New community fridge aims to help bring people across Smethwick together to share food and ideas
A new food and engagement project around a shared fridge has been launched by a Smethwick community charity.
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The Dorothy Parkes Centre has launched the Community Fridge, which is a space that brings people together to share food, meet up, learn new skills and prevent fresh food from going to waste.
The project was launched on Friday and is open to all, with anyone in the community able to share or take food, including surplus from supermarkets, local food businesses, producers, households and gardens across Smethwick.
It's the first Community Fridge of its kind in Sandwell, with more than 700 fridges across the country, which are run by community groups in shared spaces such as schools, community centres and shops.
A spokesman for Dorothy Parkes Centre said: "Community Fridges are a tried and tested way of reducing the environmental impact of food waste, which is a huge issue.
"A third of all food produced globally is wasted.
"If food waste were a country, it would be the third biggest emitter of greenhouse gases globally."
Centre manager Christina Murray said the new fridge, which is called Dottie's Community Fridge, was the product of a lot of community help.
She said: "It's available to everybody and anybody, regardless of your financial situation or where you live and the main aim of the fridge is to reduce food waste, so we want to put food in bellies, not bins.
"We're in contact with an amazing project down in Winson Green called Incredible Surplus who have supplied a lot of the food that you can see here today, and we've also got contacts with Neighbourly.
"We also have an award-winning community allotment down in Bearwood, so the fresh produce is all grown there, which means that it is organic and reduces food miles as well."
The new project at Dorothy Parkes Centre also compliments two other projects they currently deliver around food provision, which are the Community Cooking courses and the Community Allotment.
Donations can be accepted from members of the local community, providing it meets the criteria, and the Community Fridge will be open on Tuesdays and Fridays from 10am to 2pm.
A maximum of three items can be taken, free of charge, and receipt of these items requires the completion of a short, anonymous, monitoring form.
