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GREEN VENTURES ORGANIC BOX SCHEME The Peckham Settlement, Goldsmith Road,
London SE15 5TF
Tel: 020 7252 8300 BACKGROUND
Because of the very low
Government subsidy for organic farming, compared with that for large scale
chemical farming, organic produce is relatively expensive and therefore
inaccessible to people on low incomes. Green
Ventures box scheme was designed as a model to help remedy this situation.
It is a non-profit making,
wholesale buying club run by it’s members with the support of Green Adventure,
a local environmental charity. It
was set up in Camberwell in 1996 with the aim of supplying local people with fresh, seasonal, organically grown
vegetables, fruit and other produce as cheaply as possible, and to offer home
delivery by bike and trailer. For it’s first three years it was
subsidised with funding from the National Lottery which, among other things paid
it’s co-ordinator’s wage. Since
the beginning of 1999 it has been self-sustaining while still continuing to
offer organic produce at a price affordable to people on a low income.
The box scheme is able to do this by:
a) keeping it’s overheads low;
·
much of the work is done in
exchange for produce by the members themselves.
·
we recycle everything.
·
because deliveries are made
by bike and trailer we have no fuel costs. b) asking members to pay a price for produce
which is determined by their income so that there is an element of subsidy from
higher waged members.
We currently supply a total
of about 80 bags of produce a week to about 60 members.
In 2002 Green Ventures supplied over 3,000 bags of organically grown
fruit and veg, and our annual turnover was £26,400. JOINING
THE SCHEME
You
need to leave a message on 020 7252 8300
and either Margaret, or Piluca will call you back within a week.
Life membership of the scheme costs just £1. We supply bags of assorted
vegetables in full and half quantities, bags of assorted fruit and mixed bags of
veg and fruit, also boxes of organic, free- range eggs and loaves of organic
bread (sunflower, wholemeal, white, rye or fruited). We don’t do bespoke
bags but if there are items you never want in your bag we’ll keep a note of
them so that we can substitute with more of the other items going into the bag
in any given week.
Currently our produce is
supplied by a consortium of Norfolk farmers, called Eostre Organics. It is Soil
Association approved. Non-UK
produce comes from two producer co-operatives in Spain and Italy who work with
Eostre. Criteria for what goes in the bags each week
·
For reduced food miles and
increased freshness we use seasonal UK produce, (when this is unavailable we
only buy European produce) ·
Our staples are potatoes,
carrots, onions and usually mushrooms. ·
We always include at least
two leafy, green vegetables for their high mineral content. ·
We vary the bag each week as
much as the season will permit. ·
We look for the best value
for money – we’re not looking for expensive rarities or veg that isn’t
quite in season. An
example of a veg bag and a fruit bag*
*
Please note that the contents vary with the seasons Sliding
scale of prices since 5th April 1999
*This
is the total per adult from all sources of income, (including housing benefit,
interest etc). For a two-adult
household please add together both incomes and multiply by 0.7.
For households with more than two adults please use your discretion or
consult us. Please deduct £1,500 for each dependent child. Delivery or collection
This happens every Wednesday, collection between 11.30am and 5pm and
delivery between noon and 6pm. Currently
we deliver to SE5, SE15, SE17, SW2, SE22 and parts of SE21, SE24, SE26, SE27
(ring to enquire whether we do your road).
If you are outside our current delivery area and don’t want to collect
from us we can probably arrange for you to collect from the member living
nearest to you that we do deliver to.
Frequency
of order
Most of our members have a regular order either weekly or alternate weeks
and some ring us on an occasional basis to order.
We can accommodate almost any permutation of order and advise a regular
pattern, (whatever it may be), rather than occasional ordering, where the onus
is on you to get your order in before
3 pm on a Monday afternoon to avoid disappointment on the Wednesday.
If you have a regular order we can cancel it for any period you wish.
A week’s advance notice of cancellation is helpful but if you can’t
then we must know before 3 pm on the Monday for cancellation of the Wednesday
order. Please
note that once we have ordered from our supplier we cannot then make
cancellations or additions for late callers. Working
on the scheme in exchange for produce.
This is a useful option if your budget is tight.
The work would either be sorting the produce or delivering the orders by
bike and trailer, (we can lend you a trailer but not a bike).
When there are no vacancies we keep a list of interested people. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||