Surplus food recovery work is not conventional in terms of working hours and duties. Our team collects surplus food and transports it back to the center upon the market’s closing time in the evening. Then, we will sort and examine the food and re-distribute to the food receivers immediately. Lastly, we need to clean our tools and equipment to maintain a good hygiene level within the center. The entire process, which is quite speedy yet busy, will usually be completed in less than 3 hours!
Other than working in a hot and humid wet market, it also requires certain physical capability to carry and move boxes of recovered surplus food, which weights around 20kg per container on a regular basis. However, it can be up to 40kg when it’s filled with heavier roots or fruits, for which requires at least two of our team members to load and un-load from the van.
The sorting and examination of the surplus food are no easy tasks! Our team needs to ensure the food is still eatable and safe for consumption. Then we need to be ready to distribute the surplus food in just 35 minutes and sometimes there will be up to 60 families visiting in a single evening.
Our food recovery program is driven by a collective team effort which has been contributing to the community for more than 6 years. The team consists of housewives, retirees in the nearby estates as well as students who care about environmental issues. Some were food receivers originally and joined the team to help others. All of them are working together towards FRRC’s goals of waste reduction and food sharing within the community.
