FareShare North East: A Positive Social & Environmental Impact

The work of FareShare North East is helping to reduce the amount of food that is unnecessarily going to landfill. But what is the problem with food going to landfill? Find out more about we are turning an environmental problem into a social solution.

The Problem With Landfill

• The production, packaging and transport of all food creates greenhouse gases, which could be avoided if the food is just wasted.
• Food that ends up in a landfill generates methane gas.
• Methane is up to 86 times as damaging as CO2.
• An increased amount of methane and CO2 in the atmosphere contributes to climate change.
• Climate change destabilises the Earth’s temperature equilibrium and has far-reaching effects on the environment and human beings.

Climate Change Impacts Human Health

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) were adopted by the United Nations in 2015 as a universal call to action to end poverty, protect the planet, and ensure that by 2030 all people enjoy peace and prosperity. The UN says that SDG 13 (Climate Action) and SDG 3 (Health and Wellbeing) are closely interlinked, as one action on one results in the other.

The Climate Reality Project says that climate change impacts human health in countless ways, four of which are:

Extreme Weather: including hurricanes and floods. Not only can this have an immediate fatal consequences, they can lead to major injuries and the spread of waterborne illnesses such as dermatitis; conjunctivitis; and ear, nose and throat infections.

Vector-Borne Diseases: which are illnesses spread by insects or arachnids like mosquitoes, fleas, mites and ticks.

Air Quality: which can cause serious respiratory problems.

Rising Temperatures: the world could experience more heatwaves, and even more intense ones. As well as the risk of severe drought, extreme heat can overpower the human body and cause dehydration. The elderly, children and the poor are most at risk from the impact of heatwaves.

How Much Food Do We Through Away?

The UK throws away around 10 million tonnes of food every year, of which 6 million tonnes are avoidable. According to WRAP (Waste & Resource Action Programme), the UK’s avoidable food waste in 2018 gave rise to an equivalent of over 20 million tonnes of CO2 – an amount of Greenhouse Gases with a similar warming potential to CO2.

WRAP has calculated that on average 4 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalents are avoided for every tonne of food waste prevented.

To accelerate sustainable development and achieve the SDGs by 2030 – more needs to be done…and that’s where FareShare North East come in.

What Does FareShare North East Do?

In 2020, FareShare North East redistributed over 1,600 tonnes of food. We continue to redistribute on average 140 tonnes a month. This amount of food is helping to fight hunger as it equates to enough food for over 333,000 meals a month. According to WRAP, this food saves approximately 560 tonnes of greenhouse gases every month. The food that we are unable to redistribute to our members is diverted to our local BioPlant or fed to the animals at a local farm.

Join us to make a difference; whether as a community group, a volunteer, a sponsor or a donor, and let us have an even greater social and environmental impact as we work together to fight hunger and tackle food waste.

Find out more about how you get involved here.