Community Shop to extend ‘surplus’ range to non-food products

Dunwell said she and her team want to widen the range of manufacturers and retailers Community Shop works with as well as look at extending the product range it stocks to non-food items.

“We already work closely with a core group of retailers and manufacturers, but we’d love to hear from others.

“We’re interested in any food – fresh and chilled products in particular – and residual and end of line products such as washing powder and even washing machines,” she added.

Community Shop, a subsidiary of Company Shop, the UK’s largest distributor of surplus food and goods, launched its first pilot store on December 9 in Barnsley. It provides people on social benefits with a range of edible food products at heavily discounted prices. Dunwell said the store is already turning a profit and the community interest company plans 20 more across the UK by the end of 2014.

The Waste and Resources Action Programme (WRAP) estimates 15 million tonnes of food waste are generated per year in the UK – a country that imports 40 per cent of its food. Globally, as much as half of all food produced — almost two billion tonnes – ends up as waste every year, a report by the Institution of Mechanical Engineers published last year found.

UK retailers, such as Tesco are beginning to tackle the food waste problem, through measures such as publishing detailed data and working with consumers and suppliers. But surplus food still persists in the supply chain because of reasons such as short shelf life and labelling errors.

“We are passionate about residual foods, because there are huge numbers of people on stretched family budgets and huge volumes of food being sent to landfill,” said Dunwell. “Across Europe there are thousands of supermarkets like [Community Shop] and they’ve been looking at [the UK] and thinking ‘what are you doing?’”

Community Shop has access to more 90 per cent of Britain’s supermarkets through its parent company, which claims to provide its suppliers with a cost effective as well as environmentally efficient solution for the disposal of residual stock.

“There are so many organisations going to ‘zero waste to landfill’, but they don’t move it far enough up the chain so it ends up as compost or in anaerobic digestion. Instead we can be saving them the cost of anaerobic digestion and also give them a return on that saving – and we get that food to people who need it the most,” said Dunwell.

The next six Community Shops will be in London, but Dunwell said the company was still working out exact locations to ensure they can have the “best” social impact.

“We have lots of big supermarkets but also lots of food deserts where people can find any number of kebabs late at night but can’t buy an apple during the day,” she commented.