Angela – Volunteer

Cooking volunteer Angela is a champion of sustainability, always turning up with a composting bin to take home any vegetable peelings to use in her garden. She sorts through the weekly food surplus donations to make sure all edible fruit and vegetables are used, and anything else is composted. A gran-of-four with a great grandchild, Angela previously ran a tea shop and restaurant in her 30s. She says volunteering helps her stay feeling young and active, as she looks forward to celebrating her 80th birthday next year. 

Sustainability is something I am obsessive about and what led me to volunteer for FoodCycle in the first place. Between us at Falcon Lodge we hardly leave a trace of our presence behind – all cardboard plastic glass and tin is taken away, and I take all compostable material. We serve around 30 – 40 meals every week, and the atmosphere is wonderful. We are a team of heroes and I love being a small part of FoodCycle.

What motivated you to get involved in volunteering with FoodCycle?  

I’ll be 80 next January. My daughter saw FoodCycle needed volunteers and she sent me the link and said: ‘Mum, I think this is exactly what you need’. I’ve been doing it for a couple of years now and I love it. It’s everything I believe in. 

I’ve never wasted anything, I think it’s to do with my generation. I was born after the war, and nothing was ever wasted, nobody had any choice what they ate, and you just got on with it. I’ve always been a cook, I had my own restaurant at one point. So I’ve always been interested in food and cooking, and I’m obsessive about recycling and all of that.  

So FoodCycle ticks every box for me. Also as you get older… well my husband is retired too, and you need to get out and do your own thing, so that when you come home you’ve got something to talk about! 

Tell us about your role at FoodCycle – how do you help reduce waste?  

I’m always in the kitchen, we turn up, we look at what’s available and it’s like Ready Steady Cook really, look at what you’ve got and then you turn it into a meal. 

As a team, we never leave a mark of where we’ve been. 

One of our volunteers has a booking at the tip every Tuesday morning, and she takes all the plastic and the tins and the paper and the cardboard to be recycled. So when we leave the venue, there is no nothing in the bins, and we remove every trace of ourselves.  

I’m the one who takes the compost. I’ve got the big garden I’ve got wormeries and compost heaps, so every single thing, even the egg shells and the egg boxes and anything that will rot, goes into one of those places. Then it gets dug in around the garden, helps grows my vegetables, and if I have spare vegetables, I take those along to cook on a Monday. So it comes full circle.  

We try not to waste anything and that gives me a great sense of achievement. 

It’s the worms who do it all really, all I do is bring a box home in my car, and then it’s nature who does the rest. It’s exactly how things should be. 

What difference is FoodCycle making in your community? 

It’s really more about community spirit rather than poverty at our meal. We have a lot of older people coming in who live on their own, and don’t have anybody to talk to or who never cook for themselves.  

They come and have a, a really big tummy full of food for no cost and they chat and have a really nice time. We’ve got a good team of cooking and hosting volunteers, and the atmosphere is wonderful. 

It’s quite amazing the number of people who come along to a meal and say things like: ‘I don’t eat peas’, or ‘I only eat peas’, and then they try something new and they go away saying: ‘That was really tasty’ – and then even ask for our recipes!  

Gradually, people try new things and they realise that actually, vegetarian cooking can be very tasty. It’s a normal thing for me to do, to help make your budget stretch, learning to cook and eat what’s available.  

Do you feel you are helping the planet through FoodCycle? 

Yes! FoodCycle gives me a place to do all the things I believe in, out in the community, rather than just at home. We can all do our little bit individually, but these projects bring like-minded people together. We’re helping people who are hungry and lonely, and we’re also helping the planet. 

The planet’s in such a mess, and if we don’t act then there’s going to be nothing left of it. I think reducing waste is important to every person who comes to volunteer. We all have the same interest. Every week we take a load of stuff that would have gone into landfill and probably created methane, and we turn it into something good. 

It helps me mentally to know I am doing my small bit, and socially too – I’ve met lots of nice people! 

Do you have any tips for other FoodCycle volunteers?  

I would say just remember that everybody can do their little bit.  

I’m fortunate because I’ve got somewhere to make compost. Not everybody can do that, but everybody can do their own little bit. You can find who can do what in your team, and everybody can wash out their containers and recycle them.  

What do you like about volunteering with FoodCycle?  

It means a lot to me. I love it. It’s hard work, and at the end of the day, obviously, at my age, I’m tired, but we have a whole team of heroes really. 

We all work hard, but we all enjoy it and we have a nice time, and we’ve all become friends.  

I can’t speak too highly of FoodCycle. I think it’s a great charity, it’s helping people, and it’s helping the planet too. 

I do believe that volunteering benefits the volunteers as much as the people we are helping too. Everybody has sadness in their life and things like that. And I think that these projects help us as much as the people they designed to help. We’re learning all the time from each other too – like how to cook different foods from different cultures. Somebody in our kitchen was making flatbreads and I thought oh that’s how you do it!