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Join the TiR family as a Non-executive Director ? ?

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Are you a food waste warrior? Would you like to help us make changes to a broken food system?

This is Rubbish (TiR) works to reduce food waste from farm to fork; using policy campaigns, values-led education, the arts and public events.

Our activity is underpinned by the three guiding values: Active citizenship, social justice and environmental justice.

Food waste is an environmental and social tragedy:

  • UK businesses throw out over 7 million tonnes of food annually, that is enough to lift all the hungry people in the UK out of food poverty, and equal to about half the food wasted in the UK.
  • If food waste were a country it would be the third biggest emitter of greenhouse gases.

TiR is looking to recruit new non- executive directors to join the current team in guiding the strategic direction of the organisation and ensure that projects are working towards goals in a competent and creative manner in line with TiR ideals and standards. The organisation focuses on positive messaging around the value of food. Joining our team will mean eating a lot of delicious food and meeting a broad spectrum of inspiring people through our campaiging and events as soon as government guidelines permit.

The three keys areas of TiR’s work that the directors will oversee and facilitate are;

  • Affecting change thought campaigning
  • Values-led Education
  • Day to day management

Director role and responsibilities include;

  • Defining and delivering organisational aims, objectives and strategic direction
  • Providing guidance for the organisation and specific projects
  • Providing high level organisational and project direction
  • Reviewing and upholding policies
  • Signing off and being a named senior contact on funding applications
  • Ensuring that TiR, a Community Interest Company complies with its constitution, company law and reports to Companies House.
  • Bringing relevant outside perspective to organisational direction, development and growth
  • Safeguarding the good name and values of the organisation
  • Being an advocate for This is Rubbish and its cause at all times – asking people to join, giving out leaflets, networking and talking about our work

Please email mickey@thisisrubbish.org.uk to request the document ‘ TiR Director Roles and Responsibilities’ for full details.

Time Commitment

All volunteer director input in valuable. The primary requirement is for realistic commitments to enable accurate planning and achievable targets.

All directors required to attend;

  • Video calls every 2 months or when needed for working group tasks.
  • Quarterly face to face meetings

What TiR seeks from new non- executive directors

The TiR facilitators are a motivated, passionate and creative team. We seek individuals who can demonstrate that they are driven to make a difference to social and environmental issues and will find working with the current team fun/interesting/ exciting and rewarding.

Previous engagement in social and environmental issues does not need be related to food waste but a background working or volunteering in the charitable sector is desirable.

We seek individuals with significant experience and skills which cover some of the following areas:

  • Accounting and financial management
  • Fundraising
  • HR
  • Project management
  • Diversity and Inclusion
  • Community and youth engagement
  • Website Development

Why be a TiR non-executive director

This is an excellent opportunity to take up a senior role in a respected, national CIC which has the potential to bring about significant changes to supermarket supply chain practice.

You will also be part of groundbreaking work to reframe the food waste narrative as a problem rooted in inequality, the legacy of colonialism and neoliberal capitalism.

The role is voluntary although we will pay all out-of-pocket expenses with prior agreement.

This is a remote working role.

How to apply

Please submit your CV and covering letter (1 page maximum) to info@thisisrubbish.org.uk by 05/04/21. Interviews to take place late April.

We look forward to hearing from you.

The Rubbish Team

Talking rubbish at the Youth Climate Summit

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This is Rubbish was proud to take part in the nationwide Youth Climate Summit, November 9th – 13th. The summit, lead by London Schools Eco-Network, Global Action Plan and many volunteer teachers and educators had five themed days and Golden Threads which ran throughout all events at the summit:

  • Climate, Social & Racial Justice
  • Education, Skills & Careers
  • Health & Wellbeing

This Winter the need to recognise the interrelated nature of the messy challenges the world faces couldn’t be more apparent. Like most other ‘environmental’ issues, food waste is multifaceted in its causes and impacts. It felt pertinent to be part of this summit which encouraged everyone, teachers and students, to link issues together and tackle the complexity. It was hugely heartening to observe young people discussing and learning about these challenges in a confident and critical way. They came up with five powerful Youth Climate Calls to send to COP26 delegates ahead of next year’s conference. 

This is Rubbish was one of the four organisations in the Food, Farming and Forests theme focus session for primary schools. This session charted the story of the food supply chain, from discovering the importance for soil and microbes with a researcher from Dundee University, to the devastating impacts of deforestation for soya production with Animal Aid. 

Our Cirque de Surplus characters rounded up the session doing what they do best – talking rubbish. See below: 

Food waste: the impact on climate change

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by Hammad Kazi

With momentum around climate change campaigning unlike any we’ve seen – Extinction Rebellion, Greta Thunberg and global school strikes – the issue is at the forefront of public consciousness. Naturally, at This is Rubbish, we tend to zero in on the food waste side of things. So how much is food waste really contributing to global emissions?

The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) reports that about 33% of food produced for human consumption is lost or thrown away every year amounting to about 1.3 billion tons [1]; this figure reflects not only inefficiency but also apathy.  We must remind ourselves that almost a billion people around the world go hungry regularly. According to statistics published by the FAO, about 821 million people were suffering from chronic under-nourishment in 2017 [2]. In addition to this moral implication of food waste there are also economic implications: food wasted through the supply chain represents wasted resources which could have otherwise been used for better purposes. This article, however, addresses yet another implication of food waste: the impact on climate change.

There are many stages in the life cycle of a food product as it passes through a typical supply chain, shown in a very basic diagram below.

There are many intermediate steps in between each stage and there are many sub-stages within each stage as well. For example, agricultural production of wheat would require preparation and planting of the crop seeds, irrigation and maintenance of the crops. Between agricultural production and post-harvest is the process of harvesting the crop. Similarly, post-harvest itself involves handling and storage.

As intuition may reveal, food waste (or loss) can occur at each stage of the life cycle. Food is considered ‘lost’ during the first three to four stages of the cycle while it is considered ‘wasted’ in the final two stages. Fruit that falls off a conveyor belt in a processing plant will be considered ‘food loss’ while an opened tin of processed fruit that is thrown away in the household will be considered ‘food waste’. Whatever terminology is taken, the result remains the same: there is some environmental implication to this loss or wastage and the more stages that the food passes through the more the environmental impact (or carbon footprint) is associated with it. There is a certain amount of food that is lost / wasted at each stage while there is a certain environmental impact of the process during that particular stage as well. This is shown in the following figure with an estimation of global contribution of each stage of the food supply chain to food wastage and carbon footprint [3].

Even though there is about 22% of food wastage occurring at the consumption stage, the carbon footprint of this stage is very high (almost 37% of the carbon footprint of the total supply chain). This is expected; the carbon footprint of any food at the consumption stage is the sum of the carbon footprint occurring at every stage before consumption as well as during consumption and even after consumption.

Different types of food have different intensities of carbon footprint associated with them as well. This depends on the life cycle of the food; the entire process of growing, harvesting, processing and packaging varies according to the type of food and therefore different food products have different amounts of environmental impact associated with them. The following figure shows the global aggregate contribution of different commodities towards carbon footprint and food wastage (within their life cycle).

It isn’t a simple calculation though and not one that can be representative across different countries. For example, the carbon intensity of a product (such as carrots) would vary in different parts of the world according to the processes employed in the various stages of its life cycle. This is how food at the table represents an expended amount of carbon footprint which has accumulated over the entire journey that the food product has taken from the beginning. Therefore, it is critical for people to produce and consume food products responsibly as every product has already impacted the environment during its journey from farm to fork.

It is important to identify the factors that cause food to be lost or wasted at different points during the product supply chain. In developing countries there needs to be focus on reducing food loss during the first two stages of the supply chain, especially post-harvesting handling and storage. Food loss during processing is controlled as it usually affects the bottom-line of the processing industry itself. Stricter government regulations and policies are needed around the world to focus on the impact of food waste on the environment and it is important to promote technological and systems-based approaches to reduce the loss of food during the first few stages of the production supply chain.

In the developed world, more effort needs to be put in to reduce wastage at the consumption level. One model that can be used to identify and highlight different ways to help reduce food waste is the Food Waste Pyramid, developed by the food waste campaign group Feedback [4].  

The next two steps cover waste management: 

Compost & renewable energy: food that is still left over should then be sent for composting or conversion to bio-fuel

Disposal: the last alternative should be sending food waste to landfills

The environmental impact of food loss / waste is a monumental problem and its impact on climate change cannot be ignored. According to The World Resources Institute, the Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emission levels due to global food wastage were about 4.4 billion tonnes of Carbon Dioxide equivalent in 2011; if food wastage was a country it would be the third-highest emitter of GHG emissions in the world [5]. And while the wastage of food has serious moral and economics implications as well, we must not ignore the drastic consequences that it has on climate change and the environmental sustainability of our planet.

Sources and references:

[1] http://www.fao.org/food-loss-and-food-waste/en/

[2] http://www.fao.org/state-of-food-security-nutrition/en/

[3] http://www.fao.org/docrep/018/ar429e/ar429e.pdf

[4] http://feeding5k.org/businesses+casestudies.php

[5] https://www.wri.org/our-work/project/cait-climate-data-explorer

[6] http://www.fao.org/food-loss-and-food-waste/en/

[7] http://www.fao.org/3/a-bb144e.pdf

Food Rescue: Smoothies in a Storm

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On a cold day in February young people from the borough took their first steps towards enterprising careers in food rescue. Six young men from Project 2020 took up the challenge of serving smoothies in the snow at Tottenham Green Market on Sunday 11th February.

This marked the culmination of an Edible Enterprise programme hosted by the project in partnership with This is Rubbish (TiR), a Community Interest Company which works to reduce industry and supply chain food waste in the UK.

Fruit was rescued from local wholesale markets and donated by Sainsbury’s instead of being thrown away and was converted into delicious, nutritious smoothies by the young people. Tropical flavours were on the menu as hail fell from the sky, but market goers were undeterred and dozens of low-cost drinks were sold. The young people showed remarkable resilience and gained an opportunity to put their learning about food enterprise and the environment into practise. The day entitled “Respect them Smoothies” finished on a high note, with one young man telling us “I liked helping each other and the community.”

Tottenham Green Market promotes community by celebrating street food, crafts & vintage from the local area and beyond each Sunday from 11.00am – 4.00pm. The group were granted a free pitch to trial their enterprise. The young people really rose to the challenge and put their best foot forward despite the hail. Some said it was their favourite part of the programme and all of them learnt valuable skills.

Each year about one third of all food produced globally is wasted, translating to 1.3 billion tonnes. About half of this food never reaches the consumer. Many crops are left unharvested because they are too wonky or the wrong size. Research has shown that a leading supermarket threw away about 70% of bagged salads in 2016 and nearly half of all bakery items in previous years. These are shocking figures, but we know the young people of Tottenham will be doing their bit to reduce waste.

Over the course of the programme, the young people met entrepreneurs who started businesses around food surplus, such as the Founder of Dash Water who use wonky fruit and vegetables to flavour their drinks. They also learned about healthy eating and cooking with vegetables, one claimed “The best thing was learning to cook with more vegetables and less meat.”

This is Rubbish CIC was started in 2011 by volunteers who used theatre and feasting to raise awareness of food waste. In 2014, many of the original ideas were brought together to form the basis of Edible Education, a programme for young people promoting active citizenship. The education team delivered interactive school workshops, assemblies and after school clubs tailored for diverse groups. They are currently working with young people from refugee backgrounds through partnerships with charities.

This is Rubbish like to save food with a smile – they bring their unique Cirque de Surplus acts and activities to public spaces to spread the message about food waste. Watch out for a three legged carrot race or a giant salad toss at an event near you this summer.

Alongside the youth work and public engagement, TiR has been campaigning for legislation to reduce food waste. Mickey Reedy from TiR said: “If the UK sets binding targets for reduction then big businesses will be accountable for their practises and the responsibility won’t fall solely to the consumer. People are becoming aware of the vast amount of food which goes unharvested, unsold, or uneaten and they want to see a change. Government policies to reduce food waste could make a real environmental and social difference.” TiR’s Stop the Rot Campaign gathered nearly a quarter of a million signatures and the work continues.

 

Getting to the root of the problem: food waste, food poverty & redistribution

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Banner image: Mack Male 

Mickey Reedy, Co – Director at This is Rubbish

This week The Evening Standard announced, for the second time, that it had found the solution to food waste. The solution is redistribution by way of The Felix Project. Hilary Croft, Felix Project Chief Executive, claimed “It’s the fact that food poverty is so avoidable in this country that is maddening. [This can be] solved by putting in place simple measures of redistribution.”

Hilary is correct that the crisis of food poverty is avoidable. But the truly maddening part is that not enough is being done to alleviate the deep causes of poverty, such as cuts to vital benefits and paucity of secure, adequately paid jobs. 60% of people in poverty in Britain are in working families, according to a recent study by Cardiff University. I find it maddening that 70,000 London children are going to school hungry while an estimated one in five shopping baskets worth of food is thrown away. Above all I find it maddening that the solution is to continue with business as usual finding a way to justify systemic waste as a solution to poverty rather than examining the root causes of both. The assertion that food redistribution is “a simple solution” is misleading.

According to The Institute for Fiscal Studies Nearly 4m children are currently growing up in poverty in the UK after their families’ housing costs are taken into account. The IFS predicts we could see over a million more children growing up in poverty by 2022. The journalist Margaret Greenwood recently wrote that the last Labour government made tackling child poverty a key priority, from the creation of Sure Start centres to increases in social security and employment support targeted at lone parent families.

It paid off – between 1997 and 2010 child poverty fell by 1.1m and the employment rate for single parents increased from 44 per cent to 57 per cent.

Since 2010, progress in reducing child poverty first stalled and then after 2015 has gone into reverse. The government not only abandoned the targets set by the last Labour government to cut child poverty, but abolished the Child Poverty Unit set up to coordinate policy across government.

Much could be and has been said about benefit cuts, policy and government spending. According to the IFS absolute child poverty is projected to increase from 15.1% in 2015–16 to 18.3% in 2020–21. This increase is driven entirely by a sharp rise in poverty among families with three or more children, which is itself the result of planned tax and benefit reforms. To quote the food policy expert, Tim Lang from the centre for Food Policy at City University, “choose your parents well.” Or in this case, your siblings.

We cannot fix poverty and climate change on a meal by meal basis. TiR is calling for systemic change supported by environmental and socially just policies because carrying on business as usual will leave a devastating legacy for tomorrow’s children

As a chef, an educator and a human being, I find child hunger, malnourishment and their well-documented education and social outcomes heart breaking. I’ve heard of teachers buying breakfast cereal for their primary students, children unable to complete football tournaments due to holiday hunger and schools unable to access funding for breakfast clubs because they cannot prove the level of need. If parents are reluctant to apply for free school meals, it begs the question whether they will queue up to receive hand outs from The Felix Project.

This is Rubbish has benefitted from the Dispossessed Fund, launched by the Evening Standard campaign against food waste and managed by Food for London. We have been working with young people from refugee, migrant and low income backgrounds to give them cooking skills and redistribute fresh produce from the retail sector. Some of the kids have been ambivalent, some grateful but one thing is clear: they don’t want to be told what to eat and by extension what members of their families should be cooking, so some of the food has been rejected on those grounds. The aim of the programmes is to introduce new ingredients as well as skills to the young people and parents are usually delighted when they see their chicken and chips loving offspring eating fruit and vegetables but it has highlighted the paternalism of food redistribution. However you dress it up, people have less choice if they are being given food rejected by supermarket shoppers.

For many people, including beneficiaries of the Edible Enterprise programme, it is all very well to give them nourishing food but they lack adequate kitchen facilities to prepare it or, as Martin Caraher identified during research as a Professor of food and health policy at City University, families often lack the funds to pay for gas and electric to prepare food.

Image: Sierra Soleimani

Nobody will argue against filling the bellies of hungry children with nourishing food but there is nothing ‘simple’ about the causes and effects of food waste. A system predicated on surplus where huge supermarkets have densely stocked shelves for 24 hours a day – so those who can, will be able to purchase almost any food from any part of the planet on a whim – is unsustainable. Indeed, it flies in the face of basic social justice while many people are struggling to meet their nutritional needs and that of their children. However, rejoicing in the certainty they can rely on retail surplus presented as charity is mad as much as it is maddening. The environmentally catastrophic overproduction involved in sustaining this broken food system is maddening too. And above all calling the answer simple is dangerous.

Our motto at This is Rubbish is: “You can’t manage what you can’t measure”. This is why we are pleased that Emma Lewell-Buck MP’s Ten Minute Rule Bill on measuring the scale of food insecurity has passed the first reading in Parliament this week. The Felix Project can put its public reach and influence to back this bill as it enters its second reading – due to take place in February 2018 – and progress further toward becoming an Act of Parliament. Moreover, the Felix Project and the Evening Standard should do more to highlight the efforts of poverty action campaigns such as End Hunger UK working to address the root causes of poverty, such as unsustainably low wages and deep benefit cuts.

We cannot fix poverty and climate change on a meal by meal basis. TiR is calling for systemic change supported by environmental and socially just policies because carrying on business as usual will leave a devastating legacy for tomorrow’s children.

 

This is Rubbish needs a website facelift!

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It’s 2016, and we need a new look, and in particular a new website! It’s that time of year, where changes are made, and ambitions set for the future. Please join us in helping us achieve our goal, and helping us bring an end to industry food waste.

Who are we, and are we really rubbish? No, not really, but we do work with a lot of rubbish! We started as a group of friends really concerned and schocked by the amount of food being wasted by supermarkets. After launching at the first Feeding the 5000 event, our organisation developed rapidly. We do a lot of things to reduce industry food waste, but our main aim is to reduce industry level food waste in the UK, through policy change, education, the arts and public events.

We operate across two main areas; campaigning for supply chain policy change and an outreach education program. We use different methods of engagement and we have succesfully run creative and arts based events, participatory workshops and stunts.

To start this year with a bang, we are trying to raise money to revamp our website which we started in 2009 when we were a fledgling organisation using a wordpress template. The website is now corrupting, vulnerable to hackers – as we unfortunately discovered – and needs a vital overhaul. Donations of any amount would be greatly appreciated to help us reach our target.

As you can imagine, a functioning website is vital for an organisation to grow and so we hope you will help us meet (or exceed our target). Your generosity will be rewarded with the following unbelievable prizes, depending on how much you pledge. Hurry – limited stocks available, and we are sure lots of people will want the holiday in a skip!

Stop The Rot: Lifting the Lid on Industry Food Waste @ Parliament on 6th July 2015

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This is Rubbish present Stop the Rot; lifting the lid on industry food waste

This is Rubbish’s latest campaign Stop The Rot: Lifting the Lid on Industry Food Waste made its first public appearance at the Houses of Parliament on Monday, 6th July. During an afternoon roundtable, representatives from across the food waste civil society, NGO and academic world met to discuss and help refine the campaign’s aims and objectives. The roundtable provided the perfect opportunity to scope out potential endorsers and campaign partners who share a vision of calling for 1) whole supply chain food waste measurement, led by ambitious reduction targets including pre-factory gate food waste, and 2) obligations for those responsible for food waste (revealed by auditing causes) to be involved in measures to reduce it.

 

Discussions explored: if the CC2025 is an effective driver in reducing food industry supply chain food waste; potential methodology for a food waste audit; planned campaign timeframes; the potential of supermarkets adopting a food waste audit / reduction / publishing scoring system / league table; and wider potential risks and barriers involving retailer buy-in and involvement.

 

During a Creative Communications and Possible Partnership breakout session, participants were asked to share creative strategy ideas for engaging with, and communicating to, the media and public about Stop The Rot campaign asks, via nationwide stunts and participatory open source campaigning. They discussed how, and in what capacity potential partnership could manifest over the next year.

The This Is Rubbish team were delighted to have such a high turnout and feel inspired and excited to take Stop The Rot into its next stages of development. If you would like to get involved, please get in touch. info@thisisrubbish.org.uk

 

A French Revolution Tackling the global food waste epidemiC

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Famous for its gourmet cuisine and tempting delicacies, France has a respected reputation in the world of food. Last month, the country’s food industry stole the spotlight on the global stage once again, when the French government announced an official ban preventing supermarkets from discarding or destroying surplus food.

Thanks to the tireless campaigning of local councillor, Arash Derambarsh, supermarkets are now legally obliged to donate all edible surplus food to charities. Any food that is not fit for human consumption must be used for animal feed, composting or energy production.

In a world of a billion hungry mouths, Derambarsh described it as ’scandalous and absurd’ that perfectly usable food is being deliberately spoiled. While charities remain desperate for donations, many major supermarkets were found to be spraying bleach on produce approaching its best before date, in an attempt to avoid accusations of food-poisoning from foragers consuming leftovers found in bins.

In January this year, Derambarsh launched a petition challenging such behaviour. The petition gained in excess of two hundred thousand signatures, plus significant celebrity support. Just four months later, in a unanimous vote, the French National Assembly outlawed the disposal or spoiling of edible food by supermarkets.

Approved as part of a wider French law, ‘Loi Macron’, supermarkets occupying 400 square metres or more will be forced to sign contracts with charities by no later than July 2016. If they fail to do so, they could face fines of 75,000 Euros and up to two years imprisonment.

It has also been emphasised that supermarkets must not place an unfair burden on charities in receipt of these food donations. Food must be sifted before delivery, and charities must be supported to source appropriate storage facilities.

Loi Macron also plans to introduce an educational programme about food waste in schools and businesses. Former food minister, Guillaume Garot, prepared the bill. He described the new legislation as ‘an important step in the fight against food waste’ and named France ‘the most advanced country in terms of fighting food waste’. The country has publicised its aim to halve their annual food waste figures by 2025.

While France has set a pioneering example in the drive to curb food waste, the fight is gathering impetus on a global scale. In response to recent UN statistics stating that one third of all food produced is lost or discarded, national and international bodies are increasingly working together to address this catastrophe.

Arash Derambarsh certainly wants the new French legislation to be adopted worldwide. Alongside campaign group ONE, established by U2’s Bono, the Parisian councillor is preparing to take the issue of food waste to the United Nations when it addresses its Millennium Development Goals later this year. He also plans to attend the G20 summit in Turkey in November, and the COP21 environmental conference in Paris in December.

Spurred on by French success, the UK have followed suit in launching a petition similar to that of Derambarsh. Started by Lizzie Swarf, the petition implores David Cameron to introduce similar legislation.

‘Rather than wasting millions of pounds worth of food that is still usable, make supermarkets donate their leftover products that are still safe to eat in food banks.’ The petition also proposes the addition of a £2 surcharge to all online orders to fund the delivery service for donations.

Presently, the UK government has a range of voluntary agreements with the grocery and retail sector aimed at cutting food and package waste across the supply chain. However there are no mandatory targets.

The latest figures suggest that 52,000 families were formally declared as homeless last year, with over 900,000 people fed by food banks nationwide. At the same time, avoidable food waste in the UK accounts for over 17 million tonnes of CO2 emissions annually.

Here at This is Rubbish HQ we are currently making the final touches to our campaign that will be calling on the existing voluntary agreement; the Courtauld Commitment and its signatories to publish annual food waste audits, and work to ambitious food waste reduction targets. We also call for prevention to be prioritised over redistribution, as part of longer term change to prevent food waste, and challenge the government to deal with increasing levels of food poverty instead of the supermarkets. 

Watch this space and sign up to our newsletter to keep up to date with our campaign. In the meantime, join the fight against the global food waste epidemic, add your signature to the UK petition here. 

A huge thank you to award winning writer Jo Walker for contributing this post. 

 

Edible Education students win prestigious UN prize

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Students from Lammas Secondary School in the London Borough of Waltham Forest won third prize in the Think.Eat.Save student challenge to tackle global food waste with their event ‘Eat My Words’. The United Nations and partner organisations, called on students to join the fight to reduce global food waste, estimated at one third annually. Around 470 schools from close to 80 countries took up the call.

The students, who had been selected to take part in the This is Rubbish Edible Education programme, wrote and performed slam poetry and spoken word to spread their message in an event open to parents, teachers and the wider public. This Is Rubbish utilised their contacts with food wholesalers and supermarkets to source surplus food for the event. Six large boxes of produce that would have been wasted was transformed into exotic, healthy snacks and juices. The students from different school years worked collaboratively to exchange ideas, create the invites and line up, make decorations and very importantly, learn new cookery skills using food that would have been wasted. Guests included Aisling Fahey, the Young Poet Laureate for London, who also performed a piece.

Edible Education takes students on a learning journey through the food supply chain and uses cross curricular, interactive learning to empower young people with a positive message for change. The pilot, which has just finished, toured to five schools and through performances, after school clubs and student assemblies reached an audience of 400+ pupils, teachers and parents. The response was fantastic. The broad range of learning activities revealed the values young people hold about food and the environment and the poetry written by the award winning Lammas students referred strongly to themes of social justice and food security. This seems particularly pertinent at a time when the rise and role of UK food banks is being debated. Waltham Forest is home to many families living in poverty and ranks 15th most deprived borough in the country. All the schools TiR Edible Education worked with have the highest proportion of students eligible for free school meals, roughly double the national average.

The TiR Edible Education team has been genuinely inspired by the passionate and thoughtful responses from all the young participants. This is powerful motivation to further these partnerships and we have big ambitions for growing the programme in 2015.

Here’s to a wonderful, wonky 2015!

Edible Education – so what’s it all about?

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Check out our new film on TiR’s Edible Education Programme.

Filmed and Edited by Matthew Barton

“Growing in soil, step into the sack, wrapped in plastic, factory packed. Chillin on a shelf, lookin scrummy on a plate. Eat it, reheat it, or give it to a mate”.

These have been the latest chants coming out of the mouths of TiR human fruits the past few months. Bert the Old Banana, Lady Land (A.K.A. Compostella), and Jessica the Californian Jazz Apple have been visiting theatres, after school clubs and community arts centres making noise and (literally) a ‘song and dance’ about how to prevent food waste in the UK.

And whilst they have been lamenting this terrible waste, extravagantly via pantomimic moments, they have equally been celebrating the great opportunities and offering real solutions for helping stop food waste.

These public events have been described using the theatre term of ‘scratch’ meaning they were part of a development process and we were keen for audience feedback. It has all been part of creating this interactive, edible foodie show for TiR’s Edible Education programme which seeks to communicate to kids about the realities behind food that is needlessly wasted in the UK, helping them to consider how as individuals and within their communities, they can take action to combat it.

Read on for the full story…

Bert, Jessica and Lady Land are the central characters, supported by Dot, Doris, Doreen and Deirdre – a gaggle of dinner ladies – some a little more outrageous than others! The show opens with Lady Land preparing for the Food Vision Song Contest, which she is desperate to win in order to communicate to the world about food waste and the life-cycle of vegetables, but not a natural musician, she needs some help to win. Bert and Jessica, as long-time song contest winners, step in to help, calling on the talents of the willing audience as choir and orchestra members. Together, Lady Land, Bert, Jess, dinner ladies, and audience come together to write lyrics, drum a beat (thanks to a selection of pots and pans, potato mashers and soup ladles) and create some dance moves of which the sternest of judges couldn’t resist! Once the song is ready for the competition, the audience is then broken up into smaller groups of peppers, carrots and broccoli and are whisked off on a whirlwind tour of the food system. Within these groups, they rotate around three stations learning about compost and its crucial role in continuing the food cycle with Lady Land, wonky veg (where over 20% of fruit is rejected by supermarkets simply due to cosmetic standards) with Jessica, and with Bert they learn about best before v. sell by dates and what to do with fruit that’s getting a little old. For some encouragement, Bert has a delicious selection of banana muffins made from surplus bananas, Jess has succulent apples canapés and Lady Land offers a super fruit juice.

TiR believes in communicating about food waste through feasting celebration in a way that inspires people to take action from feeling a sense of agency and empowerment as individuals and within their own communities. For more information on Edible Education, and if you would like to involve your school, please contact mickeyoreedy@gmail.com

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