Kortrijk Deelt (Kortrijk shares)

Four challenges, four solutions

With this project, the City of Kortrijk is taking further steps towards becoming a genuine ‘climate city’, where sharing, exchanging and reusing are just part and parcel of everyday life. The City has already gained a lot of knowledge and experience, and in doing so, it has been faced with quite a few bold challenges. The project aims to find a solution for four of those challenges.

First of all, it wants to study what a city/PCSW needs to change in its policy to return easily accessible unused plots to the neighbourhood and its citizens by turning them into popular gardens.

Secondly, it includes a partnership with local farmers. At the onset, an inventory will be made of the residual flows generated by local agriculture, when they are produced and what their extent is. Those residual flows can be reused locally as resources distributed to PCSW clients as food.

Thirdly, the project will assess what can be done to give food surpluses from mass catering a longer shelf life. The options will be explored in collaboration with the Federal Agency for the Safety of the Food Chain (FAVV). Particular attention will also be paid to any ambiguities in the legislation and how they can be clarified. A pilot project should convince the sector that the reuse of surpluses offers plenty of possibilities.

Lastly, the project will try to implement the findings of the efforts listed above in the region. Meanwhile, several steps have been taken to set up a regional distribution platform for food surpluses.