A community food project in the Western Vale says it helped more households than ever during the winter.
But organisers of the Llantwit Major FoodShare Pantry say they're concerned over whether they can meet demand in the long term.
The Glamorgan Voluntary Services (GVS) project says it supports between 80 and 100 families a week with access to fresh food and tolietries at a fraction of the reccommended retail price.
It began in 2017 as a table of end-of-day surplus items from supermarkets - available for free to the community in order to tackle food waste. Last year, a second pantry was opened in nearby St Athan.
Nicola Osgood, project lead for FoodShare, said: "There is still a significant amount of ‘surplus food’ that would be hugely damaging to our environment if we weren’t able to use it, and there are many members of our community who would really struggle to access enough affordable, good food without the pantry."
"We are really proud to be working in this space but it’s certainly concerning that there is still so much surplus food and so many people who rely on it - the project evidences our unsustainable culture at the moment."
The project received extra Welsh Government funding during the winter months via support grants from Vale Council, which supports the pantry alongside Public Healh Wales.
It enabled the charity to buy extra food, including stock to provide 97 households with Christmas hampers.
But Nicola Osgood warned: "There is concern over how we can continue to meet this demand long term if we don’t see things ease after winter or secure more long term funding."
GVS says it has also been working with Food Vale, the Llantwit Major Climate Conversations Group and other organisations to bring about sustainable change for the future.
Last summer, they teamed up with Slade Organic Farm to deliver a farm-to-fork workshop to pantry customers - and a recipe folder was created offering ideas on how to use frequent pantry ingredients to cook from scratch.
The FoodShare Pantry runs from the CF61 centre at Llantwit Major every Thursday from 12-2pm and at The Gathering Place in St Athan every other Wednesday from 11.30am - 1pm.
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