Marcus Godinho
Marcus said Fareshare has been providing free healthy, nutritious meals for Victoria’s homeless and hungry since 2000 by rescuing surplus produce from supermarkets, manufacturers, wholesale markets, farmers and other businesses. He said the number of people seeking help for food has risen by 40% over the past 4 years, and an estimated 300,000 people in Melbourne will run out of food at some time this year for a variety of reasons and with consequences such as children going to school without breakfast.
In contrast, Marcus said over 700,000 tons of food each year goes to landfill. There are a number of reasons for the waste, supermarket impose size, weight restrictions on farmers, B-grade produce is rejected.
Fareshare sources food which would be wasted from farmers, supermarkets, markets, restaurants, and with the aid of over 350 volunteers produced around 500,000 meals this year from their premised in Abbotsford. Their aim for 2013 is to move to new premised and produce 1,000,000 meals.