







STACY SQUIRES/STUFF City Harvest Food Rescue volunteer and law student Juliet Bruce makes up orders.

Food waste is a growing social, environmental and economic problem in New Zealand. Meanwhile, about 270,000 children go without meals each day. But a few food rescue groups are making important social change that could benefit us all. Vicki Anderson reports.

Pallets of ice-cream and neatly placed loaves of bread jostle for space with crisp, farm-fresh vegetables harvested from around Canterbury's quilt-like fields.

This food would have ended up as landfill if it weren't for City Harvest Food Rescue.

Each year New Zealanders throw out 122,547 tonnes of food, worth around $870 million every year. This food rots, including a staggering 20 million loaves of bread.

At the same time, across the nation, about 270,000 children arrive at school every morning without breakfast or go to bed without dinner.

READ MORE:

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* You all left us behind': Inconvenient truths from the homeless

* Roimata Food Commons: 'The first step in creating a community orchard'

​New Zealand produces enough food to feed 20 million people, yet every day tonnes of edible, safe, fresh food is thrown out.

Around the country food rescue services are working on social changes that will benefit us all.

Dr John Milligan is a former high flier with IBM and an opera singer who has performed around the world and shared the stage with Dame Malvina Major. He is also an author, life coach and award-winning poet, but today we are talking about vegetables.

"We used to wash the dirt off the bottom of the lettuces," he explains. "But then we decided we'd leave it on so the kids who were getting them would know it came from the soil because some of these kids have never seen where a lettuce comes from."

City Harvest, one of the many food rescue groups around the country, officially started in Christchurch in March 2017.

When Dr John and Janice Milligan returned from the United States, they wanted to help make a positive change in Christchurch.

"The food we rescue is diverted from going to landfill, where it would release gases toxic to the environment. Food waste impacts our region environmentally, socially and economically," says John Milligan. "In the US I was CEO of an $11.1m non-profit … I worked with some food rescue groups … it's huge in Europe too. When we came back home we saw a need for it here too."

It puts surplus food to good use in a sustainable way by collecting safe, nutritious surplus food from all sectors of the food industry – some New World supermarkets and all of the Countdown stores, as well as wholesalers and fresh produce farmers.

The food is sorted and redistributed to charities within 24 hours of collection.

It's 10.30am on a Thursday and already the trucks are pulling up outside their Riccarton base. The food will help charitable organisations and community groups serve thousands of healthy meals each week to those in need.

Each month, City Harvest redirects 30 tonnes of food back into the Christchurch community.

"We've already done 28 tonnes this month and we still have a week to go. We have a formula from WasteMinz, which calculates the number of meals and CO2 reduction," says John Milligan. "Using that, in July we distributed 31 tonnes of food, 90,340 meals and our CO2 reduction was 24,614kg."

On average each Kiwi family will throw out around 80kg of uneaten food annually or "around $500". This food is worth around $872m annually and, according to WasteMinz, when it ends up as landfill, produces 325,975 tonnes of carbon emissions.

City Harvest vans travel the city, making 80 pick-ups each week.

"We are collecting from all the Countdowns now, which is why we had to move to bigger premises," says Milligan of their new base at the former Kilmarnock Enterprises. "Students from Ara came in and did a good job cleaning it up for us."

It is a secular, not-for-profit organisation and makes "no judgements".

STACY SQUIRES/STUFF Operations and logistics coordinator Angie Nichol unloads the freezer van

"We don't see the people the food goes to, we are not a food bank, we give food to the food banks," says Milligan. "The food comes in and the community groups come here to pick it up. We give to the City Mission, Vincent de Paul, community centres, maraes, the women's refuges and rehab centres. They distribute it directly to the disadvantaged individuals they support."

Without the more than 100 volunteers who sort and prepare the food for collection, it wouldn't work.

Janice Milligan is busy working with the volunteers but ducks into an office for a quick chat.

"Recently Unilever has come on board and so now we are getting a lot of really useful hygiene products, tampons and so on that we can distribute to the refuges."

She digs her hand in a bin full of children's underwear and says they receive a surprising amount of lollies.

"You never know what you are going to get," she says, pulling up new smoke alarms. "But it all helps someone."

When they started, they had one freezer, tiny premises and John Milligan worked 10-hour days unpaid. Janice Milligan worked another job and turned up at City Harvest when she finished it to do another six hours packing the food.

City Harvest is a finalist in next month's Westpac Champion Business Awards and they're both thrilled.

Now they have seven freezers, 104 volunteers. Janice Milligan has a paid role but John Milligan still works long, unpaid hours.

"City Harvest costs $250,000 a year to run," he says. "Our main cost is petrol, we are running all over town picking up food."

​City Harvest moved to larger premises after Countdown came on board last October.

Milligan has noticed a sharp increase in demand for rescued food: "an increase of around 20 per cent".

It is not just homeless and vulnerable families who will eat the food. Elderly people who "only have enough to pay the power bill" and the working poor who have money coming in but who live with "food insecurity" will dine on it too.

"'Food insecurity is the term we use," he says. "Anyone can have food insecurity."

He shakes his head as he talks about food banks which are open only from "10am-2.30pm".

"The hours are outdated," he says. "They don't work for people who are the working poor or the solo mum working two jobs."

The rescued food is safe to eat. All rotten fruit or vegetables are collected by a pig farmer so nothing is wasted.

"We adhere strictly to food safety guidelines with all the food that comes in. I think there is a lot of confusion among people as to 'best before' dates," says Milligan. "The date a manufacturer places on their products is somewhat arbitrary. What they are saying with, say, that date on their yoghurt is that it will taste best if you eat it before this date but that doesn't mean it is not edible after that date. It's just that they want you to buy more of their product."

He doesn't often meet the people who eat the food City Harvest rescues – "we are not trained, far better they see the City Mission" – but sometimes he does meet the hungry mouths he helps feed.

"We talked to some young children," he says, "who told us they ate 'red soup' two or three times a week. Red soup? Mum and dad would take three or four saveloys and cook them in a saucepan full of water. Then mum and dad would eat the saveloys and the kids got the 'red soup'."

STACY SQUIRES/STUFF Volunteer Kathrin Mathias prepares an order.

It's a bitterly cold Monday morning on Roimata Food Commons in the Christchurch suburb of Woolston and Michael Reynolds of the Food Resilience Network Canterbury, points with pride at a group of fledgling fruit trees.

He's playing the long game. His impressive beard moving with the chilly easterly breeze, he points at the trees and talks about each one and the fruit it will one day bear in Radley Park. There are some heritage varieties of apples with good baking properties and he demonstrates with his hands how large they will grow.

One day, when his young children are grown and so have the trees, they may wander this public park and pick a few apples or some vegetables from the community garden.

It's a vision he hopes other communities around Christchurch will embrace.

"Edible gardens and parks are about food stability and sustainability, sure, and also that dreaded R word, resilience," says Reynolds. "But at the heart of it all is community."

There are more than 2000 public parks across the city. Not all have organic soils like Radley Park, but many do.

Reynolds pictures a city where those in our community who have spent decades tending gardens and have abundant experience do not live isolated in rocking chairs, but have the ability and space to share the fruits of their knowledge with their community for the benefit of all.

As he's seen at Roimata, all it takes is "a few people to have a bit of energy".

"You need people in the area who will drive it for their community and then get others onboard. The benefits for the whole community can be huge."

The Food Resilience Network Canterbury wants to see "a patchwork of food producing initiatives based around local hotspots and linked together like a ribbon woven into the fabric of our communities".

It is also behind Edible Christchurch and Otakaro Orchard Project, an edible inner city food park under construction near the Margaret Mahy Playground.

Once completed, Otakaro will boast a heritage orchard and herb and vegetable beds.

"Eventually, our plan is to have a website with an interactive edibles map for the whole city where people can click on each individual tree and see what it is and when it is in fruit," says Reynolds. "We will also put in bus routes near it and that sort of thing so people could essentially start with an edibles shopping list around the city and hop on the bus to go get whatever is in season."

As we walk the path in Radley Park, Reynolds points to a dilapidated jetty and explains that in Christchurch's early years, it was the spot where food was delivered by boat.

"It's why Ferry Rd is called Ferry Rd, because there was an actual ferry delivering food to the settlers," he says, smiling. "I like that the jetty is still here."

Reynolds is working on planting projects with a number of local primary schools. The children are given seeds to grow and, when these seedlings are sufficiently grown, the children will plant them in the planned vegetable garden at Roimata Commons.

"That's the next step," says Reynolds. "We will be planting the vegetable garden next month."

Christchurch is the "garden city" but imagine if Christchurch was the best edible garden city in the world?

Such urban agriculture makes nourishing food accessible to all and increases the habitat for bees. Another benefit is that it helps the people of Christchurch "rebuild a positive relationship with the soil post-earthquakes".

Festa – a public festival of architecture, design and food – is being held from October 19-22. Its headline event is Feasta, a one-night street party celebrating food with large-scale installations, performances, artworks, activities, people and lots of wonderful things to eat and drink.

"Straight after Festa, the Food Resilience Network is having a number of events."

But this week, Reynolds is helping with pop-up event, Everybody Eats.

Joseph Johnson/Stuff Chef Sam Campbell and Tom Newfield, co-owners of Welles Street bar and restaurant in the lead up to "food resilience" and Everybody Eats initiative, where Welles St staff are donating their time and kitchen to feed 300 homeless and vulnerable families using "rescued food".

He answered a call for help from Auckland-based Nick Loosley​ who was looking to stage his Everybody Eats in Christchurch.

"Over three sittings, we feed 300 people in one night using rescued food."

It is a not-for-profit, pay-as-you-feel dining concept which takes food that would otherwise go to waste and, with volunteer help, turns it into restaurant meals served to people from all walks of life in a warm, safe, communal environment.

Tom Newfield has donated his inner city pub, Welles Street.

"I put the call out to my staff to see if they wanted to do it," says Newfield. "Everybody jumped at it. I will even have my niece and my parents helping too."

Welles St chef Sam Campbell will be joined in the kitchen by others from Christchurch's hospitality industry. Together they will turn food destined for landfill into a three-course banquet.

The food will come from City Harvest and also Kaiapoi-based food rescue group, Satisfy.

"Right now," says Newfield. "We have no idea what food we will get, so it will be interesting to see what the chefs create on the night."

Loosley says that in Auckland, top chefs queue to cook for the vulnerable.

Everybody Eats launched in June 2017. The idea came from research he did for a masters degree in the United Kingdom.

Last year he raised nearly $200,000 in crowdfunding to create a permanent restaurant.

"We are now looking for a permanent site," he says. "Once that is viable, hopefully we can roll it out across the country."

The pop-up Everybody Eats in Christchurch on August 29 is a trial of sorts.

"We are trying this in Christchurch because when we did the crowdfunding campaign, we had a lot of interest."

He agrees with Milligan that food waste is a huge problem.

"People often confuse 'best before' with 'use by' dates and there's a big difference. Rescued food is not pulled out of rubbish bins – it's from commercial outlets like supermarkets who are being responsible with their surplus."

Since starting Everybody Eats he's been surprised by the generosity of the hospitality industry and has no shortage of volunteers.

"Chefs from prominent restaurants give up their time to come and cook. Most are cooking steaks for rich people in high end restaurants, they're cooking for professionals wearing suits. Chefs are blue collar workers to some extent … This is an opportunity for them to use their specific skills to do something positive."

You won't find mushroom soup on the menu.

"At the K Road pop-up we deal with a lot of elderly and inner city homeless people so we need to offer accessible food that is nourishing. We serve things like carrot and ginger soup, followed by shepherd's pie with greens on the side and apple crumble for dessert … We hide a lot of vegetables in the meat," he says.

"We offer them three-course meal served at a table by a waitress. To give inner city homeless that experience of feeling warm, safe, and being treated with dignity and respect is a big thing."

No alcohol is served.

In Christchurch he has been working with Food Resilience Network and River Jayden, co-founder of Street Wise which advocates for Christchurch's homeless.

Street Wise has recently been holding Feeding the East events on Sundays from 5pm at Cafe 53, at 53 Hampshire St in Aranui, it offers food, coffee and clothes offered in a "pop-up op shop".

She says some homeless whānau attending Everybody Eats have never eaten in a restaurant.

​"Our homeless and vulnerable whānau are struggling and food takes one less struggle away. Many haven't been to a restaurant in years or haven't at all. It's a chance for all people to be welcomed. It breaks stigma within the community when you bring in people from all walks of life."

Everybody Eats is not just about feeding people or stopping food waste.

"I don't get paid, the staff all volunteer … if there is a hidden agenda it's about community and getting people from all walks of life together," says Loosley.

"Food is a powerful tool in doing that."

Food rescue organisations in New Zealand

DAVID WALKER/STUFF River Jayden from Street Wise used to live on the streets, and now helps what she sees as her "street whanau" in the Christchurch CBD. She says that some of those attending Everybody Eats next week have never eaten in a restaurant before.

ALDEN WILLIAMS/STUFF Michael Reynolds of Food Resilience Network Canterbury and project manager for Roimata Food Commons has a vision of edible community gardens throughout the city.