Feeding Melbourne's hungry, using not wasting food

Here is the original link where I found it. It is the best news I have encountered today. It is happening now, not once they can get it going. Now. I love it.


Monday June 30th 2008
It’s a common scenario the world over, especially in developed countries: thousands of people go hungry while tons of unwanted but edible food is heaped into landfills. One organisation in Australia has developed a novel scheme to correct this, one that provides meals for the disadvantaged and is also good for the planet. Marcus Godinho, the man behind it, explains:

It’s shocking to see how much good food gets thrown out. The goods that come to us are usually rejected because they’re close to their "best before" date; incorrectly packaged; weather-damaged; superseded by another line; or don’t fit society’s high standards, for example not complying with a certain size, colour or shape. We have an egg farm that regularly gives us eggs that are too large, too small or are double-yoked because the supermarkets don’t want them.

Apart from staples such as fruit and veg, we sometimes also get magnificent luxury goods, like smoked salmon or beautiful cheeses. Two weeks ago we were given 30,000 chocolate bars because some were heat-affected and had gone a bit pale. This made little difference to the appreciative people we gave them to. Not that you could call chocolate bars healthy, but everybody deserves a treat.

We cook with what we’ve got in the kitchen on any given day. While we’ve got regular boxes of food coming in, our duty chef and the band of volunteers who help him have to be on the ball, and very creative with some of the unexpected ingredients that we’re donated. Not long ago a catering company whose freezer was on the blink gave us 450kg of prawns. We collected them quickly, shelled them and made delicious quiches out of them.

But we don’t produce everything in our kitchen. Sometimes catering companies give us their surplus pre-packed sandwiches and rolls, as well as any freshly squeezed juices they have spare. There was a bar mitzvah over the weekend and the company catering for it dropped off 250kg of leftover lamb chops, wild barramundi and stir-fried chicken.

Lately we have seen an unprecedented rise in the demand for food. There’s the ongoing issue of homelessness (there are 20,000 homeless people in Victoria), but hunger isn’t something only faced by them or by people struggling with drug and alcohol addiction. The recent increase in interest rates and the price of petrol and food means there’s a lot of pressure on working households to make ends meet, and some people are struggling to put food on the table.

FareShare is about giving tangible emergency help to members of the community who are going through a tough time, and we get some fantastic support for the work we do. Our operational costs, such as wages, electricity and petrol are funded exclusively from philanthropic and corporate organisations, as well as private individuals.

We started seven years ago as One Umbrella. It began when Jewish Aid Australia, which rescued food and distributed it to agencies, joined forces with six people (one of whom was a chef) who used to meet every Saturday morning to make meals for disadvantaged people. Up until this year we worked from a kitchen which we shared with other organisations. This limited our capacity to respond to the high demand for food, the ever-growing offers of surplus goods and an expanding waiting list of volunteers.

But a recent extraordinarily generous donation has meant that we’ve been able to buy our own building, which will give us enormous scope to grow and provide more meals to people in need. Before we moved into our new premises in May, we made 700 meals a day. Now we can make 1500 an hour and plan to produce up to a million meals a year.

We support 55 agencies all over Melbourne and some regional areas with emergency food. They include soup vans, homeless shelters, school breakfast programmes and crisis centres. We’ve got a Cryovac machine that vacuum-seals food, which then just needs heating up. But we’re really inspired by old-time miners’ use of pastry to wrap up their dinners, which we now know as pasties, and would love to use it more often if we could get donors to supply it.

Pastries, pies, sausage rolls – all have distinct advantages for us. They are nutritious (we use lean meat and high fibre) and very portable. Our agencies find them easy to serve as they don’t have to worry about having adequate infrastructure, such as a kitchen and cutlery, or the washing up.

We have four paid staff and 100 volunteers a week to assist us with baking, as well as administration and driving. Some of the volunteers come to us from the corporate sector – there’s a trend among large companies to encourage workers to take time off and volunteer in the community.

Food safety is paramount: we haven’t had a single incidence yet. Donors themselves are protected from legal action under Victoria’s Good Samaritan Act, which is legislation that FareShare was instrumental in bringing about. This gives donors immunity from common law liability for food donated in good condition and good faith. As a result, last financial year, we rescued 140 tons of stuff going to landfill. This year the figure is closer to 280 tons. So not only do we protect the environment, we’re able to use that surplus to feed Melbourne’s homeless and hungry. I think it’s a great achievement.

• Marcus Godinho was speaking to Carmela Ferraro. For more information visit the FareShare website.