- Imran Ahmed (Allwood, 2016, n.p.)
"
40
SUSTAINABLE FOOD ACTIVITIES
in Trondheim
In Trondheim, there are many sorts of sustainable food activities. Based on my previous knowledge on the topic and desk research, I have identified some sustainable food activities in Trondheim. To structure the findings, I have divided the sustainable food activities into different sections.
Free Fridge
Free Fridge is a concept focusing on reducing food waste. The concept is based on volunteers installing a fridge in an area (street, garden, school building, etc.), where people can leave or take food from the fridge as they please.
The concept is fully volunteer-driven and depends on volunteers cleaning, maintaining, and taking care of the fridge. There exist four free fridges in Trondheim, and the fridges are said to be very popular. The free fridge at ILA is usually empty 2-3 hours after being filled (Heggdal, 2016).
Grocery stores
By purchasing at grocery stores focusing on sustainability, consumers can reduce negative environmental consequences (Framtiden i Våre Hender, 2018). There are some grocery stores in Trondheim that focus on reducing packaging and selling locally produced groceries. These are Etikken, Helios, and Svartlamoen samvirkelag.
Besides selling local products and reducing packaging, it is essential to save expired edible groceries from the trash. Two initiatives collect expired groceries from the grocery stores, Matsentralen and Frelsesarmeen.
Furthermore, they distribute the
surplus food to non-profit organizations such as congregations, Trondheim Community Kitchen, and Omsorgskafeen.
Community kitchen
A community kitchen can be defined as “community-focused and -initiated cooking-type programmes.” (Iacovou et al., 2011, p. 535). It is usually an event where people meet regularly to share a meal.
For example, Trondheim Community Kitchen and Omsorgskafeen are two companies arranging free meals several times a week. They prepare meals from food received from Matsentralen. The people visiting these initiatives are often people with low income that need a helping hand.
Community garden
A community garden can be described as “a shared, semi-public space where people in the surrounding neighbourhood share the work and harvest of maintaining a garden space for growing fruits, vegetables, flowers or even livestock.” (Study, 2017, n.p.).
Community gardens differ depending on their structure, environment and land.
Trondheim municipality provides financial support to urban agriculture in Trondheim (Trondheim municipality, 2020). There exist five urban farms on ground level owned by Trondheim municipality, Kneiken Felleshage, Smedstua, Trondheim Parsellhage, Lilleby Hagelag, and Fagerheimskogen velforening. Trondheim municipality also finances 14 other private urban gardens.
Guerilla Gardening Trondheim is another initiative doing gardening in the city centre. It is defined as
“gardening on land that the gardeners do not have legal right to use, often an abandoned site or area not cared for by anyone.” (Guerilla Gardening, n.p.). Even though it is not legal, no articles state that anyone has ever been convicted for the activity in Norway.
Dumpster diving
Dumpster diving is searching through garbage containers to collect edible food (Rombach & Bitsch, 2015). A store owns its trash, and because of that, it is illegal to dumpster dive in Norway.
Despite that fact, no one has ever been convicted or gotten a fine for dumpster diving in Norway (Nicolaisen, 2016). That may be due to dumpster divers have morals on their side. They save food that would otherwise be thrown away.
In Trondheim, there are several dumpster diving Facebook-groups, and the biggest one has 8,600 members.
The members mostly post tips on where to dumpster dive or hand out free groceries if they found too much.
Dumpster diving is not included as a category due to the fact that it happens
at unknown locations in Trondheim.
Therefore, it is not possible to locate the activity.
Connect farmers and consumers
A direct connection between farmers and their consumers benefits the environment in several ways. It increases the value of locally produced products and reduces advertising, food waste, unnecessary packaging and transportation (Krutvik, 2020). There are two initiatives in Trondheim arranging for consumer and farmers to meet and trade, Trondheim Cooperative and REKO-ringen.
Restaurants & cafes
Six restaurants and cafes in Trondheim focus on sustainability by serving meals made of local ecological products.
These are Persilleriet, Mat fra Hagen, Stammen Cafe & Bar, Kafe Soil, Grønnsaksverkstedet and Ramp.
42
Identifying the different sustainable food activities in Trondheim provided me an overview of the initiatives.
Furthermore, it is most interesting to look closer at the sustainable food activities that exploit urban wasted spaces in Trondheim. These are the free fridges, some urban community gardens (such as Kneiken and a houseing cooperative), and Plant Tech.
To understand how the initiatives exploit the wasted spaces, their challenges, needs, and perspectives, I decided to conduct interviews and observations.
Interviews and observation
I was able to arrange an interview with an owner of the Free Fridge at Ila, a resident at a housing cooperative with an urban garden on the roof, and observe an interview of two members from Kneiken community garden. The last initiative I wanted to interview, Plant-Tech, was not able to be interviewed. All the information about Plant-Tech is collected from their website and other articles.
The interviews were semi-structured and only notes were taken (and photos when allowed). Background information about the initiatives built the basis for the questions during the interviews. See Appendix A for a full overview of the questions.