Berlin – The Home of Community Fridge

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...and what Wales can now offer through Circular Communities Cymru:

In Wales, Circular Communities Cymru (formerly Circular Economy Wales) has been making huge inroads during 2021 in helping Wales move from just two or three Community Fridge groups to over twenty in a matter of months, working with communities to find sites and purchasing and allocating fridges and freezers. On top of this, Circular Communities Cymru has been inundated with requests, having fifty-plus further communities on its books now exploring the potential. But where did this global phenomenon all start?

Community Fridge started in 2012 in Germany. The Berlin-based organisation, ‘Food Sharing’, set up Fridges across the city ten years ago to save unwanted food from households and local businesses where people can help themselves.

In Galdako, a small city on the outskirts of Bilbao, Spain, residents in 2015 began to wonder what would happen if the town’s rubbish bins were replaced with fridges. From there, there are Community Fridges in New Zealand, Canada, America, the Netherlands and in Israel, with many national support networks working alongside them.

With communities giving it a go in Somerset, Derbyshire, London and in Oxford, the UK home nation to get going on first was England. Five years after the Berlin inception of Community Fridge, the London-based charity, Hubbub UK, started supporting their groups in England.

In building a uniquely Welsh Network to tackle the decades-old challenges in our communities and wider economy, Circular Communities Cymru is now working with local authorities in Wales to build a regionalised approach to development within Wales to support the north, south, east and west. The support packages being put together not only capitalises on Circular Communities Cymru expertise and history of initiating and developing viable reuse initiatives, it is also being designed to take Wales’s new fridge communities on a new and exciting journey, dovetailing into other Circular Economy tools to ensure longevity, impact and success.

Following the communities of Berlin, through the lead that Circular Communities Cymru is taking, in time Wales will contribute something unique to the world in this field as we progress through 2022.

For more information: eifionw@circulareconomy.wales

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