🕒 Why don't you penalise Food Waste Heroes for claiming lots of slots?
There's already a limit in place: Food Waste Heroes can hold a maximum of 3 collections on any given date. That's our main fairness safeguard: it means no single volunteer can lock up every collection in an area on a given day, so there's always room for others to get involved.
This cap also comes down to food safety: it reflects how much food one person can safely store and manage in a day. You can read the full detail in our guide to how many collections you can claim.
Within that limit, slots are first come, first served and can't be reserved. This way, slots get claimed and covered fast, which is what helps surplus food be rescued and shared with the Food Waste Heroes’ communities.
Our mission is to share as much food as possible, as widely as possible. When we've looked at the data, most Food Waste Heroes who claim several collections a week (or from the same store) are sharing that food widely across the community, which is exactly what we want to see. When they're not, we do step in and penalise that behaviour, because that's the part that actually matters.
We also value reliability highly. Stores depend on familiar, responsible volunteers turning up week after week, and those relationships are a huge part of what keeps food flowing into the programme for everyone.
Protecting that regular commitment matters more to us than moving slots around for the sake of it and risking collections going uncovered.
Of course, if there's evidence of genuine misuse, we'll look into it. Let us know by submitting an Issue Report Form via the Volunteer Hub.