2267 tonnes of food was rescued from supermarkets and farmers, and diverted to charitable causes instead of going into landfill – that is huge!
Johannesburg, South Africa (27 February 2023) – NOSH Food Rescue NPC is an organisation that helps prevent food waste by collecting food, on the cusp of expiring, from supermarkets to donate to charities in need.
Sell-by dates on food are what shops go by when restocking the shelves. Some stores will mark down the price on the last day of the sell-by date and then if the item isn’t sold, they bin it… Yes, that is correct; food gets sent to landfill even if it is perfectly fine because of sell-by dates.
In South Africa, wasting food in such a manner is gutwrenching. We have millions of people living below the poverty line, going to bed hungry at night. There are charities that struggle to stay open and are in desperate need of food to help feed the needy.
The organisation, by Hanneke Linge, was started to be the middleman between retail food waste, farmers and the people of South Africa in need of food. Currently, the organisation works in the Johannesburg area but hopes to grow and spread across the country, saving food and people in one swoop.
They have compiled all their numbers from 2020 to 2022 and came out with some staggering statistics! In that two-year period, the team was able to rescue 2267 tonnes of food, which is the equivalent of 5.93 million meals. If it had ended up in a landfill, it would have contributed around 1918 tCO2e (tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent) to the atmosphere.
“It is quite a task to wrangle the 100 000-line produce spreadsheet into submission, but we can now present these figures with confidence. Thanks to each and every one of you who contributed to this in some way, we absolutely could not have done this without YOU!! We’ll let you know as soon as we have a more extensive impact report up on the website.”
The food rescued from landfill is all safe to eat and a great eye-opener to how much can be done even if food reaches its expiry date. We love that there are organisations out there working to rescue food and make sure people don’t go hungry!
NOSH sends its food to soup kitchens, homes and other organisations that rely on food donations to feed people in need. One of the initiatives the charity has done over the last four years has been to host odd plate dinners.
The dinners are run once a month and the funds raised are used to further support charities. You can find out more about how to join an Odd Plate Dinner via the Nosh Facebook group here.
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