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Helping people all over the UK, The Real Junk Food Project (TRJFP) runs on a pay as you feel (PAYF) basis and makes use of food that other stores are ready to throw out. TRJFP has opened a sharehouse in Leeds where anyone can come and pick up food for free or make a donation that they feel is reasonable. I visited sharehouse for the first time where I was met by volunteers who were working hard to sort through the produce they had received. I was lucky enough to speak to one of the volunteers who enthusiastically told me about the work TRJFP did for the community. She told me that nothing in the packed warehouse went to waste; all the plastic crates were bought and reused, along with cardboard boxes. Even the excess food that wasn’t given to schools, cafes or customers had use, with the carrots being fed to horses and other produce being used by animals. TRJFP made sure that nothing they used impacted the environment in a negative way.
While walking around, numerous families with small children came into the warehouse and picked up food from vegetables to bread. It became clear that without the help of TRJFP, a lot of families would be unable to feed their children. I was informed by a volunteer that visitors to food banks in the area were often told to visit TRJFP as they could receive two bags of food for free, or a small donation. Along with the sharehouse, TRJFP organises boxes of food that families can order and pick up from the warehouse, which contain a weekly amount of food, which varies depending on whatever excess food the project can collect.
As well as helping families with the PAYF store, TRJFP sends out food to local schools who are in need of fruit and bread for its students and was providing 44 schools in the Leeds/Bradford area with food in September 2017. A volunteer I spoke to mentioned how teachers had reached out in need of bread for toast, as many students were coming to school without having breakfast. This is an important task as students who eat breakfast are twice as likely to perform well in tests. TRJFP also received a donation of women’s sanitary products which were given out to numerous schools, on the basis that they had to give them to students for free. Girls from low-income families often skip school while on their periods due to not being able to afford sanitary products, so by providing schools with free products to give to students in need, TRJFP are helping encourage young girls to still get an education.
Although many of the people who come to the sharehouse need to, there are still customers who come to help support the project. I spoke to a volunteer who said that the customers were ‘all regulars’ and that she also ‘knew them all by name’. She also went on to say ‘some of them don’t financially need to come here, but they want to come to support it. Somebody has been in this morning and didn’t want anything… but she still put £5 in [the donation bucket] because she just wanted to support us’.
However, with all the good TRJFP do, some large supermarket chains still didn’t want to give their out-of-date but still good food to the project. A 2016 article by the Evening Standard revealed that Sainsbury’s had wasted over 35,000 tonnes of food, while Tesco had wasted over 59,000 tonnes. With over 8 million people in the UK struggling to put food on their tables, there is no justification for stores to waste something people are desperately in need of. TRJFP and the stores who donate their left over produce to them, helps these families who can’t afford supermarket prices, as well as homeless people who have nowhere else to turn to.
TRJFP helps give back to the community by feeding families, helping schools and providing food to anyone who needs it, free of charge while also making sure no produce goes to waste. The project has set up sharehouses and helps cafes all over the UK, and have a location search to help find one nearest to you. TRFJP Leeds are shutting their sharehouse doors for the month of May (excluding Saturdays) to open ‘Sharehouse: Emporium’ on Boar Lane, bringing the sharehouse to the city centre of Leeds. Along with the more central sharehouse, the project is also opening a fine dining experience where the public can enjoy a 5-course meal for only £25.
