DENMARK - Foodsharing Copenhagen
Started by volunteers of Floating City, yunity and others in May 2016.
Public facebook group with >2400 members, private facebook group for active volunteers (>70 members)
FRANCE - Nantes - DLC, Détournement Libre de Consommables
Clément and Chloé started around January 2016 a Facebook group based on the Foodsharing.de's experience.
Community: 700 members on a public Facebook group (by 08/2016), without advertisement
Stores: 2 cooperating supermarkets, about 7 pickups a weeks with a lot of fruits and vegetables
Legal: registered as an association on the Loi 1901, costs 85€/year to insure active members. Haven't contacted the municipality directly. Active members sign a ''Charte'' manually.
Difficulties: getting more stores to cooperate. Have tried mostly supermarkets. A bit messy at first, as all volunteers were invited to go and ask stores without preparation. Will try from Sept. 2016 onwards to look for more stores with a more structured, professional approach. Law of Feb.2016 (supermarkets must try to give away their leftovers) : an association needs to be a charity and at least 2 years old to be eligible to receive the unsold food.
Tried to implement a different tool than Facebook but very few people transited to Slack and Trello.
How does it work? Members who want to become active pay a 5€ subscription to cover the costs of the association. About 25 active members. Each pick-up needs one active member and a car. They can choose to donate to a charity, put the food in a ''Boîte Utile'', 4 existing boxes in Nantes where people give and get all sorts of things for free (without a fridge, completely open in the streets), or redistribute. They often choose the later option and write on Facebook where they will redistribute, often at their home with fixed times.
They have a quiz but it is not compulsory. 2 trial pick-ups.
Interested to try out a basic software if it's in French.
POLAND - Foodsharing Warsaw
Agnieszka and Karolina started around March 2016 a Facebook group based on the Foodsharing.de's experience.
Community: 15 core people who push foodsharing Warsaw forward and meet every two weeks. Around 30 verified foodsavers and a lot more aspiring ones. After interviews on TV in (which month?) they are contacted by people all over Poland and other cities already started foodsharing initiatives as well.
Food Share Points: 3 fridges. They call them 'Jadłodzielnia' (from 'Jadło' - the fodder + 'dzielić' - to share + '-nia' - marks a location). Are used by the people, but sometimes empty.
Stores: The most lacking part so far. No regular pick-ups, just spontaneous calls from a bakery, a chef-in-training, and a seafood store.
Legal: foodsharing Warszawa doesn't want to register as an organization, because as private individuals noone is liable for possible problems due to the FSPs.
Difficulties: getting more stores to cooperate. Will focus from Oct. 2016 onwards to get regular cooperations. The Polish gift law, which makes the recipient of a gift pay 10% of its value to the state.
Solutions for handling the gift tax problem:
- First solution is clandestineness (The food is 'abandoned' and 'coincidentally' gets found by the foodsaver. Downside: Makes the cooperation inofficial and illegitimate.)
- Second solution is price reduction (where the store reduces the price to ridiculously small amounts and thus makes the tax almost non-existent. Downside: There still is money involved and the store has more work in accounting.)
- Third solution are tax-free amounts (If the value of the gifted items doesn't exceed a certain amount of money over some years, no tax needs to be paid. Downside: Work in accounting.)
How does it work? Extensive use of facebook:
Fanpage with 2246 likes (by 09/2016) https://www.facebook.com/FoodsharingWarszawa/
A closed group for the orgateam consisting of 14 people (by 09/2016)
A closed group for foodsavers, which I cannot seem to open with my facebook account..?
A closed group for private foodsharing, dumster diving and freeganism, which already existed before, with 2069 members (by 09/2016)
A closed group for connecting organizations that have food with those who need it with 13 members (by 09/2016)
A closed group to coordinate the expansion of foodsharing to other Polish cities with 26 members (by 09/2016)
They have no quiz. 3 trial pick-ups are needed to become a verified foodsaver, two meetings must be visited to get the password to the orga-googledrive. On that drive there are spreadsheets about FSPs, pick-ups and verified and aspiring foodsavers, meeting minutes, a general rules sheet, flyers and posters, also to approach stores and basically everything they work on. The googledrive is like the office of foodsharing Warsaw, and who has the password is part of the orgateam.
Still dreaming of translating foodsharing.de. Interested to try out a basic software. Already thinking about building an app for themselves.
