United bags of Angers gather more and more inhabitants

The idea is generous but gives a glimpse of the difficulties more and more Angers households are facing and will, maybe, face in the months, and years, to come. Since spring 2011, Les Jardins de Cocagne, an Angers association member of a national network, started to distribute to low income families of the city unsold fruits and vegetables collected on the Marché d'intérêt national, then packaged in string bags. The idea offers a double interest, says the Angers city on its website, first by reducing the wastes coming from the destruction of unsold products, secondly by allowing households to get access to fresh items. Moreover, the work resulting from the sorting of the fruits and vegetables, their packaging and their transport has given a work to several persons.

Credit : Angers CCAS, Angers city

After it was launched in the Justices-Madeleine, Saint-Léonard and Les Hauts de Saint-Aubin districts of Angers, the idea has been extended to the Monplaisir and Deux-Croix-Banchais and will be implemented in La Roseraie and Belle-Beille districts. The string bags are put aside for low income families who must vouch they are economically modest. The prices range from 2,5 to 6 euros a string bag according to revenues while a part of the cost is met by the Centre communal d'action social.

Magnified par the word "united", this trend is not reassuring about the purchasing power of more and more Angers families. Two conclusions may be learnt from the experience. The more and more common recourses to associations in numerous aspects of daily life demonstrate the Angers inhabitants become few by few unable to face the economic costs of the contemporay life. If such honourable experiences must be continued and generalized to others field (energy, transportation, clothing...), that must not be on the expenses of persons (employers employees) facing the social and economic costs of a commercial business.