Launching the Community Fridge
In June 2022, we launched the Bradford on Avon Community Fridge. The goal of the Community Fridge was not only to help local people but also to tackle food waste in the town.
At launch the Community Fridge was open weekdays between 2pm and 5pm.
Our Town Warden team stock the fridge with food collected from the Bridge Yard Co-op.
On launch there was a clear demand and to match this demand we increased the opening hours of the fridge to every day between 9am and 5pm.
Collections from the Co-op also increased to 7 days per week.
Update June 2023
How much food waste does the Community Fridge stop?
On average the Town Warden team collects 1 to 2 bags of food from the Co-op daily with an average weight of over 5kg – though is does depend on the stock supplied by the Co-op.
This means that over a week, the Community Fridge is stocked with 35kg.
Over the course of the working year, this will mean that the Community Fridge is stocked with 1.7 tons of food.
At the time of writing the Town Wardens have collected from Sainsbury’s twice collecting 4 crates on each visit. These crate weigh around 10kg each – which saves a further 40kg of food waste from going to landfills.
We could see there was a clear demand as Community Fridge would always be empty by the next day. This also means that no food from the Community Fridge is thrown out by the Town Council.
Currently we do not accept food donations from individuals.