A special event, led by the University of Worcester, will highlight the scale of food waste in the UK.
The Feed the 1,000 event will see unwanted supermarket food that would otherwise end up discarded, turned into meals for up to 1,000 members of the public in Worcester City Centre, on Tuesday. It is one of a number of activities taking place as part of a "Go Green Week" for the City, running from April 17 to April 21, which gives the public a chance to find out what actions they could take to be more sustainable.
Following on from last year's successful Feed the 1,000 event, the organisers have taken it a step further. They will again attempt to give away 1,000 meals, equivalent to the average amount of food a UK family wastes in a year." But this time a number of local supermarkets will provide the ingredients, having donated produce that would otherwise have to be thrown away, such as wrongly shaped vegetables. " Catering students at the Heart of Worcestershire College will use these to cook up soup and kebabs to be given away outside the Guildhall, on Tuesday, April 17, between 12pm and 2pm.
This is one of a number of events, activities and giveaways at three different venues throughout the week; outside the Guildhall, at South Parade, close to Worcester Bridge, and at an empty shop in the Crowngate Shopping Centre, open throughout the week between 2pm and 4pm.
As part of 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 Tuesday, April 17 to Friday, April 20, 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. To mark World Fish Migration Day, there will be a chance to make fish from origami and learn more about the plastics polluting our rivers and oceans.
The university-led event follows on from the annual Go Green Week initiative on campus. This is the second year this initiative, led by University of Worcester students alongside students from Worcester Polytechnic Institute Massachusetts, has been run in the City for the public. It 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.
It is hoped that, from this, a model for behaviour change can be developed that could then see similar events applied in other cities.
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."