ALDI KENDAL

Manna House works for the benefit of the public in South Lakeland, providing advice, advocacy and a drop-in support center for those who are homeless, vulnerably housed, lonely or needing help.

Waste into Wellbeing (WIW), is a volunteer led project in the heart of Kendal. We’re creating a vibrant and resilient community by bringing people together around good food. Surplus food collected from local supermarkets, shops and eateries which would otherwise be wasted is served as delicious meals in Kendal People’s Café or shared with others through the community larder. We also host a Kendal Community Kitchen, offering training opportunities and social events. Our community and children's cookalongs are all about coming together to share skills, knowledge and good food. Inspiring our community to cook and eat healthier and consider their impact on the planet. As well as these popular events which are open to all, our kitchen is used to enable learning and work experience opportunities for young people and vulnerable adults. Hosted by community-based charity, South Lakes Action on Climate Change towards transition (SLACCtt), WIW is delivering an important environmental impact by providing a solution to reduce food waste, a significant contributor to Green House Gas emissions through landfill. Our Ambition     We aim to respond to climate change and the recommendations of the Kendal Climate Jury, by diverting surplus and waste food In the Kendal area from landfill. Through this, we aim to build social cohesion and improve well-being in Kendal and surrounding areas through the provision of, and education on, good food. We do this by: 1. Operating in a way that helps develop an inclusive, social community around food: providing a welcoming place to eat and enjoy tasty, healthy food, made from the surplus we collect. 2. Offering a community larder to redistribute our collected food to our community, open to all. 3 Reducing food poverty in Kendal by the provision of the above, helping to improve the quality of life, resilience and life chances of our customers and volunteers. 4.Developing an appreciation of good nutrition through education on healthy food, through our outreach programmes with our customers and other community partners. 5. Ensuring our food community is open to all, inclusive and welcoming, by providing a ‘pay as you can model’ while still ensuring our own financial resilience and sustainability.

Eggcup is a food project based in the Lancaster City Council district. We are part of the Lancaster and Morecambe Food Justice Partnership and members of Xcess and IFAN. We operate an industry-standard surplus food warehouse. We can process, portion and repackage all kinds of food. We have walk in cold rooms and freezers, and a commercial prep room. Of course, we can also take retail-ready food and non-food items. We have the full support of the city council and operate rigorous standards designed in collaboration with the EHO team. We run two community food outlets, one in Lancaster and one in Morecambe. We have a membership scheme so people sign up to become members of Eggcup and then come every week to the outlet, pay their membership subs and do their 'shop'. The outlets are run like community shops and have a cheerful, high quality presentation. People make choices from the food in our chilled units and from the produce and ambient shelves. There are cupboard staples like pasta and sauces, tinned foods like tuna, beans, tinned veg or meat puddings, fruit and vegetables, fresh and frozen meat, dairy products like cheese and yoghurts, and bakery products. We want people to be active in their community and to come together to tackle problems, and volunteering with Eggcup is a good way to do this. We encourage our members to come and volunteer with us. The outlets are friendly places. We also run a Buying Cooperative and source staple foods in bulk at a discount and at the moment we provide bread, milk and eggs for our own members and for other community food projects. When people come together they can pool their resources and achieve more through solidarity than they could achieve in isolation and the Buying Cooperative is an example of that. We work as closely as we can with local sustainable food projects. One of our goals is to support the food system to develop in a way that is environmentally and socially just.