Thanks to funding from Inverclyde Climate Action Network - Empowering Communities for Climate Action Grants 2025, Inverclyde Community Food Network (ICFN) in partnership with Branchton Community Centre and Belville Community Garden are looking for volunteers to help us with a new pilot project over the next 12 weeks.
ICFN are looking to create a Community Volunteer Driver Network (CVDN) to collect & redistribute surplus food to local Early Learning Centres.
This project aims to prevent perfectly good supermarket food from ending up in landfill, ease household living costs, and enhance Inverclyde’s climate resilience.
The Community Volunteer Driver Network will be pivotal to this pilot. Once recruited, each week, volunteers will confirm their availability and carry out collections and deliveries, ensuring surplus food is quickly redirected to where it is most needed. Volunteers will be offered food vouchers as a thank you and form of recognition for their contribution.
Alongside the CVDN, four ‘Ready Steady Cook’ (RSC) sessions will take place – using ‘waste’ supermarket food. Participants will gain ideas on how to use excessfood to produce healthy meals at very little cost and have conversations about how it benefits the local environment and climate e.g. reduces methane-producing landfill waste, increases access to nutritious food, and eases financial pressure on families.
This pilot is designed as a proof of concept and a foundation for hopefully developing a permanent solution. The learning, processes and feedback and the RSC sessions from the three-month trial will inform the case for a dedicated paid worker and a van to manage surplus food redistribution across Inverclyde. Establishing this pilot will provide the evidence and operational model necessary for sustainable future expansion of the project, including the potential use of low-carbon transport options and additional collection points, ensuring consistent delivery, improved coordination, and expanded reach across Inverclyde.
End of project update
Estimated total food redistributed: Approximately 2.1–2.2 tonnes (see appendix 2).
Equivalent to driving around 10,000 miles in a petrol car or the annual carbon footprint of approximately 1–2 UK residents (food-related emissions).
