By Jenny Conway
Ever wondered what happened to all that waste from your local supermarket? Couldn’t it be used to make meals for people rather than being sent to a landfill? Well guess what – it can!
Second-bite exists to provide access to fresh, nutritious food for people in need across Australia. They do this by “rescuing and redistributing surplus fresh food, building community capacity in food skills and nutrition and advocating for an end to food insecurity”.
They get all kinds of foods – meat, fruit, vegetables, cheese, pies, sugar, bread, tinned food, cakes and biscuits, breakfast cereal, flour, margarine, jams, vegemite, frozen foods, from Coles and Woolworths and the weekend markets.
The trucks pick up the produce and bring it to the warehouse in Kensington where it is sorted and then sent out to the people who need it. Its a great help because instead of buying the food that gets donated, the charities can put the money that they would have spent on food into other things to help low income and homeless people. In the last year alone they’ve redistributed about 2 million kgs of unwanted food nationally.
Each week they deliver fresh produce to over 1,200 community food programs, which supports hundreds of charities across Australia that in turn provide support to people in need. This is achieved via emergency food for people that can not afford to buy food, and school nutrition initiatives so that school children can get good food at school. There are also community meal programs which include church groups, soup kitchens and other charity groups that offer food to low income families and the homeless.
Curtis Stone is one of the Ambassadors, and if you’d also like to be involved or become a food donor, just go to their website: www.secondbite.org
