Cork town’s effort to ‘waste not want not’

Waste Not Want Not, the Clonakilty-based food waste project devised by environmental NGO Voice Ireland - was set up in spring 2024, to help the town achieve the goal of being Ireland’s first community-based food waste champion.

Shortly after the project launched, I met with Abi O’Callaghan-Platt, Policy Director at VOICE Ireland, and Allison Roberts, Community Liaison Officer, to find out about the project for The Echo.

A year later and, as the project nears the end of its one-year duration, I caught up with Abi and Allison to find out what had been achieved, the challenges they faced, and how they’re preparing to hand over the project to the community.

One early learning was that, while engagement with the project across all three stakeholder groups was high (householders and community groups, restaurants and retail, farming and manufacturing), participation was not as equally spread between each group as was hoped.

But Waste Not Want Not is as much about being the pioneer and learning from what worked and what didn’t as it is about creating tangible change – doing the hard work now so other community groups won’t have to.

“It’s been a real whirlwind of activity,” says Abi. “Much more on a community level more than on the business level – especially big business.

“We found some businesses, like large producers and retailers, are often held to other standards, like Bord Bia’s Origin Green programme,” explains Allison, “which means they might be using systems but on a much bigger scale than what we need for change at community level.”

“They don’t discount because then the retailer only gets a fraction of the full price back,” explains Allison. “That’s a broken system.”

Other retailers in the town do discount, offering cut-price veg boxes on a first come, first served basis, or through food redistribution apps, like Too Good To Go, as well as partnering with Food Cloud. But even then, it’s not a perfect system.

“Another retailer doesn’t discount bread or send it back, it just goes in the bin. They do partner with Food Cloud, so it’s better, but there is still huge food waste going on,” says Allison.

While retailers couldn’t quickly respond to the community scale of the project, Abi and Allison noted their engagement with the initiative was enthusiastic, sharing challenges and open to doing better.

Change in this sector still may come, but as Allison says: “It’s one of those big ships that turns slowly. We can only achieve so much with those guys in a year, and if we had put all our focus on them, we wouldn’t have achieved anything elsewhere. I think the repercussions of this project will grow slowly with this sector because there is really good intention there.”

Another surprising finding was how much food waste was generated by food manufacturers. 

Again, larger producers also found it hard to reduce how much food waste is created, but that this was mainly linked to their requirement to batch test product against food safety standards.

“They have to send off big batches of product to the HSE for testing, and that’s where a lot of their food waste comes from. That’s not the kind of thing we can tackle at a community level, but the great thing is these producers turned up and shared that information with us,” says Allison.

Engagement from the town’s restaurants and hotels was also fantastic, but systemic problems caused by food safety regulations highlighted how restaurants are not allowed to donate unsold food to charities.

Clonakilty is a popular destination for weddings, and again, hotels came on board and signed up to commit to offering a Green Wedding Package to couples, but as many hotels have bookings locked in up to 18 months ahead, any potential impact in offering green weddings will only start to be noticed from 2025 on.

It was the community stakeholder group that ultimately drove the project forward during the year. “We had massive engagement in this stakeholder group,” says Abi. “Loads of ideas; great turn-out, and it drove the rest of the year.”

Abi and Allison list out many initiatives including cookery and gardening skills to chef demos on food waste and preserving; a new Apple Festival based around the idea of a community apple press; establishment of a Women’s Shed and expansion of the Men’s Shed, and outreach events to involve everyone who calls the town their own.

But it is the #StopTheSachets initiative that is on course to be one of Waste Not Want Not’s best successes. Focusing on ‘The Big Four’, the initiative looks to rid the town of single-use condiment sachets for ketchup, mayonnaise, vinegar and butter.

The idea began with James Wharton, owner of Clonakilty chipper, The Chunky Chip, who had already been trying to stop their use. The local Tidy Towns had also identified the sachets as a source of litter around the town. Being able to see the benefit of the initiative from the business and the community side has meant progress has been speedy, with Clonakilty on track to be officially single use sachet free by the start of this year’s tourist season.

Coming in at 15c per item, getting rid of sachets makes financial sense – especially at a time when margins on a food business are wafer-thin and every cent saved counts. Business owners like James, along with others in the town, have transitioned to reusable or compostable ramekins and portioning out the condiments to ensure no waste and no litter.

There is a growing demand in tourism generally for visiting destinations that have sustainable credentials, and Clonakilty is hoping this initiative will tap into some of that demand, in the same way Killarney has with its pioneering project to rid the town of single use coffee cups.

It also gives the town a head start for what is coming down the line. In 2030, the EU’s new Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation will come into effect, and single-use sachets are included in the ban.

“It’s going to happen anyway, but what we hope is that it will bring everyone together to think about waste as a really unifying effort for the town,” says Abi.

“All this activity has created lots of little sparks around the place with things happening and people and groups starting to work together,” says Allison. “It’s given a lot of energy to a lot of people who are trying to do lots of great things.”

Although VOICE Ireland’s work on the project concludes at the end of March, there is one last big chunk of work Abi and Allison need to do – to create the resources that community groups all around Ireland can use to replicate what Clonakilty has achieved, as Allison explains.

“The report we produce, in of data, is qualitative rather than quantitative. There’s already hard data that has been produced on a national and EU level on food waste, that’s the data we’re basing the whole project on, so the information we will compile into the report will be from the experience of the local community working with us on the project: impact statements, personal experience, case studies and analysis on how it all worked.”

From that, a toolkit will be available online that will take community groups through the process of setting up a community-level food waste reduction initiative in the same vein as Waste Not Want Not.

“Step one of the toolkit covers Planning and Engagement – setting out the intention and knowing your why, gathering together community groups and deciding which bits of the toolkit you want to use.

“Step two covers the Action phase – how to engage at the community and business levels, measuring engagement, implementing change and case studies for how to get community projects going like composting, working with schools, creating a festival or a social hub.

“The third part of the toolkit is a Resource Library which will pull together templates, links and information from multiple sources. Some of which we have developed, but also there is a wealth of really great information out there that we can put together in one place that makes it easy for people to access,” explains Allison.

“Once this work is done, we have another six weeks of disseminating the information out to other communities via information sessions where we will present the toolkit and what we have learned,” says Allison.

“The big thing we have learned overall is that what people want is community and what we need is a big cultural shift,” Allison explains. 

“How we are going to get there is by bringing people together in a community and creating connection. Good communication is key; we’re not telling people off, but we are all in it together and we can have the craic while we’re doing it. You can do anything with food waste – but make it creative and then people are happy to engage with it.”

In the end, though, Allison and Abi will both have to back away from the project as it is handed over to the community groups that have been so energised over the year by the project.

The future of Waste Not Want Not rests with Clonakilty Tidy Towns and Clonakilty Community Resource Centre. “They have been our community partners throughout, and they’ve been amazing,” says Allison. “They will keep it going; the Apple Festival will keep going, and the Women’s Shed, too.”

Quite a legacy, after all.

See www.voiceireland.org/wastenotwantnot or email [email protected].