SHOPPERS in Worcester were given a tasty treat as students from the city’s university hit the High Street as part of a campaign to highlight food waste in the UK.
The Feed the 1,000 event will see unwanted supermarket food which would otherwise end up discarded, turned into meals for up to 1,000 members of the public in the city centre yesterday.
It was one of a number of activities taking place as part of a ‘Go Green Week’ for the city, running until Saturday which gives the public a chance to find out what actions they could take to be more sustainable.
Organisers were set to attempt to give away 1,000 meals, equivalent to the average amount of food a UK family wastes in a year. A number of local supermarkets will provide the ingredients, having donated produce which would otherwise have to be thrown away, such as wrongly shaped vegetables.
Catering students at the Heart of Worcestershire College used the items to cook up soup and kebabs to be given away outside the Guildhall.
As part of the week, members of the public will have their first chance to try out new electric bikes, which are part of the Woo Bikes scheme that the University is piloting.
They will be available at South Parade from until Friday from 11.30am to 1.30pm.
Other events include bike security marking by the police, a community litter pick – starting from South Parade on Thursday at 10.30am – a raffle, a nature photograph contest, free chilli plants, poppy seeds and dehydrated fruit, and samples from The Body Shop.
The week sees the University working with a number of local partners, including the Heart of Worcestershire College, Crowngate Shopping Centre, Marks and Spencer, Worcester City Council and Worcester BID.
Katy Boom, the university’s director of sustainability, said: “It’s about giving people a little bit of information about what they can do and maybe getting then to change one behaviour; something they’d never thought of before.
“It’s letting people know that doing a small thing will actually make a big difference.”
