Renelaine Pfister
Special to The Hawai‘i Herald
The other day I had to throw away a bag of moldy bread after consuming only a few slices. It pains me to throw away food when I know there are starving people everywhere.
Have you ever thought of all the wasted food at restaurants, grocery stores and in your own homes? Or how helpless you feel looking at houseless and needy people, wondering where they get their meals?
Here on O‘ahu, there are people who not only thought of this, but did something about it. Aloha Harvest is a non-profit organization founded in 1999 by Hau‘oli Mau Loa Foundation. Modeled after a program in New York called City Harvest, Aloha Harvest is a food rescue and redistribution organization: they pick up quality excess food from donors such as restaurants and grocery stores and redistribute it on the same day to agencies that help feed the hungry, such as homeless shelters and food pantries. They even accept donations from individual households, for example, those who are moving off island or need to clear their pantries. Individuals can also drop off donations at their Kaimukī office.
Chef Lee Anne Wong, in a video on the Aloha Harvest website, says 25% of food in restaurants go in the garbage. In 2022, Aloha Harvest saved 3 million pounds of food that would otherwise go to waste. Donors and recipient agencies are protected under the federal Bill Emerson Good Samaritan Food Donation Act of 1996 and the Hawai‘i Good Samaritan Donation of Food Act.
Mele Pepa Latu, who has been with Aloha Harvest for twelve years, is now the interim executive director. She says, “I love our mission. It’s so simple to get behind. Rescue perfectly good food from going into our landfills and give it to those in need. I love making the connections between those who are in abundance to those who are lacking. Everyone wins in this situation.”
Its mission is to reduce food waste and hunger, and it is environmentally friendly to keep our excess food from going into landfills. I learned from Aloha Harvest that food rots and forms methane, a greenhouse gas more potent than carbon dioxide. By decreasing waste, we help protect the environment.
Thanks to financial supporters, Aloha Harvest picks up donated food and delivers it to recipient agencies for free, seven days a week. There are currently seven full-time drivers and two part-time drivers, and they are looking to hire another one.
Sini Pepa, one of the full-time drivers at Aloha Harvest, was born and raised in Hawai‘i. The youngest of three and the only boy, he and his family lived in Kaimukī. He started out as a helper, when there were only two drivers. Currently, he starts his work day at 5:30 a.m., running his routes, picking up donated food and dropping them off at recipient agencies. He also takes care of call-ins from donors. What he loves most about his job is helping people. His best memory is “watching folks who look uncomfortable receiving donated food, but walk away with a smile knowing they have something for them and their families to eat.” On the other hand, it is difficult for him to see people in need and in despair.
From April to June this year alone, Aloha Harvest distributed 665,316 pounds of food, from 234 food donors and received by 101 agencies. Donors include Kualoa Ranch, Zippy’s and Foodland, while recipients include churches, Waianae Coast Comprehensive Health Center and The Pantry by Feeding Hawaii Together.
Aloha Harvest accepts food that is fresh, frozen, prepared, raw and dry. They even help harvest food, in a program called Community Harvest, which started in 2021.
Haleigh Jones, sustainability coordinator, says, “Community Harvest is a gleaning program where Aloha Harvest staff and volunteers provide free harvest services to residents and businesses to rescue excess produce growing on O‘ahu. We harvest excess, B-grade and cosmetically damaged produce growing in yards, gardens, and farms. We harvest all types of produce. We even had our first-ever community fish harvest in PŪpŪkea last month, where we harvested 250 pounds of tilapia from an aquaculture pond.”
Aloha Harvest coordinates the harvest event and provides all the supplies, equipment and trained volunteers.
Aside from the Community Harvest program, Aloha Harvest is an official partner of the O‘ahu Compost Project. Haleigh explains, “The O‘ahu Compost Project is a two-year pilot project that aims to reduce food waste on O‘ahu by providing free compost services to food establishments in Chinatown. By law, larger food establishments, such as the restaurants and resorts in Waikïkï, are already required to recycle their food waste. However, smaller restaurants, such as the mom and pops in Chinatown, are not required to recycle their food waste. That’s partly why we chose to target Chinatown for the pilot.
“Aloha Harvest’s role is to manage the logistics of the project. Aloha Harvest transports the food scraps from the restaurant partners in Chinatown to our partner farm, Full Circle Farm, in Waimānalo, where the food scraps are composted in Hawai‘i’s first in-vessel composting unit. The food scraps are transported in an Isuzu flatbed truck, which the GIFT Foundation donated to Aloha Harvest for use in this project.”
On Saturday, July 15, I met some of the wonderful staff at Aloha Harvest and felt excited to be involved as a volunteer. D. Otani Produce had donated 40 pallets of food and volunteers were needed to assemble the food in over a thousand boxes, which will be distributed two days later to recipient organizations. Volunteers of all ages turned up, including little kids. We formed an assembly line and gathered, for each box, one melon or cantaloupe, two cartons of eggs, a bag of small onions, five large loose onions, a bag of apples or grapes, sliced bread and a bag of chips. Food that looked spoiled were to be placed in a designated box for composting. Nothing was going to waste. The volunteers were energetic and happy to spend a few hours of their Saturday doing something good for the community.
According to Mele, the challenges faced by Aloha Harvest are “so many more business[es] out there have yet to donate excess foods, and it’s a priority for us to reach out to as many as we can. Another challenge that every nonprofit faces is [a lack of] funding.”
As for plans for the future at Aloha Harvest, Mele says “We are focusing on four areas: enhance access to quality food, ensure mission sustainability, focus on operational excellence and inspire action.”
Aloha Harvest is currently only on O‘ahu but they hope to expand operations to the other islands. In response to the Maui wildfires, Danielle Lee from Marketing and Communications, stated, “Our team is working with our food donor partners to make sure that we get fresh food and ingredients to the right places on Maui. We are working closely with partners on Maui who are helping to cook and prepare meals for those impacted by the wildfires.”
Aloha Harvest believes in “Waste less, Feed more.” It is something we can all participate in.
Go to alohaharvest.org to donate, volunteer and learn more.
Renelaine Pfister is a physical therapist and writer based on O‘ahu.
