Hamilton's homeless and underprivileged will benefit from the Waikato Environment Centre's new food rescue initiative, Kaivolution.
Ruth Seabright of the Waikato Environment Centre said the idea behind Kaivolution food rescue is food that is still good enough to eat but not good enough to sell is rescued from being thrown away and is then redistributed to charitable groups that are working with vulnerable people.
"It can be any charitable group at all, basically any group that is giving the food away, it can't be on-sold for profit, but any group that's not for profit that work with vulnerable people can apply to be a recipient. So we've got the food bank, the night shelters, the women's refuge, community houses, those kids of groups."
Seabright said the food will be donated to Kaivolution from manufacturers and growers, market gardeners, people that supply the supermarkets, and also potentially from supermarket as well.
"Because we are just at the beginning we are targeting the bigger suppliers and the bigger donors, so a lot of it will be fresh fruit and produce or packaged foods. So it's more like the raw product as opposed to prepared food."