Sophie Spencer: Warwick mum kickstarts community group to reduce food, household waste

The new community group hopes to spearhead a wave of positive change with an innovative and easy way to reduce food and household waste.

A Warwick mum has launched an online group she hopes will inspire the community to take the lead in reducing food and household waste across the region.

Sophie Spencer started the Facebook group Grow. Reuse. Create in January in an effort to stop the excessive consumption of household food wastage that ends up in landfill.

She said the group enables members to gift any excess produce or second-hand goods that would otherwise be thrown away to those in need.

“The group’s whole mission is in the name really, people who grow produce can share their excess with others and people who need it can access it,” she said.

“If we grow more food here, then we have access to more fresher seasonal produce, and less food packaging, which reduces pollution.”

Mrs Spencer said the idea was sparked by the amount of excess produce she had from her own vegetable garden.

“Even with cooking, freezing and preserving we were still gifting bags and bags away, so I thought, ‘Let’s make a network of people sharing together’,” she said.

Sophie Spencer's excess amount of vegetables grown in her garden led her to start the community page Grow. Reuse. Create. Photo: Contributed

People in the community can post on the Facebook page about fresh fruit, vegetables and herbs they have left over in the garden or household items like children’s toys and washing machines and then give them to others.

“We don’t need to give money away to big corporations that don’t invest in the local community. We need to reduce plastic buying and food wastage,” she said.

“I hope that through this group we can enlighten the community spirit and bring people together.”

Mrs Spencer also wants to raise community awareness on the effects of climate change and how people can become self-sufficient.

“In the coming decades we are going to be subject to really intense weather events here and across the globe that will affect supply chains. Bushfires and intense droughts reduce access to water and food and that could impact our quality of life here,” she said.

To join the Facebook group Grow. Reuse. Create click here.