Community Fridge Frome

I wonder if you are aware or have seen a community fridge here in Wales, I certainly haven’t. But I’ve been talking to Terri Pitts, who with her amazing team of volunteers runs the Community Fridge in Frome, Somerset, which has been running for about seven years, with Terri being with this project for five years.

The Frome Community Fridge Project was the first of its kind in the UK and their success has spurred on many more communities to open their own Community Fridge Projects.

The Frome Community Fridge project saves around 2 tons of food a month. Obviously it fluctuates month to month, but on average that is what they save, ‘spare’ food that would otherwise go into landfill or for bio fuel. With such a well-established project as the Frome Fridge project is, they never have any waste food. If that isn’t proof that this project works I don’t know what is! This Fridge Project is not only a huge help for the community but links ‘spare’ food with local people that need help.

Frome work with food charities as well as local companies and schools. They also work closely with their local food bank but are really quite different beasts. Most of us are now well aware food banks help those that can prove they are in need, not something some people can bring themselves to do, whereas Community Fridges help everyone.

Terri has a team of 23 volunteers. Which I think shows how the Frome community has understood and have taken on this important concept of food wastage and support for their own community. The volunteers carry out a range of tasks from collecting from shops and bringing food back to the fridge, then filling the fridge, cleaning roles and also administrative roles.

Terri explained to me that they are certainly not in competition with their food bank as the food bank have in-date food and use collection points for people to donate. The Community Fridge take excess food from the major supermarkets and put those items into their fridge, for example bakery items. Although local people bring and donate their excess food to the fridge, that only makes 1% of Frome’s donations. Terri also uses food charities such as Fairshare and neighbours collect from Frome’s major six supermarkets. Local shops also donate as well, making this a super community scheme.

The Frome Community Fridge was setup by Edventure Frome as a start-up project and it is a pleasure for me to report on a start-up project that has gone from strength to strength, thanks to Terri and her team of hardworking volunteers. I’m so impressed with this scheme.

I’d love Wales to take this idea on board, because if they have already done so – I’ve missed them!!! Now Ian has done a web check and found a few in Wales but guess they are too busy to let us know about their existence, but of course delighted they are there, helping their communities. Perhaps in the future this might warrant a further post.