The Weekly 'Servicing Delivery' Column: Recycling Food

Distributing food to more than 1,000 organisations around the country and in total more than 200 000 people, FoodBank SA is putting wasted food to good use. Do yourself a favour and spend a day at any one of FoodBank South Africa’s (SA) warehouses in Cape Town, Durban, Port Elizabeth, Limpopo or Johannesburg and see what these people are about.

Foodbank SA was started after the Global Food Banking Network brought together Feedback Food Redistribution (which won an Impumelelo Innovations Award in 2008), the Lions Food Project, Johannesburg FoodBank and the Robin Good Initiative in 2009. These large organisations decided to consolidate their efforts to make a more significant impact on alleviating hunger when severe Protein Energy Malnutrition is the fifth most common cause of child death in South Africa. 

Daily around South Africa hundreds of kilograms of food which cannot be sold but is still fit for human consumption are delivered from large companies like Woolworths, Pick n Pay, Unilever, Nestlé, Kellogg and Pioneer Foods to FoodBank SA warehouses. FoodBank SA staff and volunteers sort and package the items into balanced meals which are loaded onto their 30 trucks and transported to food insecure communities. 66 000 people are fed in this way every day. In 2009 FoodBank SA redistributed 5.6million kilograms of food which was able to provide 19 million meals which were worth R76million.

42% of FoodBank SA agencies support child and youth development such as schools and shelters for orphans and vulnerable children. 40% see to vulnerable adults at nutritional feeding centres and soup kitchens that serve the unemployed, HIV-infected and pregnant women. The rest of the FoodBank SA’s agencies (18%) fall in the Social Welfare sector focussing on caring for the aged, the disabled and the terminally ill.

Small community-based organisations that attempt to address this without the aid of external support are being helped by FoodBank SA South Africa. Such organisations and those involved with income-generating activities are prioritised to discourage a pattern of dependency on FoodBank SA as organisations cannot be supported indefinitely. Additionally, organisations sign an agreement which holds them accountable and prohibits them from selling foodstuffs delivered from FoodBank SA for profit.  

The tragedy is that FoodBank SA can only meet 20% of its beneficiaries’ needs. There is a waiting list of 1,500 organisations that require their assistance. This important project needs the institutionalised support from government and the private sector much more seriously. Moreover their example of redistributing wasted food should be adopted by other sectors like the film industry, restaurants and other large businesses that produce large amounts of food. 

Food banking is commonly practiced in more than 40 countries around the world and although relatively new in South Africa these are the kinds of banks our country needs more and more!

Check out an Impumelelo visit to Foodbank SA in Cape Town!

Read about intern Nadya Abedian's experience after visiting Foodbank SA in Cape Town!