To raise awareness of the problem of food waste in Norwich and gather some more volunteers to join our mission to tackle it, the NFH team often attend local events. In this post, our Fundraising Officer, Alice, tells us about a recent event FoodHub attended:
A few weeks ago I helped host Norwich FoodHub’s stall at One Planet Festival: an annual event run by Norwich City Council to showcase the work being done to combat environmental and social issues while encouraging people to take steps to live more sustainably. FoodHub's stall was just a part of a big variety of activities - the festival was a great chance for us to see the work being done by other environmental initiatives in Norwich and meet some of the people involved.
It was a lively and busy day, and it was great to see so many members of the public engaging with environmental problems and solutions.
We arrived at One Planet equipped with our famous smoothie bike and several boxes of surplus fruit from supermarkets which would have been thrown in the bin had it not been collected by NFH volunteers. Instead, the fruit was used to make pay-as-you-feel smoothies. Visitors to the stall could pedal on the stationary smoothie bike to power a blender attached to the back to make their own. Baked goods such as pastries, sourdough bread, loafs and baguettes were also on display and offered to visitors; this helped show that surplus or recycled food that FoodHub collects is not old or mouldy, but fresh and edible.
On my way to the event, I was worried that the wet and windy weather would put people off coming to our outdoor stall, but I was glad to be proved wrong. There was hardly a quiet moment, and most of the day we had a line of people waiting to talk to us and make a smoothie. The stall was especially popular with kids, who loved choosing what kind of fruit to pop in their smoothie and whizzing it up themselves with the bike-powered blender. In between smoothie-making, we spoke to people about what Norwich FoodHub does and how they can get involved. Thanks to the donations of One Planet attendees, we raised money to help NFH keep saving food from going to waste and getting it to people who need it.
Our stall was also part of the eco-stamp-trail, where people would come by to get a stamp from us and find the answer to a question: what year did NFH win the Norwich and Norfolk Eco Awards? We got to show off a bit here, answering that we won in both 2018 and 2019! We were one of the last stalls to pack up at the end of the day, and used up a whole box of salvaged bananas as well as all the strawberries and blueberries we’d brought. Rather than being thrown away, all that fruit helped to make lots of kids happy while teaching them about food waste.
Look out for us at more events soon, including the Cadge Road Community Fete on Saturday July 20th and the Pumpkin Rescue at the Forum on the 19th October - see you there!