The Sydney Convention and Exhibition Centre is working with local ‘food rescue service’ OzHarvest to ensure that any excess pre-packaged food from the venue does not go to waste.
Centre Executive Chef Detlef Haupt said the venue began donating perishables to OzHarvest at the start of the year, following an approach from the organisation to help feed Sydney’s needy.
OzHarvest is a not-for-profit organisation that collects food and delivers it free of charge to 118 charities that provide meals for men, women and children in need throughout Sydney.
“The Centre can only provide leftover food that has been wrapped and unopened – for example lunch boxes or packaged food from our Exhibition Cafes, so it depends what has been happening at the Centre and the nature of the products that are left over as to how much and when we can donate,” Detlef said.
As soon as a collection is ready, the Centre calls the special OzHarvest hotline and the food is picked up and distributed the same day.
“The Centre recently became the first venue in Australia to be awarded ISO 22000 certification, recognising its world-class food management systems, and this was a key factor in OzHarvest agreeing to work with us,” Detlef said.
“OzHarvest is very well organised and set up. They know how to work with big venues and they follow State food handling guidelines to provide an excellent service,” Detlef said.
“Being involved with programs like this is just one way the Centre helps the local community and it’s good to be able to give food to those charities that really need it.”
OzHarvest Logistics Coordinator Margot Donde said three refrigerated vans collected and distributed food donations to 118 charities throughout the city and western suburbs.
“More than 1.5 million meals have been delivered to charities since the organisation’s inception two and a half years ago. In our first month of operation we delivered 4000 meals, we now deliver more than 75,000 meals every month thanks to the generosity of donors such as the Sydney Convention and Exhibition Centre,” Ms Donde said.
“As a food rescue charity, whatever highly nutritious, healthy food we can obtain to distribute to local charities enables them to redirect their limited funds in other important ways,” Ms Donde said.
Report by The Mole
