During my second year at university, Bristol was named the Green Capital of Europe. The city’s ethos had a huge influence on how I now think about aspects of everyday life, such as how we source the food we eat, where our clothes come from, and how we get rid of our waste. I remember watching a Netflix documentary with my boyfriend on food waste in the UK and being shocked by the estimation that UK supermarkets were throwing away 115,000 tonnes of edible food every year (the weight of 12 Eiffel Towers in food). I was also horrified that UK farmers wasted tonnes of produce as it could not be sold to supermarkets because it was ‘wonky’ (and did not satisfy the customers demand for that perfectly curved aubergine).
Although this didn’t encourage me to start spending my entire student allowance on veg from the local Clifton farmer’s market straight away, my then boyfriend and I did discover a really cool café in Stokes Croft that made meals entirely from supermarket skip waste and operated on a ‘pay what you will’ policy, which we ate at regularly. Now living in London, and no longer on a student allowance, I order my weekly vegetables through Oddbox – which delivers wonky and surplus produce that would otherwise go to waste – and buy my much-needed sweet snacks and chocolate nuts from The Source Bulk Foods to minimise waste.