Community fridge to be set up in Whitby

Whitby is set to get its own community fridge to help tackle food poverty, food waste and to protect the environment.

Author: Karen LiuPublished 28th Feb 2021

Whitby is set to get its own community fridge.

It is a place for residents and businesses to donate any extra food they have so people can go there and take the produce for free.

It is to help tackle food waste, food poverty and to protect the environment.

It will be launched and fully set up in the middle of March and it will be based inside the Flowergate Hall Community Art Centre.

Flash Company Arts, who currently run The People's Kitchen in the town, will be running the community fridge.

Rebecca Denniff, Artistic Director and Programme Manager, said:

"The Whitby Food Alliance identified the need for this community fridge in Whitby and they've been looking for a space for quite some time. Once we started running our People's Kitchen they came to us and asked us if there'd be room in the building for it.

"This is about dealing with local food waste and food poverty issues. So the priority for a community firdge is around making sure we can become a zero waste community. The Scarborough fridge is for Scarborough and the Filey fridge addresses the needs of Filey, but Whitby didn't have anything like it.

"I think it's one of those things that have taken a long time to come to Whitby. I know that the worker who's connected to the Scarborough and Filey fridges just took a long time to find someone in Whitby who was prepared to take on, because these are big things as they take a lot of volunteering areas and goodwill.

"If it's a fridge then it's got to have somewhere where it can belong, where the power is not going to be interrupted so I think it just took the right space ot happen in the cnetre of Whitby and hopefully we've offfered that and we're very excited."

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