Sustainability & eco friendliness – you’ve probably heard of it before. Naturally, this is also an important topic at FareShare Sussex & Surrey. Therefore, we’re focussed on aligning our work with some of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). These goals include, for example, creating sustainable cities and communities, but also reducing inequalities. With our daily work we try to achieve these goals and are proud to have many charity partners who share the same objective.
Our work, set out in figures:
What work do actually we do? – that’s quite simple. Our mission is to rescue food and distribute it to those in need, tackle food waste, hunger and malnutrition, promote good health and contribute to responsible consumption and production. Through our work, we also contribute to reducing inequalities, in terms of access to food, which is one of the 17 SDGs.
Despite our seemingly simple work, we make a great contribution, which can be illustrated in figures. Unbelievable but true, we saved and distributed 1,014 tonnes of perfectly fresh and delicious food in 2022 alone. For every tonne we redistributed we saved 1.6 tonnes of CO2 and 1.5 million litres of water. And if that wasn’t enough, our waste levels averaged at 1% last year.
With these fantastic numbers, we are also pursuing three of the sustainability goals, which include fighting poverty, taking care of the environment, and responsible consumption and production.
Efforts to mitigate climate change:
You can contribute to the mitigation of climate change in many different ways. We at FareShare Sussex & Surrey do not only strive to curb climate change by working to reduce food waste, but we have also swapped half of our vans, now delivering with three electric vehicles. Of course, this was not enough for us. Therefore we have switched our energy suppliers to greener alternatives based on 100% renewable energy, last year.
In order to expand this progress in the energy supply, it is our goal to acquire solar collectors in 2023. These will reduce our greenhouse gas emissions even further, reduce energy costs in the long term and lead us closer to the achievement of another goal of the 17 SDGs, namely to the point of sustainable cities and communities.
As you can see, we are not only committed to ensuring that everyone has access to fresh food, but also that this is done with an environmentally friendly footprint. Through continuous improvements in sustainability targets within our Green Team, we have set various plans for the future, which include, for example, the use of LEDs throughout the building. We hope to be able to realise our plans and thus constantly improve our environmental friendliness.
Read more in our 22/23 Impact Report.
Written by Marlon, work placement from Würth Elektronik in Germany
