Creggan Park's community fridge helping both community and planet

Creggan Country Park has launched another new environment initiative thanks to funding from The National Lottery Community Fund Northern Ireland and Department for Communities.

The Park has received £5,000 to grow their environment programme to benefit people and the planet.

‘Creggan Connected’ is a community fridge funded by The National Lottery Community Fund, IKEA's 'Places Called Home,’ and is supported by The Department for Communities.

A community fridge is a social space that brings people together to connect, learn new skills and reduce food waste. In partnership with FareShare Go and Tesco, surplus food is redistributed via a community fridge to local people.

No registration is required, and food is collected and redistributed on the same day. Visitors can go for a walk, bring along a reusable bag and just take what they want from the fridge and shelves during its opening hours.

Community fridges help tackle climate change at a local level as food waste can produce large amounts of greenhouse gases. In just three days, the community fridge has saved 250kg of carbon dioxide and distributed 78kg of surplus food.

Karen Healy, Environmental Officer at Creggan Country Park said: “We are excited to grow our environment programme further so that it can help both people, and planet.

“We would like to say a huge thank you to the six students from St Joseph’s Boys School, our volunteers, and our artist Sheila for all their hard work over the past few months.

“This is their project, they designed it from scratch, and did all the work themselves. Looking at the amazing transformation of the space just shows how hard they worked, and they should be very proud.

“We want to use the space to raise awareness on climate change and biodiversity issues that affects us all, and would like to extend our thanks to everyone who made this possible.”

Amanda Doherty, from The National Lottery Community Fund added: “We’re delighted to see the opening of this new community space at Creggan Country Park.

“This has been a massive community effort and I’d like to pay tribute to everyone including the pupils from St Joseph’s Boys School who have made this possible.

“It is so inspiring to see local people working together to help each other and take action on climate change. Well done to everyone involved.”

Eimear Montague, from the Northern Ireland Resources Network also praised the initiative, describing it as “fantastic”.

She said: “Creggan County Park offers activities which supports the local community as well as promoting environmental projects.

“The opening of Creggan Connected by the team at Creggan Country Park with support from volunteers to expand their work and open a Community Fridge is a fantastic initiative.

“This project will prevent food being wasted and sent to landfill, tackles climate change at a local level, enables food to be shared, improve lives and strengthens the local community. Many congratulations to all involved.”