Speak Up - Kōrerotia18 April 2018Food Waste

Female Coming up next conversations on human rights with “Speak Up” – “Kōrerotia”, here on Plains FM.

Sally E ngā mana,E ngā reo,E ngā hau e whāTēnā koutou katoaNau mai ki tēnei hōtaka: “Speak Up” – “Kōrerotia”.

Tune in as our guests “Speak Up”, sharing their unique and powerful experiences and opinions and may you also be inspired to “Speak Up” when the moment is right.

Welcome to “Speak Up” – “Kōrerotia”, I’m your host Sally Carlton and today co-hosting with me is my intern, Andréa Vildeuil.

Andréa Hi.

Sally Today’s topic is ‘Food waste,’ something which both of us are really passionate about. Andréa, I thought it might be nice just to hear where your interests or your passion for the topic stems from and I know that you’re French so the situation in France is very, very different to the situation here.

Andréa It is but I think that when we are looking at food waste in general then I can see it as being the same situation. I mean, we all go to huge supermarkets and buy lots of food and we know that all this food is produced and we kind of take this situation for granted, like having all this food available and we don’t realise the huge quantity which is wasted so I think that’s my main interest, and to that like how can we use this food or produce differently.

Sally I know one of my interests was when I was giving a talk on climate change actually and when I was doing some research I found that if food waste were a country, it would be the third biggest polluter after the US and China and that’s pretty horrifying.

This particular show will take the form of a series of interviews. The first segment will set the scene looking at food waste in Aotearoa. In the second segment, we’ll discuss personal experiences of trying to limit food waste, and in the third segment we’ll talk with individuals who are making a living from repurposing food waste. To set the scene for us we have Jenny Marshall, who is Sector Group Coordinator of Love Food Hate Waste which I believe is New Zealand’s largest organisation dedicated to combatting food waste, is that correct Jenny?

Jenny Yes, I think we’re kind of the only organisation that’s really trying to encourage people to reduce how much food they waste. We’ve got some great organisations out there - some I’m sure you’ll have on the programme later on - which are helping to take wasted food and give it to people in need, but we’re really focusing on reducing that food waste in the first place.

Sally And why is that important? I guess some of the statistics to get us going.

Jenny Sure. So a couple of years ago now, we had a suspicion that New Zealanders wasted a lot of food but we weren’t really sure. So what we did is we went into the rubbish bins of about 1,300 households around New Zealand, including some down in the Christchurch region, and we took a look to see what people were actually throwing out. We were horrified to find that half the food that people put in their rubbish bins was still edible in some form or another. We were finding bread crusts, we were finding people who had maybe had a roast chicken but had only taken half of the chicken meat off the carcass - and in total we found that New Zealand families were throwing away three shopping trollies per year of food which they’d bought intending to eat but it just ended up being thrown away.

It’s kind of hard to understand the scale of that problem but it’s actually enough food to feed everyone who lives in Dunedin for two years, that’s how much food we’re wasting.

Andréa Is this situation specific to New Zealand or do we also see this same behaviour in other countries?

Jenny I think it’s very fair to say that everyone around the world wastes food in some way or another, but in the western world a lot of the food gets wasted at the consumer end which is we buy too much and we don’t eat it; we got to a restaurant and we order too much and we don’t eat it. In the third world and developing countries, they also waste food but for quite different reasons. They waste food for example because they might not have very good transport infrastructure so it takes too long to get the food from the farmer to the market and so the food along the way rots or deteriorates. It might be that they don’t have very good storage infrastructure, so they pick their harvest, they put it into a shack or a shed to store it and then maybe rats or insects get in and nibble away at it. So food waste is a global issue, it’s just that the reasons for that food waste can vary according to which country you live in.

Sally Jenny, you mentioned that the average household throws away three shopping trollies worth of waste; do you have a sense of how much that is combined?

Jenny Sure. So as a country the total cost - and this is just for families we’re talking about here, we’re not talking about supermarket waste or restaurant waste - its $872 million a year worth of food that we buy,

intending to eat but we throw away so it’s kind of a mind-blowing amount.

Sally That’s huge, isn’t it? Getting back to my comment earlier about food waste and pollution: Do you have any sense of what that might mean in terms of environmental impact?

Jenny Sure. So as you mentioned, food waste is the third-largest contributor to greenhouse gases after China and the US and if you kind of think about that in the New Zealand context: we’d have to plant about 119,000 trees a year in New Zealand to offset the greenhouse gas emissions that we cause when we waste food.

Andréa OK and so you’re talking about all these incredible numbers but are people actually aware of this huge waste which is occurring?

Jenny When we first did this research, I think it was fair to say that people weren’t aware and so we’ve spent the last three years with our Love Food Hate Waste campaign really trying to raise people’s awareness in the media of this issue of food waste. So for example, last year we were down at the University of Canterbury and live on the TV we built a pyramid out of bread; we built a pyramid out of 2,400 loaves of bread because that’s how many loaves of bread get wasted in New Zealand every hour because we throw away so much bread.

We’ve been doing the best that we can to draw the public’s attention to this in an interesting and engaging way that gets people talking. And equally, we’ve got the Love Food Hate Waste website where we actually provide people with solutions on how they can reduce their food waste, give them recipe ideas for using up leftovers, we give them storage advice as to how they can store food so it lasts as long as possible, to inspire people to move from awareness to action.

Sally I’m a follower of yours on Twitter and Facebook and I really like some of the topic- or event-appropriate suggestions that you have. Like I noticed you had a Christmas campaign, for example.

Jenny That’s right we did and that’s because Christmas is a time of year where we all buy a lot of food, we all like to eat and drink, we have our leftovers on Boxing Day and then often we all pack up to go away on holiday on the 27th and we’ve still got all those leftovers and we don’t quite know what to do with them so definitely Christmas is a time of year where people should be a little bit more mindful. One of our key campaigns was this idea of having space in your freezer because if you’ve got leftovers and you can’t get around to eating them today, that doesn’t mean that in three weeks’ time you won’t come home late from work one night and want a quick and easy meal so popping those leftovers and putting them in the freezer so you can take them out and microwave them and make yourself an easy meal on another night is a really great way to reduce food waste.

Andréa Linked to this idea of awareness and people’s responsibility, do you think that individuals think that there’s a real impact of their action? For instance, do they think that companies are the one that have to do effort in order to reduce food waste?

Jenny I think it’s very tricky when it comes to environmental issues because it’s always very easy to point your finger at other organisations and say you’re the ones that are causing the problem but we can each make our own difference. I suppose a really good example of this is what we see and hear in the media a lot about turtles eating plastic bags and choking and starving and we can all go ahead and go, “Right well I’ll choose to buy reusable shopping bags and use those” and yet there are people out there who still continue to buy single-use plastic bags. So I think that we’ve got to recognise that each of us - the choices that we make when we shop, when we buy food and what we do with it - do have an impact and it’s not one or two big organisations wasting a lot of food, it’s lots and lots of people making lots of small decisions that then end up being a really big problem.

Having said that, the good news is that lots of people making very small decisions to do things differently can also end up having a big impact. One of the campaigns we ran last year, a little bit more edgy, was around ‘Be a stalker’ and it was around being a broccoli stalker because we realised that lots and lots of people out there didn’t realise that you could eat broccoli stalks and that they taste delicious. So that’s a simple thing and now there’s a whole lot of people out there who were like, “Oh, I didn’t realise I could eat a broccoli stalk and so now I’m eating it so I’ll never create that food waste again.” And it was just purely a lack of awareness that broccoli stalks taste great to eat.

Sally It’s really good to hear you talking about some of the successes of the campaign. To get back a little bit to what Andréa was asking about: Have you noticed any action taking place not just at the individual level but also at the level of businesses and I suppose also at the governmental level?

Jenny So I think obviously with the change of government in New Zealand we may see more action happening at a governmental level but I think really where we can see the changes has been with businesses,. So Countdown has announced a goal of zero waste landfill by 2020 and they’ve done a lot of work working with food rescue partners around the country and they now have a fund each year where food rescue partners can apply for funding to help them to continue to rescue fresh food from the supermarket. I think that’s a really practical example of a large organisation that’s ready to tackle food waste and make a difference.

Sally That’s great to hear. How about among the city councils? I noticed that the Auckland City Council is starting a food waste collection initiative in Papakura and wanting to roll that out elsewhere later, I guess that’s probably the first time that’s happened?

Jenny So obviously Christchurch and Selwyn and Timaru have had food waste collections for a number of years - so lucky people down in Christchurch who have always been used to having that option - but Auckland Council is obviously the largest council in the country that’s really committed to looking at what they can do to divert food waste from landfill. So they had a trial for a couple of years on the North Shore in Manurewa and now they’re starting with Papakura and it slowly kind of going to roll its way throughout the city. Particularly in Auckland where you have lots of high density housing, we’ve got lots of apartment blocks where it may not be possible to have a compost or have a worm farm so a food waste collection service is a great way to give everyone the opportunity to make the right choice and send their food scraps for composting rather than to landfill.

Sally Seeing as we’re in Christchurch, do you know what happens to all our food waste when it’s collected?

Jenny Sure, so in Christchurch you’ve obviously got a food and garden collection combined, that goes to a facility called Living Earth and they make it into really high grade organic compost which then gets sold back into retail stores so that people like you and I can plant it in our gardens and grow delicious fruit and vegetables. In some ways it’s almost like a circular economy where our food scraps get turned into compost which we can then use to grow our own food.

Sally Nice circle.

Andréa So coming back to what you are doing with Love Food Hate Waste: What would be your number one tip? What could we do minimise waste at an individual level?

Jenny So at this time of year, a really good tip for people is to keep your fruit in the fridge and not in the fruit bowl and there’s a couple of reasons for that. Firstly, bananas cause other fruit to ripen far too quickly so if any of you are still lucky enough to be eating stone fruit like peaches and apricots, you never want to place them next to your bananas because bananas release a gas called ethylene which makes everything ripen a lot faster. We’re also moving into apple season at the moment and apples will last eight times longer in a fridge than in your fruit bowl and I know if you’re like me, no-one ever likes that experience of biting into an apple that’s gone a bit soft or floury so keeping your apples in the fridge will really lengthen their fridge life and given them that nice crisp feeling that we all want when we bite into an apple.

Sally I guess this is a good point to recommend that everyone follow your organisation for the tips that come with different seasons.

Jenny Yes that would be great, so obviously our website is lovefoodhatewaste.co.nz, we are on Facebook, on Instagram and Twitter and we regularly share recipes and tips and sToriees of people who are

doing a great job of minimising their food waste. Currently what we are all talking about at the moment is cabbages, you know when you buy that big cabbage and you have to try and invent three or four meals out of it because you just can’t eat it all in one meal, so we’ve got a recipe on our website at the moment called Okonomiyaki and it’s a great recipe for using up leftover cabbage.

Sally Sound yummy.

Jenny It really is nice.

Andréa To come back on what we said on these initiatives, so of course they will reduce the food waste that we are producing but do you think that we will eventually go towards a model where less food is produced or at a smaller scale so that waste or destruction stop being necessary?

Jenny Look I think it’s always tricky. Like from a supermarket’s perspective, you never know from one day to the next… One day everyone wants… The weather is warm so everyone wants to buy a certain type of food and the next day it’s freezing cold, so we all choose a different type of food to buy so I think for supermarkets it’s always hard to predict demand. For our vegetable growers once again it’s hard… You can have a weather event and suddenly your cauliflowers are $10 a head whereas you can have a year where the weather is ideal and then your cauliflowers are really cheap. So I think it’s always going to be tricky to balance producing enough food to feed us all versus minimising food waste. I think as we become more and more aware of the issue of food waste, I think it opens people’s eyes as to what they can do and those small tweaks that people can make which will make a big difference.

Sally It’s nice to hear you end on a positive note, have you got anything else you’d like to add before we say goodbye?

Jenny No but I suppose to encourage everyone who is listening just to be a little bit more mindful. You don’t need to make extreme changes to your diet but just keep an eye out for what it is that you are wasting and then think about what you could do differently to help you waste less.

Sally Great well we’d like to say kia ora, thank you so much for taking the time to share some of the information and some of the tips from Love Food Hate Waste.

Jenny Lovely, thank you for having me.

MUSIC BY SPACE HOG - A REAL WASTE OF FOODSally You’re listening to Speak Up Korerotia, with co-host Sally Carlton and

Andréa Vildeuil talking about food waste. That song you just heard was Space Hog, A Real Waste of Food - very appropriate for today’s topic.

Having just spoken with Jenny Marshall of Love Food Hate Waste, we

now turn to personal experiences of trying to limit food waste: Amanda Chapman of Amanda in Waste Freeland. Explain your waste free philosophy and the rationale behind it.

Amanda So I guess I started a bit of a zero-waste journey a few years ago when zero waste was not limited to plastics but also limiting my food waste so just trying to reduce all my waste that goes to landfill. The obvious one was food waste with composting but actually just making sure that I wasn’t composting food that was still useable basically. From there I ended up setting up the community fridge in Auckland with the help of Jenny Marshall actually and just doing all sorts of other little weird food wastey things.

A side note: Last night I went for dinner at my friend’s house and they had it with a dumpster dive themed dinner so everything we ate was all food that would otherwise have gone to waste.

Sally Is that just a normal dinner, basically?

Amanda Yeah but I guess this is the third time we’ve done this. It was quite a good meal: I think we had three or four courses, a starter, a main which was vegetarian lasagne and then dessert - it wasn’t technically dumpster dived, I made aquafaba mousse, aquafaba being chickpea brine - and then we made a crumble. The oats were dumpster oats and the apples were just the apples.

Sally I believe there’s been a law recently prohibiting it, is it still taking place though?

Amanda Yeah absolutely, so there’s a few interesting things within the dumpster community. For one, a lot of people that do dumpster dive are quite secretive about their locations and it seems that whenever there’s something in the media about dumpster diving, suddenly it’s quite hard to do it. So technically I believe it counts as trespassing and also theft, even though you’re taking stuff from the landfill which they’re paying money to dispose of. But it’s quite interesting: Some of the supermarkets have a lot of security around their bins, basically to make sure people don’t get into them. They’ve got them locked or gated or security. Myself and quite a few of my friends have been caught by security a few times and the security guards are usually pretty nice, they just want to make sure you’re not going to make a mess or hurt yourself.

Sally Is there any kind of legal implication if you were, for example, to get sick from eating that kind of food?

Amanda Yeah so I think that’s the main concern of the supermarkets which is also why they’re quite particular on which foods they donate to, for instance, charities or the community fridge. But it’s sort of use your common sense, take at your own risk and check things and don’t eat something that looks pretty gross or has been in a gross place.

Andréa It’s not just food waste that you try to minimise but all waste. What makes food waste different to other waste, in your opinion?

Amanda So with food waste or food or compost in general it’s often sent to… or people send it to landfill thinking that it just breaks down and composts but actually it doesn’t quite do that, it often sits there for quite some time and it ends up releasing methane gases whereas with plastic, plastic goes to landfill and it just sits there inert so it’s not going to break down anyway but when it is, it’s not releasing these gases so there is quite a bit of a difference. The same goes with paper with paper getting sent to landfill or paper packaging is actually releasing these gases whereas plastic doesn’t do that. Then of course there’s the issue with plastic when that ends up going to for instance the ocean, then you’ve got all those issues of it getting into the food chain and marine life eating it. It’s quite interesting the differences between them; they’re both quite environmentally destructive in their own different ways.

Andréa You blog about your experiences. Do you feel you are making an impact by documenting your journey?

Amanda Yeah, I guess I just started it because I would always end up talking about these things and a lot of my friends or my circle were really interested in waste and they all had their own sToriees as well so it was definitely a place for me to share that opinion. I have noticed, even now, how often waste and environmental issues come up and quite often I don’t actually mention the fact that I’m obsessed with waste and blog about it; waste is definitely something that is on the increase. For instance, the Zero Waste NZ Facebook group is a massive group which is New Zealand-specific but there’s over 10,000 people in it. Everyone has got their own sToriees of how they ended up coming here and it’s often they’re just putting their rubbish out every week and thinking, “Well I could be doing better than this.”

Sally Certainly an awful lot when you add it up person by person. My co-host ended our last segment by asking if various initiatives might reduce food waste, but do you think we eventually might move towards a model where less is produced in the first place?

Amanda This is one I end up discussing quite a bit. A lot of businesses have surplus food waste, or even individuals, but there’s sort of a logistical issue around getting that food waste to where it can actually be used or actually rescuing it and making sure that it isn’t waste. And definitely the most obvious option there is just to produce less - but it’s just something that’s quite hard for businesses to predict and they’re just sort of focused on building their business. It’s an interesting one, there’s so many logistical concerns around transport and then the food itself, like the lifespan of it and keeping it cool but if businesses could actually… businesses in particular could actually forecast what they would be using, not have that over supply issue and have to worry about and deal with…

Sally Just one final question: What would be your top tip if people are interested in reducing their food waste?

Amanda Like, look at what it is you’re actually throwing away, what you’re composting at the end of the day or if you are sending it to landfill and there’s so many ways to use things. I mentioned making aquafaba - aquafaba being chickpea brine. Or even things like vegetable peelings - Do you need to peel your vegetables or can you do something else with them? Simple things like that, look at it and don’t see it as a waste, see it as a resource. I know Love Food Hate Waste do heaps around the like stalks of vegetables, definitely check out that website, they have really great resources.

Sally Alright well I would like to say thank you very much for taking part and if anyone is listening in, make sure you check out Amanda’s blog.

We’re now with Toriee Madison from the Revival Food Company, who also happens to be my cousin which is really cool. Hi, Torie!

Torie Hey how are you, Sal?

Sally I’m fine, thank you. Torie, what we’re looking to highlight in your interview particularly is the way that food waste can become a commercial or entrepreneurial viability. You’ve set up this company, the Revival Food Company, repurposing food waste.

Andréa How did you come up with the concept? What were and what are people’s reactions?

Torie I first came up with the concept as part of a third year final project when I was doing the culinary arts degree down in Dunedin, we had free range to pick an area that we were interested in working in and I guess having worked in hospitality and in kitchens for many years prior to and being aware of food waste, it was just something I had an interest in.

Sally How do people respond to it?

Torie I guess initially it was amusement and they found it a bit quirky and a bit odd, I think initially people… I think they felt like they were being a bit brave for buying some of my things but then when they actually bought them and tasted them and actually realised that it was a quality product they started coming back for it.

Sally And what are some of your products? I particularly like the compost cookies; I think that’s a great name.

Torie Well I’ve got the compost cookies and it’s a biscuit and it’s made up with all the peels and scraps from all the tarts and pies and things like that that I make, things like potato skins and carrot skins and basically all the

things that normally go in the compost bin. Things like broken pretzels that shops can’t sell, the outer casings of the cacao beans - I think they’re called cacao flakes - just all the funny little bits and pieces that generally are broken or destroyed and are considered they can’t be sold. So I make these little biscuits up with them and they taste a bit like a chocolate chippy biscuit but they’re not quite so sweet. Most of the councils around the country have really jumped on board and buy them when they’re doing their food waste promotions so it’s actually turned out to be a really good little side-line for me.

Sally Do you have a particular recipe or just it depend what you happen to have on the day?

Torie It varies, I have a base recipe and then it really just depends what’s in season and what I can access. So the whole idea is it’s using the scraps, so week-to-week it’s going to be slightly different. It generally tastes the same-ish, again I’m only getting things that are seasonal and I aim for locally grown so there are variances as seasons roll on.

Sally Torie, I believe that you gave some of those to NASA when NASA was visiting and you mentioned the councils as well.

Torie Yes I had a bit of interest in the previous administration, they did a wee visit and we had some people from NASA came and had a wee sample of what I was doing which was quite… A bit of a thrill for me to be able to meet these people and have a bit of a talk to them. That was, however, in a previous administration so I’m not expecting too much from that. The councils around the country have jumped on board and they promote what I’m doing - have you heard of the campaign Love Food Hate Waste?

Sally Yes, we interviewed Jenny before.

Torie OK well I’ve worked with Jenny and they’ve been hugely supportive, it’s great.

Andréa Do you see any links between treats made from food waste and current lifestyle movements? For instance, grow your own vegetables, knitting or home brewing?

Torie I’ve given that a bit of thought and I’m not quite sure, I’ve been thinking about things like the brewing because I know lots and lots of brewers and I’m seeing people doing a lot of brewing and I don’t know how much of things like that is related to what I’m doing. I do see things like brewing and things, it’s getting easier to do because you can buy all these grainfathers and kegerators and things like that so you can very easily do brewing on your kitchen bench at home and it’s minimal space taken up so things like brewing is quite easily done. It’s brewing and having stills and things, people have been doing it for centuries and I think possibly because when you look online… And I’m self-taught with a lot of things I

do and I go online and I look at, How can I do this? and, How to make this? I think there’s a lot of things that people are learning themselves to do: More complex knitting, interesting brews and things like that. You can actually look things up online and you can teach yourself and then it can become more exciting and you can expand on what you are doing at home, so I don’t know how much of that is related to the sort of things I’m doing and why I do it or just how more easily accessible it is to increase your knowledge in what you’re doing.

Sally Just one final question then Torie: You’ve obviously made a real success of your company, do you know of any others doing a similar kind of thing around New Zealand?

Torie There is a lovely guy in Auckland - and I’m trying to think of the name of his café, I think it’s Scarecrow up in Auckland - and he has a food waste-based business which is up in central Auckland somewhere but not really! I don’t really know how people… I don’t actually know anyone else who is doing it. I get a lot of interest in it and I do do a few talks and it’s interesting enough, it seems to be becoming part of the curriculums within schools which I think is very cool. I have interest from high schools that are teaching health and nutrition at schools and they’re interested in learning more about it so I’m kind of anticipating that the next generation of children coming out of schools with have this more in their psyche and it might become more inbuilt than what’s out there at the moment.

Sally That’s really cool.

Torie My plan is I’m hoping that - it might not be quite out there yet - but I’m hoping that it will be three, five, ten years from now what’s considered a bit quirky and odd could be the norm, that’s my plan and that’s why I’m going to push through with what I’m doing.

Sally Great, I think probably as the world gets more and more people it’s going to become more and more important.

Torie Absolutely and you only need to look at what’s happening with our food prices and things like global warming and you look at the cost of food with the flooding and things they’re having up north and how it’s affecting what we’re all having to pay for our fruit and vegetables, you can’t afford to be wasteful. So it actually becomes quite practical to be having these food skills applied and implemented into your everyday living now because it’s just so, so expensive. It’s expensive to feed a family and you just can’t afford to be wasting anything.

Sally Torie, I’d like to say thanks so much for taking the time and congratulations on the success of the company and hopefully we’ll see some more of them in the next few years.

Torie Fantastic, hey that sounds brilliant and hopefully there’s a whole new generation coming out of the schools that have just got this in the back of

their minds somewhere and they can start applying it into the cafes and restaurants and things like that. Maybe food portions can be a wee bit smaller so there’s less going in the bins at the end of the day and a greater awareness, that would be brilliant.

Sally We’ve got our second song now, it’s Global Citizen’s remake of Ed Sheeran’s ‘Shape of You.’

MUSIC BY GLOBAL CITIZENS – remake of Ed Sheeran’s Shape of You

Sally Kei te whakarongo koutou ki Speak Up - Kōrerotia. In our final segment for today we’ll be looking at ways that food waste can be productively repurposed and the benefits of undertaking this venture.

Our first guest in this segment is John Milligan from City Harvest.

John There’s a very big difference between a food rescue organisation and a food bank, 80% of the food which we pick up on a daily basis and we work six days a week goes out within 24 hours, we don’t store any food.

Sally It would be really good to kick us off if you could give us a sense of scale that you’re working with.

John We’re working with very large scale, we started just over a year ago and our first pickup was about 15 sandwiches and last month we did 19.3 tonne of rescued food. Now it’s difficult to even comprehend what that means but that’s somewhere in the region of about 55,000 to 60,000 meals and in addition to that, it’s about 18,000kg of landfill emission which has been reduced.

Sally Wow, that’s one of my questions actually was do you have a sense of what it’s reducing. That’s fantastic.

John Yes we keep very tight statistics on everything that goes out of our place, we categorise our food, we categorise our agencies - we currently work with 38 agencies now, as of this morning - so we know exactly what’s gone out and there are statistics available, a formula available where we can translate that into the amount of food, actual meals that our food would have repurposed and also the reduction of the landfills.

Sally What’s the thinking behind the statistics? Do you show them to organisations to try and get them on board?

John No not at all, statistics are mainly for our own benefit. We use our statistics for our funders, they’re very keen to know what we’re doing and what our impact is. Not just for the people that we’re sending food to but also for the greater citizens of Christchurch in terms of the cleaner living space.

Andréa Do you only work with individuals?

John We don’t deal with individuals at all, we only deal with registered agencies, registered charities. We work for instance with the Christchurch City Mission, we deal with all the community centres, many food banks, the Women’s Refuges, YWCA, White Wings Mental Health Trust, Cholmondeley Home for Children - organisations such as that who we provide the food to. We do not deal with the individuals because often the food problem with individuals is a small part of a greater problem and we’re not trained that way. When we do get contacts like that, we hand that over to what we call our more holistic social environment which are like the community centres or the City Mission.

Sally I notice in your mission statement, I suppose, that you say “Combat Hunger and Build Communities” and I suppose that’s what you are getting at.

John Yes very much so and the important thing in our mission statement is that we not only combat hunger and build communities but we rescue food for immediate purpose so that’s the big thing that goes out straight away to people who have immediate need for the food.

Andréa Are your services only available in Canterbury or touches a wider scope in the South Island or in New Zealand?

John No we work primarily within Canterbury but you know there are seven major food rescue organisations throughout New Zealand and a dozen other smaller ones and we share a lot of our resources; if we get a lot of extra food coming in we do share that out with some of the other food rescue organisations all over the country and they do the same thing to us. However our primary focus is really Christchurch and Canterbury.

Sally Where do you get the food from?

John We work with both the major supermarket chains, both Foodstuffs as well as Progressive Enterprises. We’re currently picking up from 21 supermarkets throughout the region and we also have a friendly farmer as we like to call him, who comes in with some nice fruit and veges. We get some vegetables coming in from the Rolleston Prison Farms, so those are our primary sources. We do not source food from restaurants because of the food safety issues around that; we’re very, very conscious of food safety. All our volunteers that work with us - and we have a pool of 67 volunteers - they all undergo about an hour-and-a-half food safety orientation and health and safety orientation before they’re even allowed to really work and handle our food. Food safety is a primary issue which we have to be very concerned with.

Sally When you say they have to be concerned with food safety, how do you know…? I mean, I guess you could look at expiration dates but beyond that, how do you know if food is safe or not?

John We don’t, we just have to look and feel. We work very closely with the expiration dates but obviously they don’t always hold true because for instance yoghurt lasts three weeks after expiration date. We work on the MPI [Ministry for Primary Industries] statistics that come into us, they send us what food is beyond dates are beyond expiration or best-by dates and we work very closely with those. Otherwise it’s a hand, feel and touch. We look at a dented can for instance; if it’s blown you can see its blown. We work on the principle if in doubt - out. Food safety… Because we’re dealing with human consumption, has to be of primary importance.

Our secondary level is that we have some pig farmers who pick up from us as well, so we do human consumption and if it fails that it could go into the animal… If it fails from that, it goes into our compost.

Sally When you’re gathering your statistics, do you have a sense of how much of the food that you gather you’re able to rescue and how much you’re not able to rescue?

John No we don’t really at all, we only really… In fact we don’t even read our statistics, we don’t even capture our statistics for the food coming in because of the waste element so we don’t record what goes out to animal waste, that just happens to be a by-product of what we do. We only record our food that is going out to the agencies specifically. So we know at any one time… We can tell, for instance, any of our agencies like Agency A, we can tell them on the second week of December they’ve got so much bakery, so much bread, so much dry goods, so much fruit and vegetables from us so we can break it down for them like that. It’s great to see the result of that, we got a series of photographs came in today from Cholmondeley Homes showing us the food they prepared for the children at Cholmondeley from the food that we had provided them which is great.

Andréa Is there any legislation forcing the supermarkets to provide you with food or is it an initiative from them?

John There’s no legislation in New Zealand like there is in France and going to come into Germany soon, we don’t have that here. It’s purely a negotiation level between us and the supermarkets. When we work with Progressive Enterprises which is a corporation, we’re dealing with all the Countdown stores, that was negotiated and worked out under contract with us from Auckland. Foodstuffs is a franchise so we have to deal with each of the independent stores with their owner/operators and we work with them. We sign a memorandum of agreement with them so that we will ensure that we look after the food as well as they look after the food. We in turn sign a memorandum of agreement with our agencies, so they will do exactly the same. So it’s kept nicely all the way down the food chain. It’s, again, a food safety issue.

Andréa What are the logistical or practical challenges that you are facing?

John Well we faced a very big one towards the end of last year, we ran out of space in our facilities and we had to relocate to new bigger facilities and then we run into the problems again, we need more chiller space and that provides another problem is that we need the funding to be able to build the additional chillers. So funding is always a massive issue with us all the time. It’s my job primarily within the organisation is Fundraiser in Chief: 90% of my job is really to go out and keep the funding rolling and to keep the organisation alive and afloat.

Sally Just a final question then, how do people react when you tell them you’re doing this?

John Very, very positively and in fact it’s something that actually gets a little bit annoying at times, some people come and say, “Oh you guys are doing such a fantastic job, oh well done, well done” and we say, “Yes well come and volunteer, that’s all we’d like you to do.” We don’t do it for altruistic reasons at all, we’re out there helping the people of our community and to build a bigger, better and healthier community. We were given a civic leadership award last year from Christchurch for emerging leadership for service to the people of the city and that made us very proud, humbly proud but very proud nonetheless.

Sally So I guess we might finish up by saying if anyone is listening, get in touch with John!

John Get in touch, we have a website, it’s out there, it’s cityharvestnz.org and everything is available off that, sure, we’d love to see you.

Sally We’ve got Trudy Burrows in with us in the studio, who is responsible for setting up the community fridge in New Brighton in Christchurch. Trudy to start us off, what is the community fridge and why did you set it up?

Trudy I just read about one that Jenny from Love Food Hate Waste had set up in Auckland, the idea seemed to appeal to me so I just let it sit for a while and kept thinking about it. I’m of the ilk that, often you think one person can’t make much of a difference in the world and the more I thought about this I thought well actually this is something I could do, maybe one person can make a difference even if it’s just to a couple of people. So that’s what got me really started, actually.

The community fridge itself now, well we call it fridge and pantry because we can have fridge things like dairy and meat and anything that would go into a fridge plus we can have canned food and a lot of bread and just basically anything you can find in a supermarket we can cater for. We have places where we go to pick that food up and it’s delivered a couple of times a day and then just people come off the street or from the community and just come in during the day and take what they need.

Andréa Do the supermarkets give you this food or also individuals?

Trudy We are very lucky, New Brighton is a really great community, it’s been very supportive so we rely totally on them for food for the pantry but as far as bread and some produce for the fridge, we actually go to mainly City Harvest and Satisfy Food Rescue but we also have New Brighton Countdown on board with us. And so we’re very lucky; we’ve got three good places where we can get the food but typically, it’s food that’s come from the supermarket that is going to be thrown out.

Sally Do you have a sense of how many people use it or how much food goes through it or those sorts of statistics?

Trudy Well the food rescue places, they weigh everything so they have all those details. I don’t particularly weigh it because I know it’s already gone through that process but we’ve done a count and we sort of say between 80 to 100 people a day are coming to the fridge.

Sally Goodness that’s huge.

Trudy Yes well when we started off I had no idea, I was very naïve and absolutely no idea who would come, if any. So we sort of believe it’s been very successful on that basis and each day there’s new faces, it’s also become a place for some people they just like to come and maybe say hello, they’re lonely and they like just to come down. Some of them will just bring a packet of 99c noodles so they feel they’ve given something but they’ll take away a bag of food but it makes them feel good because they’ve still contributed.

Sally So anybody can put anything in and anybody can take anything out?

Trudy Definitely, that was one of our big things at the beginning was who could come and get the food. In reality my expectation was that anyone could come because it is just waste food that’s going to the landfill. Practically though, it’s really focused, I guess, for the needy and typically that’s what we see, 95% of the people that come to the fridge you can just see that these people are really struggling and they’re so grateful for the food. So we feel it’s going to the right people.

Andréa Are there actions to advertise your community fridge? Do all these people in need know that this community fridge exists?

Trudy Well we haven’t advertised it - I don’t know if I really want to because we’ll probably get even more! - but definitely it’s on Facebook and people in the community definitely know about it. Social welfare departments know about it, they send people. We had people from ComCare… People definitely have found out about it pretty quickly.

Sally Do you know if it’s the only one in Christchurch?

Trudy When I set it up it is the only one in New Zealand that has a fridge and

pantry and it’s the only one definitely in the South Island but at the moment I am talking with quite a few other people that are looking at setting up other fridges.

Sally So I guess that might be one of my questions is: If somebody is interested, what kind of practical or, I guess, legal considerations would they have to bear in mind? How do you know, for example, that the food is going to be safe for people to consume? Is someone keeping an eye on it? Those sorts of things.

Trudy There are quite specific OSH regulations and these… Thankfully Jenny with Love Food Hate Waste, they’ve already gone to all that problem and got all the rules and regulations for us and they’re happy to share those. So yes, we label and date… Well, in saying that, we ask people that are donating to label and date their food which done but when we do deliveries we know it’s already been checked and fruit and vegetables obviously don’t… You can see what they are. But yes, there are specific use-by and best-by dates which we have to adhere to.

Sally I’m thinking about, for example, some restaurants not doing takeaways in case somebody gets sick and they might get legally blamed for it, is there anything that you had to think about in that kind of sense?

Trudy Well because we don’t sell it, we don’t come under those same regulations. Definitely if we were selling it, it’s a different story.

Sally Where is it?

Trudy It’s at 46 Hawke St in New Brighton so it’s right beside St Faith Church and when you were talking before about setting it up, that was one of the things we had to look at was the right location. I wanted it to be set up in the town itself but business people in general didn’t really want that clientele too close and hanging around so that’s an important thing for people to consider. But where we are now is still very central and we’re right beside a church hall there and they are very supportive. And also for people to consider whether they are putting a fridge inside a building or outside, that’s quite important as far as locking it up. What we do find is the fridge can overheat because it’s in a small space.

Sally Is it all run voluntarily?

Trudy Yes we have about 10-15 volunteers because they have to open in the morning and close at night, we’re open 7am to 7pm. It has to be cleaned daily and often it’s more than once a day. Also volunteers to go and pick up and deliver so it actually does involve quite a few hours of work that I wasn’t quite anticipating.

Sally My final question then is, what do you feel you’re getting out of it?

Trudy That’s a hard one. I enjoy it and I feel I’m doing the right thing at this time

of my life, it feels like this is a good thing to be doing - the fact that this is waste food and otherwise it would go to the landfill - but to see it going to homes and families where it’s really making a difference, that’s very satisfying.

Sally Thank you very much.

Andréa Thank you.

Trudy No problem, thanks for having me.

Sally Thank you very much and that concludes this episode of Speak Up -Kōrerotia on food waste. Some of your reflections Andréa, what struck you listening to the different people?

Andréa Actually that was interesting to see that there are so many initiatives because we’re not sometimes aware of it, it’s so good to know that our food is not just wasted or thrown away and that people use it to benefit others.

Sally I think for me, as well, the sheer amount was something that I picked up, just so much food.

So if any of you are listening, you can obviously get in touch with any of those groups and offer your support and think carefully, I suppose, about what it is you are buying and do you really need it. Remember we have Facebook and Twitter and you can find the transcripts as well.