On 16 December 2009 in zero degree temperatures, and an almost constant light snowfall, members of the public formed at Trafalgar Square in their thousands to enjoy that rarest of occasions, a free lunch. Luckily for the assembled crowd This is Rubbish also braved the weather to launch their campaign and provided delicious fruit smoothies to compliment the hot curry provided by FareShare (all made from food that would have otherwise been wasted).

The smiles all around make it clear we were in support. The question on everyone’s lips, ‘what is wrong with the food?’ no one could understand why our delicious feast was available to all for free and more than a few people where outraged and even quite visibly moved that in a world where millions die from– and hundreds of millions suffer from–malnutrition, all this food was destined for landfill or anaerobic digestion.

Given this setting: people eating free food prepared by us and questioning how that could even be possible, it probably isn’t surprising that we received a good reception. However, I think that it’s fair to say we where all overwhelmed by just how well things went. A group of us talked to people in the crowd and in the queue explaining our focus on retailers and talking about our aims. In this way we managed to get many hundreds of letters to Dan Norris signed (print your own off here). Once people had read the letter and had it explained I didn’t experience even one refusal to support our demands. For us this was a revelation, confirmation that the British public are not only fully supportive of mandatory rather than voluntary commitments to food waste, but that they understand the need for transparency on a supermarket by supermarket basis on how much food waste these businesses produce.

We ended the day on a high, emboldened by the level of public support and confident that food waste is an issue of concern for people of all political persuasions. We will continue to emphasise the fact that only 40% of food waste can be pinned on the domestic consumer and we will continue to push for supermarkets to be held accountable for much of the remainder due to there direct role and their influence on upstream processes. In particular we feel that we have broad support for our two starting point demands:

1. Annual food waste accounting with data audited by an independent commission and made publicly available.
2. Year on year food waste reduction targets for all the major retailers with real financial penalties if these targets are missed.

We are very pleased with our reception. Clearly the This is Rubbish message isn’t wasted on Londoners. We look forward to more exciting events and building our campaign on a very solid start. Anyone interested in getting involved in our campaign, please contact us on info@thisisrubbish.org.uk.

Feeding the 5000 was made possible in collaboration with expert food waste author Tristram Stuart, FareShare, Action Aid and Save the Children. See our earlier blog posts for a list of media coverage from the event.