Deadline approaches on crowdfunder to fund Shrewsbury Food Hub depot
A Shrewsbury charity tackling food waste and keeping community fridges stocked is appealing for help to keep their depot open.
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Each week, the team at Shrewsbury Food Hub help save the planet by collecting food destined for the waste and re-distributing it to community groups around Shropshire.
The charity has been operating since 2016 when it began with five volunteers helping gather food from a couple of shops around Shrewsbury.
Eight years on they have over 170 volunteers who collect food from over 40 stores, farms and factories, and send it off to 65 local community groups and charities.
The saved food goes to schools so they can give out free toast and fruit to children, provides fresh produce for foodbanks and helps community groups such as Shropshire Mind and Shropshire Supports Refugees host meals and coffee mornings to tackle social isolation.
Last year, the team rescued 214 tonnes of food, mitigating 586 tonnes of greenhouse gases CO2 equivalent.
But with the increasing costs of utilities, the 'heart of the hub' - their depot in Battlefield - is at risk.
Fundraiser, Cherry Teearu explained: "Our community is everything to us it's what we deliver to where we collect from, it's important to us that we can carry on helping them.
"People tend to think what we do here doesn't cost very much, because we get the food in from suppliers for free. But actually, it costs us over £300,000 a year to run because we've got our van that we have to put petrol in and maintain.
"We've got the depot which costs £17,000 a year, then all the utilities which have increased recently - there's a lot to fund."
A recently launched crowd-funding campaign is giving the charity the chance to receive a £10k grant from Shropshire Council, but they will only receive the money if they can reach their target of just over £19k in pledges.
As of Monday evening, the team had raised just over £14,000 in pledged donations, with just nine days left to raise the extra £5,000.
The deadline for pledges is next week, on August 20. If the organisation does not receive their target, any pledged money will be returned to backers.
The crowdfunder can be found online at: spacehive.com/the-heart-of-the-hub
