Wednesday 7 July 2010

Foodbank for Kent

I received the following from Nick Chard. It is encouraging.

'Thank you for your interesting email regarding Fareshare's work and the diversion of food from landfill. This charity clearly serves a very important function of preventing waste, helping those in need, addressing food poverty, saving landfill space, and reducing landfill gas, as well as saving scarce resources and carbon. It is certainly a very worthwhile enterprise and I am pleased to note that it is expanding.

From my understanding of Fareshare's work, essentially it takes food which would otherwise be waste from food processors and other businesses and provides it for community use. Turning to my role here at KCC, as the Cabinet Member for Environment, Highways and Waste, this covers the function of the County Council as the household waste disposal authority and therefore as you can see I have no remit in respect of waste food from business premises. In fact, the majority of Kent's household waste is being disposed of through the energy from waste plant at Allington and does not in any case go to landfill.

I agree that FareShare's objectives are extremely laudable and whilst landfill diversion is not an issue for KCC, I am sure that Fareshare's work will be of interest to other colleagues. In fact, during these difficult economic times, Kent has reviewed its priorities to place particular emphasis on supporting those who are disadvantaged and of course food poverty is closely linked to the well-being of our community. I will ask that the work of this charity is flagged to other directorates such as Children, Families and Education.'

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