
We’re delighted to announce that we are a successful recipient of this year’s “Eat It Up” Fund from environmental charity Hubbub.
The Fund awards projects that offer bold, creative and innovative solutions to food waste.
This grant will support our groundbreaking pilot project Clean Plate, which looks to transform food waste in prisons. Running for the duration of 2025, we will collaborate closely with a prison partner to co-produce a world-first toolkit with prison staff and prisoners. By empowering the prison community to have their own ideas about how best to tackle the problem of food waste, the solutions will be authentic and realistic. We will take the toolkit to other prisons for feedback and to take the impact further.
Food waste is a growing concern within the prison system. We have the largest prison population per head in western Europe, projected to rise to 114,200 by 2027 according to a recent report from the Ministry of Justice. Each one of these inmates requires three meals a day. The resulting food waste is often huge, and the potential for impact is enormous with even small interventions in the prison kitchen.
We believe that interventions and initiatives created from the grassroots have the opportunity to make a big dent in the waste produced, but also to make lasting change with the people who actually make up the community ecosystem.
Reducing food waste in prisons brings multiple benefits: cost savings; a reduced environmental footprint; better prison community and staff experience; healthier food; and food eaten rather than left on the plate supports prisoner behaviour and rehabilitation. Will an investment in better quality food reduce food waste and improve prisoner outcomes? The results could be transformative.
About the Fund
We’re delighted to be in such good company, with other recipients ranging from Newcastle University’s “Waste Not!”, Chefs in Schools, The People’s Pantry in Glasgow, London’s The Felix Project, Streetbox, and Angry Monk. All innovative and inspiring food waste projects that we’re looking forward to seeing unfold.
Find out more about Hubbub’s “Eat It Up” Fund here.