A friend of mine in Cambridge recently told me she routinely buys more food than she needs for herself. She enjoys entertaining, so she’s usually able to use up most of the excess in this fashion, but on weeks when her friends are all busy, that excess food goes to waste. I doubt she’s alone in doing this.
Now, wasting food is always a travesty, but in a city where 15,000 people are estimated to be living on the edge of poverty, it seems especially inexcusable, so I had a think about how to solve this. The obvious solution would be to give the food to people who need it. But who, and how?
It’s important that donating excess food should be convenient and flexible: it shouldn’t require the logistics of making prior arrangements or of journeys of more than a few minutes, and it should be able to accommodate a wide range of different foodstuffs.
That rules out the Cambridge City Foodbank, because they will accept only a limited range of foodstuffs. What about soup kitchens, or homeless shelters?
A quick Web search revealed two homeless shelters in Cambridge. One of them, Jimmy’s Night Shelter, is close to the centre of town, has staff available most hours of the day, and explicitly mentions on its website that it accepts food donations.
The other, WinterComfort, is a little further from the city centre, is staffed shorter hours, and does not mention on its website whether it accepts food donations. I’ve left them a voicemail about the latter point, and if they reply, I’ll post an update accordingly.