Start making YOUR difference to food waste with the ‘Pay as you Feel’ Project.

The Pay As You Feel Food Market and the Real Junk Food Emporium is an extremely creative and innovative way of minimising food waste! Although the organisation is global the Leeds Pay As You Feel Food Market is run by some super friendly students. It is full of food that would’ve been thrown away by the supermarkets and some of the food is absolutely perfect for baking. If you’re not into baking you can find herbs that are just waiting to be added to your delicious home made meals. The best thing about it is not only is it saving tons of food from going into wastelands but due to their motto ‘Pay As You Feel’ the food is totally affordable, fitting straight into your student budget!

To put into perspective just how amazing the work the Real Junk Food Emporium are doing it helps to know a few facts about food waste in the UK. 1.9 million tonnes of food is wasted by the food industry in the UK every year and 250,000 tones of this is still edible. With 8.4 million people in the UK struggling to afford to eat we can’t afford to be wasting this ridiculous volume of food each year! Just by getting yourself down to The Pay As You Feel Food Market or The Real Junk Food Emporium’s cafe and even just buying £1-£2 worth of stuff you are helping decrease these figures. Also not to mention you can get a full 3 course meal at The Real Junk Food Emporium’s cafe and ‘pay how you feel’! Just what a student needs if you ask me!

If you’re just looking for a few bits the food market is where you want to be, they’ve got anything from long lasting tote bags, to tea, to fruit and much much more! They are also full of creative ideas to minimise waste for example you can ‘Bring Your own Jar’ and get it filled with a variety of teas which minimises packaging waste and that’s just one example of many! Their slogan ‘Feed Bellies Not Bins’ is not just down to the food markets but the Real Junk Food Project as a whole is much more than this. It is a network of projects, charities and volunteers which all come together to redistribute food ‘destined for landfill’ to sharehouses, cafes and schools all on a ‘pay as you feel basis’. So far they have saved 1,167,605 kilograms of food and fed 44,723 bellies since December 2013!

The Leeds food market is extremely accessible right in the centre of town so if you’ve got a free hour during your long day at uni, take a study break and head down to the food market to buy those last minute ingredients for your dinner which would otherwise be wasted. There are four Pay as you feel cafés in Leeds so take your pick and get a hefty 3 course meal for however much you feel! Head down today to start making your difference to the global ongoing problem of food waste. 

 

Zara Myers

 

Images: Zara Myers