Chester-le-Street charity turning food waste into meals celebrates sixth anniversary

A food waste charity based in Chester-le-Street is celebrating its sixth anniversary.

REfUSE intercepts eight tonnes of food every month that would otherwise go to waste, turning it into 400 healthy and accessible meals per week, served on a 'pay as you feel' basis.

It has now set out a five year strategy with an intention of bringing about wider systemic change.

Starting with £12 in the bank and no bowls in the kitchen to serve food with, the REfUSE cafe in Chester-le-Street now serves meals and cakes to hundreds of customers per week. In the past year, over 180 volunteers have helped out in the cafe.

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Mim Skinner, co-founder of REfUSE, said: "Landfill sites, biodiversity in our soils, children going hungry at school, people’s access to fresh, affordable fruit and vegetables: they’re all part of one big, interlinked web, and we believe that the small transformations we all make can cause ripples of change in multiple parts of that web."

This comes just weeks after the team celebrated being recognised twice at the Durham County Environment Awards, including the overall ‘Outstanding’ award, for their Eat Smart project targeting food waste in primary schools. The REfUSE café is open Tuesday to Saturday, 10am to 4pm and serves breakfast, cakes and lunch, welcoming everyone and always looking for new volunteers to join the team.

Nikki Draver, co-founder and Director of REfUSE, added: "We want to build capacity for community-led transformation of our food system. When faced with such colossal problems as climate catastrophe, biodiversity loss, and increasing inequality, it is easy to feel lost, powerless, or alone.

"But we want REfUSE to be a community in which people can find agency, empowerment, and hope. We want the cafe to be a place which, through shared activity around food, connects people together, creates networks of trust and reciprocity, and inspires people to make a change in their own households, communities and networks."