Waimea Weekly Locally Owned and Operated
Wednesday 31 July 2019
Success at retail awards
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2019 MITRE 10 CUP DRAW
Wanderers ousted Page 28
liftout
Kai with Love takes on food waste Matt McCrorie Reporter
matt@waimeaweekly.co.nz
Steve Dunne’s lightbulb moment came sitting at the kitchen table, watching a YouTube video with his 10-year-old son. The video was about global food waste and it demonstrated the amount of food produced each
year that ends up in landfill. “It just shocked us to the core,” Steve says. “The amount of food going to waste when there are starving people out there. My son just looked up and me and said, ‘Dad, we should do something about this’.” Steve said that he had a lightbulb moment that there could be an untapped food resource in Nel-
son. He started by making a few calls, to see if there was food going to waste that wasn’t wanted. Within a week, he was distributing tonnes of unwanted food out of the back of his van. He was going to need some help. “I called Abigail, because I just had too much food. Suddenly I’m giving away food out of the back
of my van, and Abigail is giving food away out the back of her van.” A year later, the organisation that Steve Dunne and Abagail Packer started in the back of that van is ‘Kai with Love,’ a Kiwi start-up food charity. In January, the Richmond Community Church organisation offered them the free use of their
centre. Now the organisation has a food share afternoon on a Wednesday when people can collect surplus food once a week. On top of that, they deliver food to homes and now feed over 600 families a week. Kai with Love has grown exponentially, and Steve says it’s
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Bateup Road reopened to traffic Bruno Saia Bateup Road was fully reopened last Friday afternoon and people who live in the area are already been able to feel the changes. “It was irritating”. That’s how Nistazia Paulin felt about the 15 months that Bateup Road stayed partially closed. Her whole family was affected by the roadworks. “It was annoying having to go all the way round as my daughter goes to school on Hill Street, it’s so close but it’s on the other end, so I had to go all around Richmond, through the traffic lights”, she said. They are relieved that the worst is over. “Sometimes I was sitting in traffic for more than 20 minutes and today it was only 5 minutes”. There are not many businesses on Bateup Road, but there is one that strongly felt the
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Nistazia Paulin lives on Bateup Road and had trouble getting her children Noah and Amanii to school. Photo: Bruno Saia.
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