Food & Nutrition

In Wyndham Council, 4.9% and in Hume 6.1% of the population are at risk of not eating food every day, falling below the acceptable poverty indicators for Australia 

Our community partners in the North West between 2011 and 2012 have seen a 30% increase in ‘at-risk’ families accessing them for the supply of food or other services that support their most basic needs.

The food is fresh and delivered within days of receival and sorting

The impact of this increase has resulted in A Gesture growing its weekly supply of fresh nutritious food to 2000kg, helping us to focus on ending food insecurity by providing healthy food donated by SecondBite. 

Australia doesn’t eat everything it produces, and Supermarkets are the biggest source of fresh fruits and vegetables, so it makes logical sense that they are the biggest sources of food for our food rescue programme. We are supported by SecondBite and their agreement with local supermarkets by rescuing the food from their stores and distributing it free of charge to families in need.

We pickup the food, then re-sort it for quality, removing contaminated food and organising it for redistribution to more than 20,000 families in the Northern and Western Suburbs of Melbourne.

Australian’s dump $7 Billion of food into landfill. Redirecting surplus food to 

people in need is an excellent way to reduce food waste, help the environment, reduce food insecurity, and help reduce landfill.

50% of food is wasted between farm and the dinner tableDid you know?

• Australians are throwing out more than $7.8 billion worth of food annually
• 47% of municipal waste in landfill is food and green organic waste
• Over 7.5  million tonnes of food is wasted in Australia each year – from which the embedded water could supply Melbourne and Sydney for an entire year. 
• Food waste in Australian landfills is the second largest source of methane – a gas 23 times more destructive than C0₂ from cars

Surplus produce occurs for many reasons:

• Blemishes/imperfections.
• Short shelf/sale life.
• Over-ordering/over-catering.
• Consumer demand for perfect produce.

Any food we collect that is not fit for redistribution for any reason goes to CarradeneFarm in Melton or Bedford Farm in Bulla, to be fed to their farm animals. At Carradene Farm for example, the A Gesture food waste is sorted on arrival and then fed to the appropriate animals, e.g. parrots like the sweet fruit, whereas the poultry like greens.