FLAVOUR was funded by the European Union Interreg 2 Seas Programme, which covers work in the coastal areas of England, France, Belgium (Flanders) and the Netherlands.
These areas were struggling to prevent food waste while the number of people experiencing food insecurity was increasing.
The project explored how to:
- Create job opportunities and skills for people looking for pathways into employment, through involvement in food surplus redistribution.
- Create socially-innovative business models that increase the efficiency and effectiveness of how we deal with surplus food.
- Create systems covering a larger region so we can more effectively collect and redistribute surplus food to people living in food insecurity.
- Process food surplus to create new products.
- Share learning and influence policy across the 2 Seas area. Download the FLAVOUR project flyer.
Download the Flavour Project report.
Surplus Food Network
In 2021, our city’s Surplus Food Network redistributed 1,309 tonnes of food that would have otherwise gone to waste, feeding 5,870 people per week living in food insecurity. Preventing food waste significantly reduces CO2 emissions but to further reduce our carbon footprint we introduced electric vans and cargo bikes into our network. We also installed compost tumblers which quickly recycle any inedible food into lovely nutritious compost that’s used for local food growing projects.
Flavour Packs
One of the things we worked on in our Community Kitchen is how to extend the shelf life of surplus fresh food. Gluts of fruits and vegetables are the most difficult to see go to waste; the natural resources wasted in growing them combined with the lack of healthy food available to people on low incomes compelled us to create a new affordable product.
After months of experimentation, we concluded that dehydrating the produce required the least amount of processing and so we created Flavour packs in a range of different flavour combinations that can be added to few basic ingredients for a quick, tasty and nutritious meal.
In our fortnightly Chop & Chat sessions, volunteers came together to carefully prepare the vegetables ready for ‘Dennis’ our dehydrator. The sessions were a lot of fun and the smells wafting around the Kitchen on those days are incredible.
The Flavour packs have a little window panel and are beautiful as some of the colours are intensified and look like jewels. Even after dehydration, the veg packs contain most of their nutritional values and even have a higher concentration of fibre – lacking in most people’s diets.
We then moved on to testing Flavour Packs in the community and people have been pleasantly surprised by the taste and texture.
Partner projects
Our FLAVOUR partners were working on new surplus food products too. In Brighton Sussex Surplus are processing pumpkins, gleaned from local farms, into delicious soup with more flavours in the pipeline; FareshareSussex are running workshops to teach people how to cook with surplus using different preserving techniques; while over in France, Panier de la Mer processes surplus seafood from the Port of Bolougne into tasty soup and ready meals which are distributed to food banks.
Training Guide
The FLAVOUR Project has created a training guide which contains lots of free to download resources for managers and coaches working in the food surplus sector. The resources cover topics such as food safety, wellbeing and mentoring – and are designed to help coaches and managers support and train staff and volunteers.
Social Impact
For every £1 invested in our FLAVOUR project work, £10.72 of social value is returned.
Download our social impact card for the FLAVOUR project.
Policy Recommendations
From mandatory food waste reporting for businesses, to providing start up funding to social enterprises, read the FLAVOUR project’s recommendations for UK policy makers here: FLAVOUR policy brief UK
