Transition Westcombe is asking local people to make their fruit trees available for volunteers to harvest.
The idea is to make sure that less fruit grown in local gardens goes unused by getting volunteers to harvest it and then share it out.
Owners of the trees would get first share of the picked fruit, with the rest distributed within the community such as at SureStart centres and nursing homes. They even plan to make sure bruised fruit doesn’t get wasted by using it to create fresh juice.
A spokesperson for Transition Westcombe said:
“About 95 per cent of fruit in Britain is imported, including 70 per cent of our apples, with some coming 12,000 miles from New Zealand. They are often grown using intensive methods and even the British apples we buy in shops are transported a long way to and from distribution and packaging centres.
“In the meantime our gardens have trees groaning with fruit we don’t pick, so harvesting it for local use makes perfect sense. Similar projects elsewhere have even identified as many as 50 varieties of apples in a small area, so imagine what we might uncover on our own doorsteps.”
Owners of fruit trees in the Westcombe Park area are asked to email growing.transitionwestcombe@gmail.com with their details to get involved.
Transition Westcombe is part of the Transition Towns movement which encourages groups of local people to find ways to “respond to the challenges, and opportunities, of Peak Oil and Climate Change“.