Community Shop

Community Shop

The UK is the most unequal western country. The rich during recession have seen their income double, the poor have seen their income stagnate or decline. Austerity is used as an excuse for Shock Doctrine, slash and burn of public services, cuts to welfare payments, the poor and the sick punished for the sins of the bankers. Those on benefits, apart from cuts, are being repeatedly sanctioned on a whim by sick bastards in Job Centres who take a sick pleasure in seeing others suffer.

ConDem government job creation consists of low paid, part time, temporary, de-skilled, zero hours McJobs. The working poor. Bad employers are being subsidised by the taxpayer.

Fuel and food inflation has risen faster than the rest of Europe.

No surprise then that Food Banks are the fastest growing sector of the economy.

Dating from Medieval times, maybe going back to Biblical times, gleaners would go in after a harvest and glean what was left from the fields.

Supermarkets, rather than bear the costs of surplus food when overstocked, reject food supplies on a whim. Cornish pasties rejected when delivery 17 minutes late, ten tonnes of tomatoes rejected wrong size. Produce often never leaves a field, the farmer then left to plough the crop back in or feed to animals, either a very expensive green manure or very expensive animal feed.

A bread shop in Farnham, end of the day, the bread is thrown away. Similarly with a bread shop cum café in Farnborough.

Coffee shop Harris + Hoole in Guildford at the end of the day throws its food away.

Supermarkets, what they cannot sell, goes in the skip.

Community Shop offers a better solution than Food Banks, it takes rejected food stock, otherwise quality food, and puts it on its shelves, sells at a third of market price to its members.

Community Shop is an example of the sharing gift economy, collaborative commons, the fastest growing sector of the economy, but in the main below the economic radar as does not contribute to GDP.

We need more local businesses like Community Shop, that work in the collaborative commons, that retain and recycle money within the local economy.

TechStart in Aldershot, takes in surplus computers, refurbishes, re-sells at low price, net café, computer repairs, training.

Skipchen in Bristol takes surplus food, turns into delicious meals on a pay-what-you-can-afford.

Transition Community Cafe in Fishguard takes in surplus food, turns into low-priced delicious meals.

• Sacred Economics
• The Zero Marginal Cost Society
• Feeding Britain
• Families go hungry as supermarkets send millions of tonnes of food for landfill
• Smart farmers call in the gleaners: Volunteers are salvaging crops that supermarkets refuse to take – and giving them to food charities
• Feeding Britain: The statistics that show the scale of our food waste problem
• Revolutionary ‘social supermarket’ opens with branded goods 70% cheaper than the likes of Tesco and Asda
• UK’s first ‘social supermarket’ opens to help fight food poverty

Tags: Community Shop, food poverty, food surplus, food waste