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Food & Community Climate Action

NESCAN Hub

#Organisational Development

The great thing about community climate action is that it isn’t all about ‘saving the planet’ it is also about growing and helping your community.

Food and community climate action are a natural fit. From the actual creation of food in community gardens to the distribution of surplus food in community fridges and everything between, these projects bring so many benefits to the community. Alongside general benefits such as healthier people, development of community spirit and reducing poverty and inequality, are more project based benefits such as increased gardening skills and composting knowledge, learnings around food choices, sustainable cooking and reduction of food waste.
community garden member holding basket of vegetables

mother and toddler harvesting peppers and tomatoes from community greenhouseFood based project examples:

Community Food Growing – Community Gardens are a great way to involve the whole community from young to old. There are lots of great local examples, to take inspiration from. Do check them out on our project map and the Aberdeen City Food Growing map. There might already be a community garden in your area or a gardening group you could talk to. You can also find your local gardening group here. If you are interested in starting up a community garden in Aberdeen, CFINE provides help and support through the whole process and also runs a community garden network. The RHS has some fantastic resources to help in setting up a community garden. Gov.uk also has some great practical and governance advice but you need to take account of the difference in planning laws etc. that we have in Scotland. 
 
Education, Skill development & Campaigning –Helping people to understand the issues and what they can do about it, is a huge part of helping the planet and your community. You can do this through not only running training and events but also in what you say and do. For example, you could run
    • Workshops and events such as compost demonstrations, food waste minimisation workshops, cookery classes.
    • Local Food Networks to enable local food suppliers to reach the local market, the Deeside Food Hub is a great example of this.
    • Social media campaigns encouraging reduction of food waste, buying local etc.
Get all your local takeaways to use reusable tiffin boxes instead of single use plastic like Sustaining North Berwick did. Community Health Scotland has training events and highlights funding in this area.
 
Redistribution of surplus food - pantries, fridges, ‘shops’ – there are lots of ways in which you can help redistribute surplus food in your area from arranging to collect surplus food from supermarkets and local businesses, like Deeside CAN, to enabling and encouraging your community to share their surplus food like the Haven’s Community Larder in Stonehaven.
You may not want to take on a food based project just yet but just would like to know more about how you as an organisation can reduce food waste and buy local. Zero Waste Scotland is a great resource if you would like advice on this or just contact us and we can help too!
 
 

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