Surplus to Sublime - A food fundraiser for the Queenstown community
An apple grows on a tree in Cromwell with sunshine, water, good soil and some love. It gets picked and driven to a shop to be sold. A few days later a new shiney batch of apples arrives and our apple hasn’t been bought yet, so it’s taken off the shelf and put in the bin. That evening a family in Fernhill sits down to eat another dinner of 2-minute noodles, unable to afford fresh nutritious food. All while a perfectly good apple sits in the bin just down the road, ready to be buried in a landfill site.
Whichever way you look at it, the fact there’s enough good food thrown away in NZ each year to feed Dunedin while 40% of Kiwi families experience some form of insecurity every week is maddening, sad, wildly disconnected and downright confusing.
Not to mention all that food stuck in our closed landfills with no way to compost. Instead, they release the super potent greenhouse gas, methane, which simply damages our atmosphere and, in turn, damages us.
Before you give up all hope, we’re here to tell you that where there is a problem, there are inevitably some heroes. And for us, they come in the form of KiwiHarvest
Our Queenstown branch of the national charity goes around supermarkets and cafes five days a week to collect the perfectly good food destined for landfill and takes it to local organisations to distribute throughout our community.
KiwiHarvest currently supports over 750 families and individuals in Queenstown, Arrowtown, Cromwell and Wānaka through the incredible work of local people at the like of Happiness House, Baskets of Blessing and Whakatipu Youth Trust.
There is a sizeable portion of Queenstown locals working in industries and essential services that are struggling with COVID knock-on effects. An increase in the cost of living means many of us are struggling with changes in rents, mortgage rates and the cost of everything - food, fuel, childcare!
Last week Sustainable Queenstown and KiwiHarvest hosted a Trust the Chef food rescue fundraiser dinner at the Millhouse at Millbrook Resort. The chefs were challenged to create a three-course meal for 50 people using only food that had been rescued by KiwiHarvest, donated by Royalburn Station or grown in Milbrook’s own Kitchen Garden.
The evening started with a tour of this incredible Kitchen Garden and ended with a silent auction packed with epic prizes generously donated by local businesses. With costs for the event covered by Ziptrek Ecotour’s recent Locals Day donation, a whopping $17,000 was raised at the dinner which will be split equally between Sustainable Queenstown and KiwiHarvest.
The next time you’re in the supermarket, choose the ugly fruit – you might just save it from ending up in the bin.
