Each year, around 150,000 tonnes, or 271 jumbo jets of food, end up in landfills.
Now, a group of celebrity chefs have now joined forces in an effort to help reduce the amount that’s thrown away.
Peter Gordon, Michael Meredith, Kylee Newton, Brent Martin, and Alfie Ingham; it’s a star line-up of chefs on a mission to save imperfect produce that’s still perfectly good to eat.
“As a society, we've all got to help each other, got to do what we can, and when stores don't buy because it's the wrong shape, you think, well, let's try and rescue it,” Gordon said.
Together, they've formed the KiwiHarvest Collective, under the longstanding KiwiHarvest brand - one of New Zealand's largest food rescue organisations. It's hoped this will help the organisation raise greater awareness about how food wastage can be avoided.
Some recent rescues included tinned food from flood-damaged supermarkets.
“At that time, the protocol was anything that had been touched by flood water needed to be thrown away, we said no we aren't doing that; 8,000 kilos of food equates to about 25,000 meals,” the KiwiHarvest CEO Angela Calver said.
The food is cleaned and sorted before being distributed to those in need.
The chefs stepped up to help.
“We as chefs care about food waste. It makes sense to bring it to the community and make sure food is not wasted,” Ingham said.
“We are just trying to get out that food poverty is really sort of on the rise,” Gordon said.
“We are all in the food business, but there is more we can do,” Meredith said.
“It's the main ethics around my food processes to give food longevity,” Newton said.
It’s an example that’s being set in their own kitchens, with Brent Martin adding 560kg of food waste to his kitchen each month.
“It's taken to Ecogas, and the gas is taken out, and that gas powers roughly 20 homes, the remaining items are then used as fertiliser,” Martin said.
“Most chefs really focus on where the product comes from; we are also doing that, but also the end product and where it's landing.”
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