Award for Peterborough Food Waste Heroes - who saved 11 tonnes of food from waste

FoodCycle Peterborough received the award in recognition of the huge amount of food they save from going to waste each week by cooking three-course community meals.

Two members of the FoodCycle Peterborough team also won Outstanding Volunteer awards. Dennis Wright and Yuki De Aguiar received special recognition for the work they have done to keep the project running throughout the year.

FoodCycle Peterborough is one of 38 projects across the UK, where volunteers use surplus food collected from supermarkets and retailers to cook healthy, community meals for people experiencing food poverty or loneliness.

Sarah Holland, a project leader volunteer at FoodCycle Peterborough said: “We are delighted to have been named FoodCycle’s Food Waste Heroes of 2018. Our team works very hard to ensure that nothing is wasted, even the vegetable scraps either go to compost, or to feed rabbits close to our project. To also have two of our volunteers named as Outstanding Volunteers is testament to their hard work and dedication, we couldn’t be prouder”.

Sophie Tebbetts, Head of Programmes for FoodCycle said: “The team at FoodCycle Peterborough collect a staggering amount of surplus food every week, and account for 13% of the total food collected by FoodCycle as a whole! They have a dedicated team of drivers who work with local retailers, saving over 11,000 kg of food in 2018 - that’s an average of 310kg every week. We think that is pretty amazing, and that is why they fully deserve this award.

The team leaders received their award at the annual FoodCycle Conference, where they joined 85 volunteers from across the UK to share ideas, learn new skills and celebrate their work in fighting food poverty, loneliness and food waste.

FoodCycle Peterborough serve a delicious three-course meal every Monday lunchtime at Park Road Baptist Church and invite anyone looking to volunteer, or to enjoy a meal, to join them. To sign up as a volunteer, visit volunteer.foodcycle.org.uk.