Communities across the UK are tackling the food waste crisis

The National Lottery Community Fund has revealed today that it has invested more than £266 million in over 2,600 food waste and composting projects across the UK over the last decade - as Food Waste Action Week (9 to 13 March) shines a spotlight on one of the country's most pressing environmental challenges.

The UK generates approximately 9.5 million tonnes of food waste every year – equivalent to the weight of the Great Pyramid of Giza. Around two thirds of that - up to 6.7 million tonnes - is food that was still edible at the point it was thrown away. The cost to households is stark: the average UK family wastes food worth around £470 a year, with household food waste totalling an estimated £14 to 15 billion annually.

At the same time, an estimated 8.4 million people in the UK experience food insecurity - a challenge that communities across the UK are working to address, including Footprints Women’s Centre in Belfast. They opened Northern Ireland’s first Social Supermarket in 2017 and divert 20 tonnes of food from going to landfill each year – that’s over 54,000 meals.

In Scotland, Transition Dundee’s Gleaning Project works with local growers. In the last 18 months, it has saved almost 10,000 kilos of produce from going to waste, distributing fresh food with an equivalent retail value of over £40,000 via 40 local community groups.

In Derby, Thrivemind Village CIC has rescued over 4 tonnes of food and locally grown surplus produce from across the city and redistributed it directly to the community. Using a National Lottery–funded electric cargo bike, volunteers collect produce that would otherwise go to waste and create free meals in its community kitchen, supporting over 200 people experiencing food insecurity.

In the market town of Hay-on-Wye in Wales, Hay Regenerative Soils is doing something quietly remarkable: collecting food waste from local households and businesses and transforming it into rich compost - keeping organic material out of landfill and putting nutrients back into the land.

For volunteer Lief van der Baan, the project has meant far more than that. Lief, who has paranoid schizophrenia and had been out of work for seven years, began volunteering after becoming interested in environmental issues and wanting to do something about them - on his own terms.

"When I started volunteering at Hay Regenerative Soils I noticed quite a profound change in my mental health," he says. "Just those first couple of weeks I noticed I was getting a real shift in my state of mind. It was just different. It was refreshing. I could feel myself becoming a bit more joyful."

The work is physical and hands-on - sorting compost, taking temperatures in the Ridan machine that converts food waste into compost, aerating the maturation bays - a world away from the screen-based isolation Lief had grown used to.

"With web development, it's all in your head. You're sat down all the time. The only thing you're touching is a keyboard and mouse. So this is very different. I'm mucking about with soil and meeting people."

Most importantly for Lief, it was a choice he made for himself. "No one said to me, 'Go and volunteer for this. It'll be good for you.' And that has done wonders for my self-esteem and for my mental health. I'm very proud to have that sense of agency in life. It's turned a corner in my life volunteering here."

John Rose, Wales Director and Environment Lead at The National Lottery Community Fund, said: "Stories like Lief's remind us that tackling food waste and making good food accessible to everyone isn't just about the environment - it's about people. When communities come together around a shared problem, the benefits ripple outwards: less waste, better health, saving money, stronger neighbourhoods, and people finding connection and confidence they might not find anywhere else. That's why we're proud to have supported more than 2,600 projects across the UK, and why we're calling on even more grassroots groups to come forward.

“If you have an idea for an environmental project in your community, we want to hear from you. Find out more and apply for funding on our website at https://bit.ly/Environmentfunding."