In 2024, Healthy Cities Australia was proud to spearhead a Regional Food Coordinator program as the very first region in NSW to do so, thanks to generous funding from the NSW Environmental Protection Authority. We are fortunate to have a food rescue and relief sector that collectively rescues a vast amount of food to feed an increasing number of people in need in the Illawarra. The goal of this three-year program is to increase connections and collaborations in the sector to ultimately increase the amount of edible food rescued from landfill to feed the increasing number of people in need.

Here’s some highlights from the last few months.

SecondBite became our fifth official project partner

You may have seen SecondBite trucks on the road. They’re Australia’s largest free food rescue organisation working with food partners, including Coles supermarkets, around the country to rescue surplus food that isn’t sold in-store from landfill, and instead divert that to food relief agencies and people in need. In 2023 alone they rescued 23 million kilograms of surplus food! Many of our food relief agencies here in the Illawarra are working with SecondBite to pick up surplus food from local Coles stores, and SecondBite is doing an amazing job at facilitating and growing partnerships between food partners and organisations, so we’ve officially brought them into the project to help boost their input in the Illawarra.

We brought on a Food Coordinator for one day a week at Warrawong Residents Forum

You would have seen our partner Warrawong Residents Forum (WRF), the community centre in Warrawong that offers a food hub service on Tuesday’s and community lunch on Thursday’s. In order to make their Tuesday food service run smoothly, we brought our fabulous former FFI intern Connor on board to work in the hub coordinating the food delivery and community outreach – in May alone, WRF rescued a total of 2,120kg of food and redistributed it to 925 individuals and 8 community programs! Not only that, Connor is also doing an additional day per month coordinating an extra delivery of rescued food via SecondBite and True Hearts to get it out to nearby organisations including youth groups, breakfast clubs, home support services, and initatives providing meals to people experiencing homelessness, which is an additional 200+kg of food rescued from landfill feeding people who need it. This is such an excellent example of the collaborative strength of our Illawarra food relief sector coming together to swap and share resources to benefit the community!

Linked The Source Bulk Foods Shell Cove with local food relief

We posted a story about how Alexander’s Bakery Southside saves food from landfill and gives back to the community, which prompted Kara, owner of The Source Bulk Foods Shell Cove, to reach out to us about donating their ad-hoc surplus food from the store. They had around 50kg of unsold product past it’s ‘best before’ date but not yet expired, a common problem for food business owners – still fine for human consumption, but unable to be sold. We linked them up with two of their local food relief organisations in the Shellharbour area, and FoodCare were able to organise volunteers to pick up the food for their low-cost grocery and free morning tea service.

Are you a hospitality or food business, or food relief organisation, in the Illawarra? The Illawarra Food Donations Whatsapp Group is where local businesses can post when they have surplus edible food left over at the end of the day and find a nearby organisation to donate it to. Whether you’re a manager or staff member, hop in the group today!