Jess Wallace, sustainable food coordinator at Eco Savvy, updates us on the latest events to take place on the new Food Programme.
It’s been an exciting start to the Eco Savvy Food Programme! A few weeks back we had our ‘Fermentation station’ workshop. This was a well attended evening where participants learnt the basics of dry salt fermentation, had the opportunity to ‘massage’ cabbage and to place their sauerkraut in a communal crock for collection later this week. We also had the lovely Donna with us sharing some brilliant chutney and Jam recipes. There is a lot to be learnt from these traditional methods of food preservation (aside from being delicious!) and our food program hopes to share these skills with the Arran community.
On Tuesday we had Sam from Love Food Hate Waste deliver a workshop at our Home Farm offices. We learnt how much food the average Scottish household wastes (£460 a years worth!) and some brilliant tips on how to buy only what you need, to store food properly and to eat what you buy. It may sound self explanatory but we are throwing out a fifth of what we buy. In Scotland we throw out 2 million slices of bread a day! The financial and environmental impact of this is huge, and more importantly preventable!
Join our Savvy Food Program to find ways to reduce your household food expenditure and to lower your carbon foodprint. Email our sustainable food coordinator Jess on jess.ecosavvy@gmail.com to find out more.
Eco Savvy has been working with the Co-op to reduce food waste by running a food share. Our wonderful volunteers collect short life food that would otherwise be going to landfill. To date we have stopped over £14,000 and almost 3.000kg of food from being binned! This food is available for anyone to collect and we encourage Arran residents to come along and help reduce our islands food waste!
We are looking to expand the food share scheme, currently we run in 3 locations weekly;
• Whiting Bay every Tuesday at 9pm at the Eco Savvy shop
• Brodick every Thursday at 8.15pm at the Ormidale pavilion.
• Lamlash every Friday at 9pm at the COAST octopus center
There are also ‘pop up’ food shares being held in Shiskine and Corrie over the summer which we hope to make more regular. Please get in touch if you are interested in volunteering.
Get involved by emailing Jess our sustainable food coordinator on jess.ecosavvy@gmail.com:
• If you have any food preservation techniques that you would like to share- we are looking to skill share in our workshops and are always interested in learning from the community 
• Volunteer for our food share scheme and stop good food from being thrown out. You can help Scotland reach its aims of reducing food waste by 33% by 2030.
• Find out what your current foodprint is and how you can reduce this (and save money on your food shops) by joining our savvy food program.
Our next event is a food themed film screening on Sunday the 18th August from 2pm at our offices at Home Farm in Brodick. (Refreshments provided!)