The Walton-on-Thames Community Fridge is a free resource available to everyone.

The ethos of the fridge is to help reduce food waste.

Our community fridge is open during our normal opening hours. Please therefore keep an eye on our social media pages for updates.

All the food that we stock has been donated from food retailers, food growers and members of the public. A lot of the food is on its Best Before date, but this does not mean that it is unhealthy or dangerous. It simply means it may have tasted a little better the day before…  After all, a potato or a banana doesn’t know what day it was “created”. Yet more food has been part of a multi pack that cannot be sold individually.

We opened the Walton-on-Thames Community Fridge on 14th February 2022, with fantastic support from HUBBUB and the COOP. The money they awarded us allowed us to purchase a large fridge, insurance, cleaning materals and pay for volunteer food hygiene training.

We signed up to Farshare UK and Neighbourly, two organisations that facilitate the redistribution of surplus food from retailers to organisations like ourselves. Via these two organisations we now have strong relationships with Waitrose, Sainsburys, Gails Bakery,  Green & Lovely, Marks & Spencer, Nandos and Tesco.

We accept fresh and ambient food. Items such as bread, fruit, vegetables, tinned and packaged goods, hygiene products and household items. We try to support our local foodbank as often as possible so any good quality, long life items will be put aside and delivered to them.

Due to the cost of living crisis, we have recently seen a massive increase in demand for food, and thankfully, supply has thus far generally managed to keep pace with this demand.

Poverty or financial difficulty is not our remit. Our remit is reducing waste. HOWEVER, we will do everything we can to help our community at times of crisis and need. We mainly receive donations of bread, fruit and vegetables, but on occasion we can get tinned goods, eggs, some meat or fish and even pet food. We  do our best to look after our four legged friends too!

We never know how much or what types of food we are going to recieve. Somedays are therefore “better” than others. As such, please have realistic expectations. We are not a foodbank, but we will try our best to support the community.

Some of the food we get is not fit for human consumption, or is simply too far “gone”. We are often asked what we do with it. We have a couple of outlets. The first is our composting bins – of which we have 9 within the community garden. The second option is donating this food to a local farm. They use it to feed the animals, and in return we recieve eggs and sometimes plants for the community garden. 

To date (October 2024), we have saved 62,600kg of food from entering landfill!  The fridge has been accessed by 21,000 people in that time.