Winter 2010
The Working Party topic of 2010, held on 1 December, was about Sustain’s new campaign Sustainable Fish City. We ran a membership drive with a Christmas prize draw, with over a dozen prizes kindly donated by our members. This led to more new members and many more renewals. LFL also organised internal meetings with Local Action on Food and Real Bread staff to discuss membership retention and rates. The membership rates were reviewed and are now consistent amongst the projects, which will help with the London Food Link website revamp.
Along with Real Bread, LFL attended an Underground Christmas market of food and crafts held by prominent London food blogger and supper club entrepreneur Ms MarmiteLover. The Jellied Eel and membership information was distributed, and some of the stall holders and punters already knew about The Jellied Eel and loved it. The next issue is due out in mid-January.
Capital Growth
By the end of 2010, the Capital Growth campaign had 718 spaces towards its 2012 target. There are now 13 London Boroughs (Hackney has signed up in the last quarter) – ie over one-third – supporting the campaign and six housing associations, with Peabody committing support in the last quarter.
The fourth London-wide small grants round was launched at the end of September. As a result 123 new Capital Growth spaces were registered.
The Edible Estates Competition winners were announced in October and included Somerford and Shakewell Estate in Hackney, Parkside Growers Plot in Islington and Welcare Greenwich. All of these projects were showcased at the Edible Estates conference, held on 19 October, with was attended by around 100 delegates. Together with the competition, this has resulted in 30 new Capital Growth spaces, and secured the support of four housing associations including Tower Hamlets Homes which committed to set up 27 growing spaces.
In November a network event was held in partnership with the Women’s Environment Network (WEN) in Tower Hamlets. The event launched the first Capital Growth local lead network, which will be managed by WEN. Shortly after the event we began the process of recruiting more local leads across London. Local leads will work with Capital Growth to act as a local hub for community food growing projects in their borough and will receive a small grant of up to £1,000.
In December the sixth Capital Growth London-wide event was held in Kennington. Attended by 70 people, there was an opportunity for networking and three workshops were held to help attendees with their growing projects.
Capital Bee
The Capital Bee campaign is a strand of Capital Growth, diversifying the new community food growing spaces being created in the city. We have a new website, www.capitalbee.org, and launched a competition for beekeeping start-up equipment and training which will see 50 new community-run beekeeping sites in London by spring 2012. We have also generated significant press coverage, including in the Guardian, the Evening Standard and local radio stations.
The campaign was launched with the London Bee Summit at the Royal Festival Hall in December, which was a great success, attended by more than 160 people. Myles Bremner, CEO of Garden Organic, chaired the ten speakers and the Summit was opened with an address by environment minister Lord Henley. The event was heavily over-subscribed and featured lively debate, the London Honey Tasting and homemade honey cake.
Ethical Eats
The quarter began with a successful and enjoyable trip to Longwood Organic Farm near Cambridge, where a group of 17 restaurateurs, chefs and others learned about the benefits of organic livestock farming, in a day out that included a workshop on animal welfare from CiWF, a tour of the farm, a warming lunch and a even a tractor ride!
The team also participated in a Fairtrade London workshop, giving campaigners insights into working with the hospitality industry. We’re busy planning events for 2011, and have a packed calendar for restaurants and communities.
Ethical Eats has also been working to expand its network, with 220 new followers on Twitter, and a new Facebook page which attracted 45 members in its first month. Our fortnightly newsletter is received by around 800 members, and we continue to provide one-to-one support directly to our members, and through our close partnership with the Sustainable Restaurant Association. Examples of this support over the past quarter include linking restaurants with community growing spaces with surplus produce to sell, providing information on sustainable sugar, and giving advice on how to divert grey water.
Services for members that we’ve been developing this quarter include a waste audit toolkit for restaurants (in partnership with London Recycling Service) and bespoke business support for small catering businesses (in partnership with Greenwich Co-operative Development Agency).
The Ethical Eats team has once again been involved in judging the Sustainable Food category of the Sustainable City Awards, which celebrates the best of ethical dining in the capital. The deserving winners will be announced in February.
Well London - Buywell
This quarter we have been supporting the following projects to evaluate their activities:
Bellingham Food Co-op, Lewisham
Hind Grove Food Co-op, Tower Hamlets
Mobile Food Store, Canning Town
South Acton Food Co-op, Ealing
Woodberry Down Food Co-op, Hackney.
We have been analysing all the Buywell project evaluation data and writing case studies, as the project comes to an end in March 2011. We have been helping other Buywell projects with their exit strategies for when funding ends and tying up the finances for these projects.
We are also supporting the implementation of the Buywell Retail project in Camden, selecting two convenience stores to work with to improve access to fresh fruit and vegetables in low-income areas.
Fairtrade London Campaign
This new campaign, based in Sustain’s office, has overhauled supporter communications including the website www.fairtradelondon.org.uk and improved links through Twitter (now over 3000 followers) and Facebook. In November, 70 supporters came to the annual campaign workshop, and materials from the day – on Fairtrade Schools, Ethical Eats, and Fundraising – are available on the website. We also attended the International Fairtrade Towns Conference in Bonn on 4-6 November.
Twenty one London Boroughs have official Fairtrade status and Haringey has recently submitted its application to the Fairtrade Foundation. In addition, Harrow held a community summit on 11 November to launch their big push for Fairtrade Borough status. Merton Fairtrade Borough held a steering group meeting with neighbouring Borough groups involved, sharing advice and ideas. This is a model we are encouraging.
We have continued to promote the Fairtrade Schools initiative, including running a stall at the Envision ‘Young London Leaders’ event to encourage young activists to take up the scheme in their school or college.
In spite of London’s snow-chaos, almost 20 people attended our Christmas Fairtrade marketplace held jointly with Co-op Membership Services, at which the Chief Executive of the Ugandan Co-operative Alliance spoke. We also organised a stall at the Fair Christmas Fayre, in Oxford Street.
In December, we launched a campaign to remind the London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games (LOCOG) and the contract catering companies of the mandatory catering standards and to encourage them to go further by adopting their aspirational standards. Our message is ‘Source Fairtrade: make every Olympic catering purchase a winning one’.
Autumn 2010
London food policy
We have been contributing extensively to the development of the newly structured London Food Board, its implementation plan, and a draft ‘definition of sustainable food’ for adoption by the board. In addition, we have been helping the GLA food team to develop four food strategy implementation groups, and an ‘affiliation’ system for sustainable food projects with a London focus (eg Sustainable Fish City). The aim is not only to help these groups win status and influence, but also to develop an army of supporters for the London Food Board now, and in the future.
There was a lively debate at our second working party of the year, which took place on 15 September, and where members were consulted on the new implementation plan for the Mayor of London’s Food Strategy. Immediately following the working party, London Food Link held its Autumn Network Do at Cecil Sharp House, kindly hosted and paid for by our LFL member who now manages the Nice Green Cafe. We had a lively and interesting speaker line up, including the Dalston Farm Shop, The People’s Supermarket Acton Gardening Association and the Food Innovation Centre Park Royal Partnership.
Awards
London Food Link was very excited to be short-listed in the Green Contribution to London category in the inaugural London Lifestyle Awards. We are using Twitter to promote our work and support members’ endeavours; the current follower count is 420. A membership drive is imminent, pending a website revamp.
Jellied Eel magazine
Issue 28 of the Jellied Eel magazine, London Food Link’s network magazine, was released in July, including articles on the sustainability of festival food, pick-your-owns, local ice cream, and features on some of the wonderful initiatives around ethical food particular to London. An ethical supermarket chain, Planet Organic, is going to distribute 4,000 copies of the latest magazine to their customers, when it is published this October.
Capital Growth
The campaign now has 585 spaces towards its 2,012 target. There are 12 London Boroughs supporting the campaign and a number of Housing Associations.
The inaugural Capital Growth Open Day was held on 25 September with 15 sites opening their doors to hundreds of Londoners. The Capital Growth Get Growing training programme, located in The Regent’s Park, continues to be a sell-out success, so far supporting over 170 people in topics such as Container Growing, Composting and Growing Soft Fruits. In addition, the training site has been supported by a team of 16 volunteers, together putting in a total of over 500 hours during the summer.
The Edible Estates competition has closed and we have had 40 community food growing projects in housing estates participating. There are great prizes from B&Q, Rocket Gardens, Wiggly Wigglers, The Seed Pantry, Gardening Express and Bulldog Tools. Judges for the competition include Rosie Boycott, Belinda Porich and Peter Neal. Winners of the competition were announced at our Edible Estates Conference on 19 October.
Capital Growth is launching a new project, Capital Bee, also funded by the Greater London Authority, to promote community apiaries (beehives) and responsible beekeeping, and encourage more bee-friendly behaviour in London.
Ethical Eats
We have worked closely with the Sustainable Restaurant Association (SRA) and London Remade Solutions (LRS) to develop and run the Why Waste workshop: good clean ways to go green and improve the bottom line. The event saw restaurants, cafés, caterers, venues and hotels delve into the big issue of waste in the industry. The event was held on 13 July at Café Spice Namasté and came up with ideas that delegates’ organisations and establishments can use to improve waste management practices.
Ethical Eats teamed up with Capital Growth to investigate opportunities for micro-local supply of fruit and vegetables between the networks’ members. Meet the Locals: Who’s growing near you? brought together community gardeners, apiarists and foragers with chefs and owners of food businesses to share their needs and network. We discussed the ins and outs of how to trade healthy sustainable food with people just around the corner. Surprisingly, neither growers nor buyers listed price as a reason for buying or supplying locally until prompted. We discovered that payments, invoicing and taxation require further research.
As part of our commitment to connecting the public to the concept of eating out ethically, we organised a Restaurant Ramble in September. The event saw 24 punters embark on a four-course gastronomic journey at four Sustainable Restaurant Association member venues through Islington. The four hour adventure showcased local and seasonal food and drinks during British Food Fortnight and British Cheese Week. When asked what they enjoyed the most, ramblers said the combination of great company and conversations, the variety of drinks and outstanding food.
Ethical Eats’ informal network of businesses continues to attract new members, with 43 joining during the quarter. We now reach more than 800 people with regular e-bulletins offering invitations to events, awards, supplier information and investment opportunities. We have also now launched into Twitter and have attracted 158 followers already, with some of these joining as a result of a competition to win two Restaurant Ramble tickets.
Events coming up over the next few months include a visit to Longwood Organic Livestock Farm in Suffolk. Plans for events in the second year of the project include, for businesses: Embedding Sustainability conference for beginners; business planning for start ups and community cafés including sustainability strategies; and a vegetable farm visit. For people in general we look forward to promoting: Fairtrade tea parties; Veg Adventures: Passport to eating green in the capital, and British Wine and Cheese Tasting.
Good Food on the Public Plate
For updates on the Good Food on the Public Plate project, to improve the healthiness and sustainability of food in London's public sector institutions, see: www.sustainweb.org/goodfoodpublicplate
Making Local Food Work for London
During the last quarter we attended two Examination in Public sessions to discuss the final text for the London Plan. The proposed text now supports both commercial and non-commercial food growing including orchards, allotments, agriculture in the Green Belt and, explicitly, the Capital Growth project. The text also mentions that food production is good for food security and health, and discusses the London Food Strategy implementation plan which will encourage new markets for local food via public procurement and wholesale markets.
We organised a meeting in Lambeth Town Hall on borough food strategies for the London borough group. This group is also exploring affiliation status with the London Food Board.
London 2012 food
We continue to attend meetings of the London 2012 Food Advisory Group, to influence the wider catering sector with the inspiration of the London 2012 Food Vision catering standards, previously billed as an ‘Olympic Food Charter’. We are arguing for a robust process that would challenge the catering sector to show how they are making tangible commitments and progress towards Food Vision targets (such as demonstrably sustainable fish, seasonal menus, environmental standards for food production and Fairtrade products), to qualify for a London 2012 Inspire Mark. However, it is not yet clear how this process will develop.
It also remains unclear how sustainable suppliers and smaller suppliers can take up Olympic opportunites. Meet the buyer events may be organised in 2011. Meanwhile, we are pursuing contacts with the major caterers that we think may win Olympic contracts, to encourage connections between them and sustainable suppliers, with some useful (although not yet large-scale) results.
Well London – Buywell
We have been working with food partners in Buywell areas to evaluate their projects. Working with the University of East London and London Sustainability Exchange, we are developing appropriate methods to measure the impact of Buywell. In September the Buywell Retail Project final report was released and we have been using what has been learned from this project to help Camden and Richmond local authorities to plan and set up similar retail projects.
We also contintue to provide Buywell project partners with one-to-one advice and support on running their food projects. Buywell has also supported SureStart Hounslow to set up a volunteer recruitment and training programme which aims to build a strong local team to help run the food box scheme, community café and kitchen garden. We have also helped to secure investment from NHS Barking and Dagenham into the Well London Super Output Area Becontree Heath where they have agreed to test a project with fast food outlets. It aims to provide much needed support for takeaway businesses in the target area to help them cook and promote healthier options.
Summer 2010
London Food Link held its first working party of 2010 on 19 May at Café Lumen, serving local and seasonal food, and with a Capital Growth growing space being developed. The topic was Community Food Training in London and attendees discussed existing formal and informal community food training programmes, gaps in provision, the needs of trainers, obtaining venues and funding, participants, outcomes and the future. Our Spring Network Do followed the working party and around 50 to 60 people attended. Participants remarked that it was an enjoyable opportunity to network and discover what other projects are happening.
London Food Link is using Twitter to promote its work and support members’ endeavours and already has 200 followers. Our website review continues, with plans for first-time members to be able to register and pay online.
Jellied Eel magazine
Issue 27 of The Jellied Eel magazine, London Food Link’s network magazine, was released in April, including articles on the launch of the Sustainable Restaurant Association and the food being planned for the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games. The magazine is currently distributed through a variety of around 90 stockists in central London. The Jellied Eel was also promoted at the Real Food Festival in May, where around 5,000 copies were distributed. There was a very positive reaction from the attendees and also from the festival organisers who are keen to work with The Jellied Eel team again in the future.
Capital Growth
At time of writing there were 524 spaces registered with Capital Growth, with 100 having registered since April 2010. Similarly, eight boroughs are now supporting Capital Growth, collectively committing to 480 spaces. This includes two (Kensington & Chelsea and Greenwich) in the last quarter.
A Capital Growth showcase event was organised for 29 June at City Hall. The event was a great success and was attended by Directors and Chief Executives of both private and public sector organisations and featured speeches from the Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, his food advisor Rosie Boycott and the Dirty Hands project from Newham.
The training site at The Regent’s Park has been running successfully with a number of fully booked training sessions as well as school training days.
A ‘spaces’ section of the Capital Growth website has now been launched. This enables people to see where all the sites are located, displays short descriptions of each site and whether the site is looking for volunteers or not. Potential volunteers can then email the spaces directly.
Edible Estates competition
The competition was launched on 29th June. It will run from now to October 2010 and aims to encourage residents of housing estates to start or enhance community food growing projects on their estate. We have secured prizes from seven different companies – B&Q, Bulldog, Gardening Express, Mears, Rocket Gardens, The Seed Pantry and Wiggly Wigglers. We have also developed a competition website.
Schools competition
The school competition’s deadline was 18 June and 145 schools registered to enter. As a result, 89 new Capital Growth spaces were created. Some 55 schools submitted their competition entry and a shortlist of five schools for each category has been drawn up (Bugs & Slugs; Collect & Create; and Climate Cool). The judges will be arranging visits to these shortlisted schools, to choose one overall winner and four runners-up. The winners will be announced on 12 July at one of the winning schools, with Chris Collins the Blue Peter Gardener who will announce and present the prizes.
East London Green Grid
The East London Green Grid project officially finished in March, but work has been done in this quarter for the final report which will be submitted at the beginning of July. We have also worked on a funding bid for a second phase of this project which was submitted on 11 June. We are seeking funds for the further development of four of the eight projects, which we hope will result in the creation of at least one new food growing social enterprise in the short term, with others achieving this after the end of the proposed project.
Ethical Eats
During this quarter, we worked closely with the Sustainable Restaurant Association (SRA) and Carbon Descent social enterprise consultancy to develop and run Simple Systems to Save, a workshop on energy and water efficiency for restaurants and caterers. The event was held on 8 June at The Zetter Hotel in Clerkenwell, and hosted by The Zetter’s founder Mark Sainsbury, also joint founder of the SRA. Clive Streatfield from Carbon Descent presented a workshop with an emphasis on low-cost and no-cost actions that can add up to good practice.
Sustainable food master class at Café Spice Namaste
We sent guest speakers to a master class on sustainable food on 4 June, part of a series run by hospitality industry charity Springboard (http://springboarduk.net/). Topics included a brief introduction to sustainable development and the SRA, Sustain’s seven principles of sustainable food, and where to find local and seasonal food suppliers.
Considerate Hotel of the Year Awards
Sustain sponsored the Sustainable Food category of these awards, which, from a field of excellent candidates, was won by Lasswade Country House and Restaurant, at Llanwrtyd Wells, Powys in Wales. The ‘Considerate Good Egg of the Year Award 2009/10’ was also presented to one of the UK’s most widely respected hoteliers and chefs, Raymond Blanc OBE.
Events
At the Camden Green Fair on 6 June and the Castle Garden Party on the 13 June the Ethical Eats team talked to hundreds of consumers about eating out sustainably. By distributing SRA postcards and Jellied Eel magazines, we urged people to use their consumer influence to encourage restaurants to join the SRA and improve the sustainability of their food.
Events coming up which will be promoted to SRA members and Ethical Eats contacts, include a workshop on waste in July and networking events to introduce restaurants and caterers to London’s growers, including those Capital Growth projects who are keen to trade their produce to local businesses. The visit to Longwood Farm in Suffolk was postponed and rescheduled for September.
Good Food on the Public Plate
For updates on the Good Food on the Public Plate project, to improve the healthiness and sustainability of food in London's public sector institutions, see: www.sustainweb.org/goodfoodpublicplate
Good Food for Camden
For updates on our work with NHS Camden and the London Borough of Camden, to create and implement a healthy and sustainable food policy, see: http://www.sustainweb.org/londonfoodlink/good_food_for_camden/
Planning policy
On 27 April we met with representatives of ten local authorities to share information on their food growing work. We have since established an online forum to continue to share information and also plan future meetings to be hosted by the boroughs on food issues they are working on.
We have also continued to contribute to the development of the London Plan by applying to make a representation and developing a position paper to be presented at the Examination in Public in July and in September. For more information on this work see the Local Action on Food pages.
Well London – Buywell
We continue to support community groups and businesses to make it easier to buy healthy, affordable and sustainably produced food in 10 low-income neighbourhoods across London. Most of the Well London Buywell projects are now running and we have been providing individual project support and advice to Buywell partners to help them to improve their operations and monitor and evaluate their projects.
We also continue to try and influence retailers in areas targeted by the Well London project who participated in the Buywell Retail project to sell more fresh fruit and vegetables. In April we ran a workshop for London boroughs to learn about running retail projects to improve access to fruit and vegetables in low-income areas of London.
We are currently designing a pilot project with the Council and NHS in the London Borough of Barking & Dagenham to work with fast food outlets, in Becontree Heath Super Output Area, to encourage them to adopt healthier cooking methods. This scheme will tie in with recent planning legislation in the borough to limit the opening of new fast food outlets. See: www.sustainweb.org/buywell/
Spring 2010
Preparations are well under way for the May Network Do at the new Café Lumen, serving local and seasonal food. The venue has also registered as a Capital Growth community food growing space. The proposed topic for discussion is ‘Food and the London 2012 Olympic Games’.
London Food Link has now joined other Sustain projects and campaigns on Twitter: www.twitter.com/LondonFoodLink. To date there are approximately 70 Twitter followers, and we are also making steady progress on plans to update the London Food Link and Jellied Eel websites.
The London Food Link membership benefits are being reviewed using member surveys and general feedback. Prior to the Network Do we will be targeting lapsed members, hopefully with a deal that will overcome the lingering effects of the recession. Networking opportunities and the online forum are the key attractions.
The Jellied Eel magazine
The spring edition of The Jellied Eel has been sent to members and delivered to our growing number of stockists around London (90 in total). We had particular success with a trial distribution at City University (home to the Centre for Food Policy), for a large order of the next edition to be distributed across their campus.
Capital Growth
The campaign set out to achieve 2,012 new community food growing spaces for London by 2012. To date, we have 427 spaces registered with Capital Growth, with more in the pipeline.
Two events in March included sessions on selling produce, dealing with soil contamination and involving the community in food growing. In addition an East London event was organised as a result of the Capital Growth East London Green Grid grants project.
So far, five London boroughs have collectively committed to 380 spaces (some not yet registered). The team has met with various housing associations, resulting in a commitment from Hackney Homes, plus interest from four more social housing providers. A Capital Growth Land Plan has been developed to pursue more work with landowners
A partnership with Regent’s Park has been developed and training will start in April on a new growing site in the park. Supported by the Mayor of London, Capital Growth has also launched a Schools Competition, to get more schools in London signing up to be spaces. A press release was sent out at the end of January, and every primary school in London received a letter from the Mayor. 107 schools signed up online, and so far 57 will become registered Capital Growth spaces. Winners will be announced in the first week of July.
There have been three newsletters for registered spaces, and a quarterly newsletter for the wider network of people and groups interested in food growing in London has also been developed. See: http://www.capitalgrowth.org/
Ethical Eats
Funded by the Lottery’s Local Food Fund, Ethical Eats works with London’s restaurants and caterers, advising them on ways to make their businesses more sustainable. During this second quarter of the project, the focus has been on the launch of project partner the Sustainable Restaurant Association (SRA). We’ve produced fact-sheets for the SRA members’ packs and text for the members’ area of the website, as well as advising on the SRA audit process. The launch was covered by various national and regional publications.
We co-ordinated a series of workshops on sustainable food for Level 3 Catering Students at Westminster Kingsway College. Topics covered included fair trade, animal welfare and vegetarian cookery, with a final session featuring a presentation on the SRA. Westminster Kingsway lecturer Miranda Godfrey is interested in continuing to work together next academic year.
Recent and forthcoming events include a talk on sustainable fish in March, a workshop on energy and water saving measures in April, and a trip to an organic livestock farm in Suffolk in May. See: www.sustainweb.org/londonfoodlink/ethical_eats/
Good Food on the Public Plate
For updates on the Good Food on the Public Plate project, to improve the healthiness and sustainability of food in London's public sector institutions, see: www.sustainweb.org/goodfoodpublicplate
Good Food for Camden
Sustain’s work on Good Food for Camden is now coming to an end – most work has finished and only a few loose ends remain. The Good Food Partnership (GFP) met twice this quarter. Both were well attended and feedback on the new format of the meeting was excellent. Several members of the Partnership expressed their regret that Sustain would no longer be formally involved, although we anticipate we will attend future meetings.
The core group of the Partnership met for the first time in February. This group is in place to maintain communication between the wider GFP, NHS Camden and the Council. The meeting sparked lots of interesting debate and ideas and we are confident the group will take great care of the Partnership when Sustain’s involvement comes to an end.
We recently ran a ‘Buy it, cook it, eat it’ workshop for the benefit of anyone – from any sector – who buys food for their organisation in Camden. The Camden Good Food Guide has also now been published and NHS Camden is starting to circulate it. The supplier directory is very close to sign-off and should be live online soon.
On behalf of NHS Camden, Sustain managed a small pot of funding which was allocated to four projects: Global Generation; Queens Crescent Community Association; Lumen Café; and St Michael’s Church of England Primary School. The aim of the funding was to encourage GFP members to work together towards implementing some of the action in the Good Food for Camden Action Plan. Not all the funding was allocated, so we are in discussions on how to re-allocate the underspend.
Infrastructure project: Wholesale markets
The infrastructure project continues to operate, commissioned originally by the London Development Agency as part of implementation of the London Food Strategy, and now overseen by the Greater London Authority. The project employs Business Development Managers at several of London’s wholesale markets to promote local, regional, seasonal and sustainably grown food, as part of implementation of the London Food Strategy.
After a lengthy period of uncertainty about the project’s funding – largely due to the transfer of the project from the LDA to the GLA, it seems increasingly likely that the GLA will fund further work with the wholesale markets, including a new Business Development Manager at Billingsgate Market, with a remit to help promote sustainable fish. Sustain has commented extensively to ensure that sustainability is at the heart of the work.
London 2012 food
For information about our work to promote healthy and sustainable food for the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games, and in associated events and hospitality, see: www.sustainweb.org/olympicfood/news_update/
Well London Buywell
We continue to support community groups and businesses to make it easier to buy healthy, affordable and sustainably produced food in 10 neighbourhoods across London. We also combined with London Food Link to produce the fourth Gherkin newsletter for London community food projects.
Since the launch of the retail project, we have been providing individual support to shops in Well London areas. Increases in sales of fruit and vegetables have been maintained in most of the shops since the changes were made, with an average increase of 60% across 15 stores. We’ve been helping retailers find more affordable suppliers of sustainable fruit and vegetables and overcome any difficulties they have been facing in trying to sell more fresh produce.
We also supported Aardvark Recycling Ltd, a South London social enterprise specialising in food waste to launch a new food co-op with local residents in Lambeth. We ran a food co-ops training day on 19 February and have provided mentoring and exchange visits for volunteers. We have also been supporting SureStart Hounslow to carry out a food access needs assessment and plan their food project development. See: www.sustainweb.org/buywell/
Registered charity (no.