Kaibosh to the rescue

New Zealand’s cafés are famous for great coffee – and their tasty, fresh and healthy food – yet, sadly, much of the food that isn’t sold each day is simply thrown away.

Except in Wellington, that is, where each month 10 tonnes of quality leftovers are used to feed the needy instead of being sent to rot in landfill – and that’s all thanks to Robyn Langlands and her team at Kaibosh.

Hunger and waste

When Robyn immigrated to Wellington from South Africa shortly after the end of apartheid, she felt a strong desire to do something that contributed positively towards social justice.

She started volunteering at the Women’s Refuge, and at the same time happened to make friends with someone working for the upmarket sandwich chain Wishbone. Her friend had been trying to find a way to redistribute the unsold leftovers, so in a simple act of common sense Robyn created a link between the needs of Women’s Refuge, and the excess food at Wishbone – and New Zealand’s first food rescue charity, Kaibosh, was born.

The name is a play on the Maori word for food and the Yiddish word ‘Kibosh’, which means ‘put an end to’, and its aim is to put an end to food poverty and food waste simultaneously by taking quality leftovers from businesses and distributing them to charities that help people in need.

To begin with Robyn ran this operation from her car boot, and stored the fare at home. However in only five years the registered charity has grown to become an integral part of the social fabric in the Wellington Central community; last year Kaibosh delivered enough free food to provide over 336,000 meals for those in the community who were struggling or at risk.

Saving the healthy stuff

A big point of difference between Kaibosh and other charities is that the food they rescue is the healthy stuff – it’s freshly grown and made, rather than canned goods or food full of preservatives.

This, however, involves a significant logistical challenge: they have to pick up donated goods at the end of the working day on a tight shift so they don’t slow down anyone’s business. To make it all run smoothly, a dedicated team of 85 rostered volunteers sorts through food donations daily while a small paid staff do the rounds in a chiller van picking up produce.

The benefits to the community are wide-ranging – healthier people, less hardship, and less waste rotting in landfill to release greenhouse gases. Plus the volunteers and workers get a chance to make a difference that they can see, and know they are helping people who really need it.

“You feel like you are a part of a bigger solution tackling problems in this work,” says Kaibosh’s general manager Matt Dagger. “We are not out there to solve all the problems of social justice, but we are a small part of a larger jigsaw of help.”

The rapid growth of Kaibosh is testament to the value that the food rescue concept adds to the community and Matt feels like they have played a large part in helping various other social service providers to meet the needs of people in Wellington Central.

“For the charities we support, fresh healthy food is a great incentive to get people in the door” says Matt. “It is like a gateway that can often give people a chance to receive more help from [charities that also offer] budgeting services, counselling on family issues and relationships, health advice and more.”

Going to the next level

Of course, running a food rescue operation has some huge challenges. At Kaibosh they’re working hard to create a financial model that will allow them to expand operations and help meet the needs of other communities.

There is a huge demand for our services in the Hutt Valley and Porirua, where healthier and more affordable food would be a huge help to many people. But they currently rely on donations to keep the operation running and the grind of constant grant applications takes resources away from the operational arm of the charity.

However the Nikau Foundation, a regional funding manager for the Tindall Foundation, is now helping Kaibosh research how they can expand and meet the needs of communities around the region with their successful model.

Another challenge is that many potential donors are worried about liability in terms of food safety – if someone got sick from eating food past its use-by date they could get in trouble.

However Food Safety Minister Nikki Kaye has responded to this challenge by proposing a law change in the Food Bill (in its second reading at the time of writing) that Kaibosh hopes will enable them to rescue even more food from cautious businesses. The ‘Good Samaritan’ clause will absolve food donors, food rescue organsations like Kaibosh and food distributing charities such as the City Mission, Women’s Refuge and The Salvation Army from civil and criminal liability in the case of someone getting sick.

So, despite the challenges ahead, Matt says he is feeling confident. “Kaibosh is making a significant difference in the quality of healthy food that many less-advantaged people wouldn’t otherwise be able to afford.” And he believes they will find the support they need to expand, simply because people can see that what they’re doing is common sense.

Testament to this is the fact that – inspired by Kaibosh – there are now five other food rescue organisations operating around the country.

And although Kaibosh would like to like to expand its own reach, this is because they see a genuine need for this service in communities beyond theirs, not because they are trying to own the food rescue space: they regularly take time out of their hectic schedule to provide advice to start-up food rescuers elsewhere and have even written a guide for getting started, which is now available on their website www.kaibosh.org.nz.

So if stopping waste and hunger at the same time sounds like your kind of idea, check them out online and give it a try.

Kaibosh in numbers

• 195,482kg of food diverted from landfill since 2008
• 117,680kg of food rescued in the past year (equivalent to 336,228 meals)
• Around 10,000kg rescued each month
• 85 volunteers each contribute around 2 hours per fortnight
• 28 charities supported
• 27 businesses regularly donate food
• 65 per cent of food rescued is fruit and vegetables

How you can help

Kaibosh relies on donations: help them out by donating at their website www.kaibosh.org.nz.

If you are in the Wellington area you can: Donate your time by emailing [email protected].

Or give the gift of kai: email [email protected] to help out the needy with your business’s quality leftovers.

If you are outside Wellington and want to help: Check out the Kaibosh website for other food rescue organisations such as FoodShare in Dunedin, KCA in Newlands and Porirua, Fair Food in West Auckland (www.fairfood.org.nz), 0800 Hungry in Christchurch or Just Zilch in Palmerston North.

Start your own food rescue organisation! There are some excellent resources on the Kaibosh website for start-ups and the team are happy to help with advice. See www.kaibosh.org.nz plus check out Ozharvest at www.reap.org.au and the start-up guide from City Harvest in New York City at www.cityharvest.org/about/start.