Deborah Manning saw a use for the tonnes of unwanted food that would have otherwise gone to waste.
She has now been recognised nationally for her salvaging efforts.
The Dunedin lawyer turned social entrepreneur won the Genesis Energy sustainability award at the Kiwibank New Zealander of the Year Awards last night.
Ms Manning, before the event, told the Otago Daily Times it was an honour to be a finalist.
“I think it’s really important that I want people to know that this award is not just about me – it reflects the collective effort of so many people who believe in the power of food rescue and sustainability to create meaningful change.
“Being a finalist in something like that is a collective – you only get there because of the collective efforts by so many people.”
Ms Manning established the food-rescue initiative Kiwi Harvest in Dunedin in 2012, in response to media coverage about dumpster-diving – people retrieving food from skips – as she felt she could help ensure food got saved.
Since then, it has grown to become a nationwide initiative, employing 22 people and enlisting hundreds of volunteers.
“To date, we have rescued enough food to provide the equivalent of over 33 million meals – and that was from food that was considered to have no value and it was going to be disposed of in some way.
“It certainly wasn’t going to be reintroduced back into the community to end up on the tables of the people who need it the most.”
In 2020, she expanded the project’s reach to create the New Zealand Food Network, which collects and distributes bulk volumes of food that cannot be sold for one reason or another and keeps it out of landfill or out of compost or out of anaerobic digestion.
“About one-third of the food that’s produced every year in the world never makes it on to the plates of people who need it, and that just seemed absurd to me.
“At the same time, there is this enormous food insecurity problem in New Zealand and it’s just getting worse where one in four children are experiencing food poverty in their homes.”
She praised the efforts of the volunteers.
“They provide us with the manpower and the hours that we need to get the food in and out of our system quickly, because obviously the food is often short-dated and so it needs to be picked up and transported and distributed often within 24 to 48 hours.”
Being honoured meant the greater collective was acknowledged, too, she said.
“Without the food donors, food rescues have no food to pass on, and without the people that we pass it to, the organisation working at the coalface of hunger, then it doesn’t work either.
“So it’s a whole collective effort that makes food rescue so successful.”
matthew.littlewood@odt.co.nz
