November 9, 2021, by aczjb1

Foodprint – Meet the students fighting food waste in the heart of Nottingham

Ahead of Social Enterprise Day on Thursday, we’re shining a spotlight on Foodprint, a community initiative ran by University of Nottingham students.

Foodprint is Nottingham’s first social supermarket and a food redistribution network, established in 2017 by a group of students from Enactus Nottingham at the university. Their aim is to tackle food waste and food insecurity in the local community, contributing towards the UN Sustainable Development Goals in the process.

Their supermarket is located in the heart of Nottingham, in Sneinton – a community with high levels of child food insecurity relative to the rest of the UK. Foodprint aims to make healthy eating sustainable and affordable by selling food that would otherwise be wasted by supermarkets, at discounted prices. Each year, new students take over the running of the shop, supported by advisors from Nottingham University Business School.

In addition to their social supermarket, in 2020, Foodprint introduced ‘Foodprint on Wheels’, a mobile supermarket selling affordable food – including fruit and vegetables, bread, locally sourced sweet treats and more. Thanks to funding and support from Cascade at the University of Nottingham and the National Lottery Community Fund, and a Ford Transit van donated by the Ford Fund, Foodprint were able to fulfil their ambition to take their services to customers beyond Sneinton.

Throughout the pandemic, they used the resources they had available to bring the mobile supermarket to isolated communities across Nottingham. Since the launch of Foodprint on Wheels, the team have completed numerous visits to these communities across the city, with plans to reach many more individuals in the coming months.

As well as this, they have carried out several projects within the local community, such as half-term holiday parcels for school children and Christmas parcels for international students self-isolating at the university over the festive period.

Foodprint is run solely by volunteers. They are always looking for people to help out with the supermarket by driving their van, serving customers or helping to stock shelves. If you are interested in making a social and environmental impact in the community, visit their website for more information!

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