000 through the Merseyside Recycling & Waste Authority Community Fund 2022/2023, which supports community reuse, recycling and waste prevention initiatives across Liverpool.
This week is Food and Waste Action Week 2023, the UK’s biggest annual food waste reduction campaign.
The eight local projects are using the week to highlight how much food could be stopped from going to waste by shopping better, meal planning and improving the use of ingredients.
The organisations are delivering a variety of initiatives across Merseyside such as cookery classes, compost sessions and grow-your-own workshops to help reduce household food waste.
One of the groups to receive funding is Liverpool-based Bay Tree Cookery Academy CIC
Michelle O’Dwyer, of Bay Tree, said: “Bay Tree Cookery Academy CIC has been running projects that work with vulnerable groups to teach food preparation, cooking and budgeting and food handling and storage skills over several years.
“Our latest project is targeting groups who benefit from learning skills that help reduce food waste, such as those living on fixed incomes and low incomes, and people with disabilities
She added: “I do a lot of voluntary work in my spare time.
“However, mostly through these cookery classes we will do demos, we have done community away days, we’ve dressed up in fancy dress and helped the community on fun days.
“For the last few years, we’ve done Christmas dinners. This started in 2019, when we catered for 200 people. We are involved with Tom Harrison House, and during the pandemic we still put on cookery classes through zoom.”
Community group, Liverpool Zero Waste, a group of volunteers who reduce food waste all year round, said: “We collect food from supermarkets every day that would otherwise be headed for the bin and distribute this through daily community events.
“Our social media pages contains details of our events but also stories recipes and ideas of how this food can be used to make stunning meals for families instead of being wasted and harming our environment.”
