“Globally, one third of all edible food produced is thrown in the bin, and with one in every nine Australian unsure where their next meal is coming from, OzHarvest and their goals are relevant to all of us as a community,” said chief executive of MCEC Peter King.

Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre is supporting OzHarvest in their commitment to fight food waste through food rescue, education programmes and sustainability work.

The venue’s contribution will be through ongoing food donations, resources and service provision with workplace giving, fundraising and advocacy programmes.

MCEC will also provide a commercial kitchen space to OzHarvest for the food rescue organisation’s ‘Cooking for a Cause’ Programme for three days in a week. Participants can learn from OzHarvest chefs zero-waste cooking skills and how to, transform rescued ingredients, into gourmet meals, ready for distribution to communities in need of food.

OzHarvest is Australia’s leading food rescue organisation with the driving purpose, to ‘Nourish Our Country’. In Melbourne, it has diverted over six million kilogrammes of quality food from landfill to people in the state of Victoria.

It also run education programmes to create positive change through its Nutrition Education Skills (NES) training of educating adults, to cook healthy meals on a budget; and Food Waste Education (FEAST) where, curriculum on food waste and sustainability are included in primary schools.

Each year in Australia, food waste costs AUD20 billion, while five million people experience food insecurity.

To find out more about rescuing food from events, you can go to www.ozharvest.org