With help from the Big Lottery fund and with the support of the local council, FareShare North Wales has set up one of their schemes to use excess foods from local companies, food manufacturers and food retailers to provide extra meals for needy people locally.
This makes Wales take a front position in addressing a problem of the modern age, that of food waste. With the surplus that is generated because of the choices offered to consumers by supermarkets these days, there is a corresponding amount of perfectly good food that goes to waste because it is not sold by the sell by date. This squandering of food amounts to tonnes of food going into landfill sites. The environmental aspect is important as well – landfill sites are increasingly filling up and the carbon emissions generated both in production and disposal of the food amounts to millions of tonnes per year.
Conwy Council is right behind the project, which fits in with local desires both to help vulnerable members of the population and environmental concerns on the generation of waste and carbon emissions. It also helps local unemployed people, who can work as volunteers and gain valuable work experience by doing so.
There are FareShare schemes running in other areas of the UK, but this is the first one in Wales and indicates the high priority that is put on the environment in this part of the world. With its history of good, local foods, Wales is showing that it can look to the future too.