FORMER Green Party leader Natalie Bennett will attend a screening of a food poverty film in Shipley.

She will be among guests at the screening of documentary film, Full Bins, Empty Bellies, Lonely Lives, from 5.30pm tomorrow at the Kirkgate Centre.

The film, directed by Daniel Vallin, will look at millions of people living without enough food to eat, while millions of tonnes of food is wasted every year.

It features interviews with Ms Bennett and Duncan Milwain, director of Saltaire Canteen and trustee of The Real Junk Food Project, who will both be speaking at the event following the film’s screening.

It will be Ms Bennett’s first visit to the Bradford district since she stepped down as Green Party leader in September last year.

She visited Saltaire Canteen with Shipley Councillor Martin Love (Green) in 2015. She has now been selected to contest the Sheffield Central constituency at the next General Election.

Saltaire Canteen will be serving a dinner from 5.30pm at tomorrow’s film screening on a pay-as-you-feel basis, cooked from waste food – edible food which would have otherwise been taken to landfill or incineration. The film will be shown from 6.30pm.

Around 15 million tonnes of edible food is wasted in the UK every year. The Saltaire Canteen, based in Victoria Road, has developed from The Real Junk Food Project, launched in December 2013 by Adam Smith, who set up a pay-as-you-feel cafe in Armley.

Run by volunteers, the cafe uses food from a number of companies and organisations who are supporting the project by passing on surplus food which would otherwise find its way into landfill.

The Real Junk Food Project operates a global network of pay-as-you-feel cafes including the Saltaire Canteen and others in Germany, France and Australia.

Mr Milwain said the film would raise key issues concerning food poverty.

He said: “What the film deals with are issues we are seeing at the canteen. We are not saying that we have an answer at the canteen, but we would like people to engage with it.

“The film is awareness-raising. It addresses three big problems.”

Tickets for the screening are available on a pay-as-you-feel basis at eventbrite.co.uk

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