From Food Scraps to Food for the Community

In 2015 a group of locals came together with a vision to create a space where we could grow food for the community and compost food waste. In a city where many have no gardens or space to compost, we’re working to prevent food scraps going to landfill and we’re feeding people who don’t have reliable access to food - all while working to be good caretakers of the land we’re working on by regenerating the soil. Things are tough - the soup kitchen and community centre we donate veggies to are telling us that food is needed by the community more than ever - all while funding is harder to come by for community organisations. 

Despite this, more than ten years on, the project is thriving. Our team collect almost one tonne of food scraps every week on e-bikes, which are turned into bio-complete compost and shared with other community gardens. Our urban farm uses this compost to grow veggies, which are then donated to local food programmes. We use regenerative, biology first approaches to farming, working in harmony with nature and are on a journey to being Hua Parakore verified. We couldn’t make anything happen without our community of amazing volunteers who help grow the veggies, harvest them, weed the garden, turn the compost and so much more. 

Looking to the future, in the next 6 months, we hope to have developed a larger Pick Your Own area for the community to have direct access to food. In a year we hope to be producing more veggies to donate, thanks to our work to continue regenerating the soil and enhancing our growing techniques. In 10 years we hope to have developed more urban farms and composting hubs around our city, giving even more people the opportunity to compost and grow locally.