Falling Fruit Ireland
Republic of Ireland
Falling Fruit Ireland is a project to harvest the seasonal glut of local fruit (apples, pears, plums, nuts, etc.) and direct it to charities catering for those in need. It’s aims are to create practical solutions to the waste that can happen when households have gluts of fruit in their gardens; to re-connect people with local food and the local environment; to foster a healthy community spirit of sharing and care for the disadvantaged; to demonstrate just how much potential there is for feeding ourselves in cities and towns; to connect diverse groups of people through food sharing; to promote awareness and preparedness as we face into a future of food systems breaking down; to encourage healthy outdoor activity and contact with nature.
Falling Fruit Ireland was set up by Bernie Brannick. As a co-founder of the WeShare Gift Economy Community (www.weshare.ie) she envisioned Falling Fruit Project as an extension of this unconditional sharing principle. The vision was for resilient, just and collaborative communities where people have access to healthy and local food and waste is minimised. In 2015 she gathered volunteers for the Project and some of the volunteers, five approximately, have participated each year since, alongside many other volunteers. The volunteers are the backbone of the project – giving freely and genrously of their time and energy, delivering fruit to charities and all manner of essential support.
Falling Fruit Ireland has two main projects.
Since April 2018 Falling Fruit has engaged in a bread rescue project. Each evening end-of-day high quality unsold bread and baked goods are collected from a bakery in Dublin and delivered to a charity where families in food poverty can access it. Some of the food also goes to an animal charity catering for rescued animals. This project will continue into the future and has the potential to expand. Results are that this fresh healthy food is prevented from going to waste and instead is put to positive use.
Falling Fruit Project partners with FoodCloud http://foodcloud.ie
FoodCloud is a social enterprise that connects businesses with surplus food to charities in their local communities that need it via a software platform. FoodCloud has enthusiastically partnered with Falling Fruit since 2015. Falling Fruit Ireland delivers apples to FoodCloud for distribution to their charity partners. For larger quantities of fruit, juicing has become the best option. In 2018 FoodCloud organised the juicing of more than 600Kg of apples for charities.
No. It may be in the future.
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