Starbucks has announced £350,000 of funding to be made available to environmental
charity Hubbub’s Community Fridge Network, to broaden its offering beyond food
redistribution.
The funding will enable 50 more of Hubbub’s 450 community fridges to run food projects
from their fridge to help communities broaden their food knowledge through activities based
around the following themes:
Skills – To give the community an opportunity to up-skill and learn about sustainable,
affordable, and heathy living through workshops, events, cookbooks, or how-to-
guides.
Affordable food – To help fridge visitors discover new ways to increase access to
local and affordable food through food cooperatives, food box schemes or food
markets.
Community Connection – To provide opportunity for communities to come together
around shared food through community meals, coffee and chats, youth activities, and
recipe shares.
Growing – To support community growing and increase the amount of edible
food grown and shared locally through community gardens, greening projects and
seed or plant sharing.
The funding comes following a successful pilot of food hub funding which was supported by
the Rothschild Foundation last year. Those involved in the pilot said they believed it helped
them adopt a more varied diet, discover new recipes and feel more connected to their local
community.
In response to this, a further 50 community fridges received food hub funding supported by
Co-op and the Starbucks Foundation, taking the total number of community fridges already
benefitting from these additional food projects to 64.
Starbucks will be funding a further 50 fridges across the UK, with grants made available from
by the Starbucks® 5p cup charge which is applied when a customer chooses to use a
single-use cup. Starbucks has donated all funds to Hubbub to support stronger, greener
communities.
The new funding is available to community fridges that are already open and running.
Community fridge groups can apply for funding from 31 st March via the Hubbub website at
https://www.hubbub.org.uk/community-fridge-funding
Community fridges are social spaces, run by volunteers, where people can come together to
share surplus food and help others in their community. Surplus food can be shared by
supermarkets, local food businesses, producers, households and gardens. In 2022, the
Community Fridge Network stopped an estimated 7,129 tonnes of food going to waste, and
shared 16.9 million meals worth of food.
Ellen Rutherford, Head of Food at Hubbub said: “We’ve always believed that a community
fridge is more than just a fridge and the new food hub funding shows how they are evolving.
From the trial last year, it’s clear there’s an appetite from people to know more about their
food and how to get the most out of it. The generous ongoing support of Starbucks and Co-
op will give visitors the opportunity to do just that, with the added bonus of saving money and
doing their bit for the environment.”
Jacqui Wetherly, Director of Sustainability at Starbucks said: “Every day, across the
globe, our partners support the communities in our stores and the neighbourhoods we are a
part of. We’re proud to be supporting the expansion of food hub activities at fifty Community
Fridges across the UK, as part of our continued partnership with Hubbub.”
Rebecca Birkbeck, Director of Community and Member Participation at Co-op said:
“As a co-operative, we recognise our responsibility to make a genuine difference and believe
that everybody should have access to good food. We’re pleased to be working with Hubbub
to introduce the new food hub funding to ensure more people can come together to eat,
connect, learn new skills and reduce food waste.”
UK households waste 6.5 million tonnes of food every year, 4.5 million of which is edible.*
The value of this wasted food is £14 billion – meaning the average person throws away
around £210 per year/£730 for a family of four.** As the cost of living crisis continues, many
of the Community Fridges have provided a lifeline to people struggling to feed their families.
