The charity group, The Real Junk Food Project, have successfully launched the UK’s first ever food waste supermarket in Leeds.
The group have teamed up with some of Britains leading supermarkets including Morrisons, Ocado, Sainsbury’s and M&S to donate unwanted, ‘unsellable’ or safe out-of-date products that they can sell onto others at a ‘pay as you feel’ price.
According to wrap, the Waste and Resources Action Programme, we waste around 10 million tons of food and drink per year, 60% of which can be avoided. The food waste supermarket launched by The Real Junk Food Project aims to decrease this.
Chef Adam Smith, founder of TRJFP, told Huffington Post UK that the supermarket was never planned; ‘We were intercepting food at our central HQ in Leeds at an enormous level, that we encountered surplus food which we couldn’t stop from going to rot. We then opened the warehouse up to the public and it was an instant success. We didn’t plan it, it was a consequence of operations.’
The supermarket has a wide range of foods available including fruit and vegetables, bottles of fizzy drink, loaves of bread and much more. All out-of-date produce has been deemed safe to consume.
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‘In the warehouse, it becomes more obvious why the project has taken off so dramatically. There’s a mountain of food. Marks & Spencer cakes and Ferrero Rocher chocolates and punnets of grapes and tomatoes and posh crisps and jars of olives and out-of-date bottles of that well-known easily perishable food substance – water – and down one aisle, dozens of clear plastic bin liners all filled with bread.’ says the Guardian’s Carol Cadwalladr
The food waste supermarket is currently the only supermarket of its kind based in the UK. The Real Junk Food Project hope to expand their warehouse so more people have the opportunity to use up unwanted, wasted foods.
Would you be interested in shopping at the food waste supermarket? Do you think more cities in the UK should launch them? Comment below!
