Food waste is a massive issue in New Zealand. This is particularly true in Auckland where our wastage is higher than the national average. The average family in Auckland is wasting $574 worth of food a year – that’s equivalent to about three supermarket trolleys full of food.
In this series, we look at the attitude to food and the approach to preventing waste in different cultures.
For Tongan-born Maile Uluave surplus food is a way to bring the community together. Maile is chairwoman of Multi-Educational Support and Services Trust (MESST), a charity that provides a range of services for Pacific Island people and new migrants.
Every Wednesday around 20 families attend MESST’s community cooking class at the Langimalie Community Garden in Onehunga, using bread donated from a local bakery, leftover produce donated by stall holders at Avondale markets and harvest from the gardening plots at the community garden.
Maile says the workshop teaches cooking and gardening skills, and provides people with the knowledge to take back into their own homes. For Maile this is crucial, as words alone do not lead to change.
“Our children need to see us as role models; we need to lead the way to healthy eating and exercise. At the cooking workshops I see people’s minds opening. It’s so easy to fall into the takeaway trap – we love KFC but it’s not the right food for us, but cooking a curry with lots of vegetables is.
"I see people start to grow their own food and cook with it and watch as it reveals their inner happiness and joy. This brings good health.”
Learning to make use of donated food is a skill in itself (tip: a surplus of cucumbers mixed with mango and coconut make for a fantastic tropical drink) and Maile says one of the biggest barriers is unfamiliar foods.
“We don’t like Italian bread because we don’t know what it is, we’ve never tasted it. But if you get given a loaf of Italian bread and learn how to use it, chances are that we will like it. It turns out that if you toast it and spread it with butter it’s like any other bread!”
For the last few years the garden produced a lot of silverbeet but no one was using it. So Maile organised a workshop that taught people how to cook with it.
“Once they had tasted it and been given the skills to cook it and grow it themselves the knowledge was there. I bet we won’t have any extra silverbeet in the garden from now on.”
Even produce that has begun to turn and can’t be eaten doesn’t go to waste, with scraps going into Bokashi bins, which then goes to feed the kumara that are harvested to come back to the table.
Above all she says that the sharing of knowledge is one of the most powerful tools.
“People like to share their skills, teaching and learning from others and everyone can participate– that’s what makes the community richer.”
Want more?
Join Maile and the MESST team at a free Love Food Hate Waste workshop in Onehunga on Wednesday 30 November. You’ll be shown how to turn foods and leftovers into very useful compost and into more food! You will also be provided with a take home recipe to remember all of the delicious meals we made.
