Hubbub Community Fridge Funding

We recently shared on our social media about a funding opportunity from Hubbub in partnership with the Co-op to communities to develop their own community fridge.

I’ll explain a little bit about community fridges and the support that we can offer for these kinds of projects at the Hub. You may have heard of community fridges before, there are quite a few different models across Scotland that communities have developed, from larders, sheds to cupboards.

Generally, the main aim of a community fridge, shed, larder or cupboard is to reduce the amount of food waste within communities.

The Hub (us) is here to help with projects that are focused on community led climate action, and community spaces to gather food waste and redistribute them is definitely something we can offer to help with. The team at the Hub has noticed a lot of interest from many different communities on how to set up a community fridge.

Not only does a community fridge act as a place to reduce your community’s carbon footprint, but it can also serve to help reduce inequality within your community. Providing food or other items, free at the point of use with no referral and can help ensure dignity of the users.

So, what is food waste? It can be the unopened food you have at home that’s nearing it’s use by date, and you know you’re not going to get through it. You end up forgetting about it, you go to look, and it’s out of date, so you chuck it in the bin. Or maybe you’re like me – you make pasta for dinner with all good intentions and then once plated up you realise you’ve made a bit too much. You promise yourself you’ll eat the leftovers tomorrow, but you get caught up in other stuff so never get round to it, so a couple days later you end up having to throw it away.

Let’s think about food waste on a larger scale. You might be a yellow sticker aficionado at the supermarket, scooping up the bargains late at night of food that is marked down in price because it’s about to go out of date. Sometimes not all of the food is bought, and there is a surplus – and that can be redistributed to communities through programmes like Fareshare, where dedicated volunteers can pick this up in the evening. By communities setting up places to redistribute this food, it saves millions of tonnes of waste a year, which also helps reduce carbon emissions.

The Hub can help with information about setting up a community fridge, community engagement to see if it is something your community would like, sourcing a fridge, food hygiene, sourcing surplus food, and volunteer handbooks. If you have a question in mind about a community fridge, larder or cupboard, give us a shout and we will try our best to help!

To read about the available funding from Hubbub and the Co-op, use this link. Please note that the funding closes on 30th October or once the fund is used up so don’t delay with those applications! We can offer support to make sure you cover all the questions in the application correctly, just get in touch to arrange an informal chat.