00:03It's the freshest produce, but not all of it sells.
00:07Summer you get, obviously, you get a lot more food traffic so you buy a lot more stock.
00:12Winter, it's hit and miss, people come out, people don't.
00:16I don't want to put in the rest rubbish bin because I feel bad when we vest it.
00:21So I'm happy to give it the free end of the day even if we can't sell it.
00:24The Queen Victoria market produces about 800 tonnes of surplus food every year.
00:30That's the equivalent of about 30 Melbourne trams.
00:33We've done a whole stack of bin audits here to understand what the waste is.
00:39And we've found that about 97% of that is actually edible.
00:43That produce is now being rescued and redirected to charities helping to feed those in need.
00:49Some of them are focused on creating meals.
00:52Others run pantry operations where they're enabling access to that fresh produce for people in the community that need it.
01:00Rescuing it and being able to collect all that food and then deliver that right out and share it with
01:06every person that needs it.
01:07According to data collected by the City of Melbourne, almost 50% of residents reported food insecurity.
01:1423% reported running out of food while more than a third said they were worried they would.
01:19This is an absolutely shocking and unacceptable situation in an Australian city.
01:25A country as prosperous as ours, people should not be missing out on meals.
01:29Now there's a family that's eating during the week or someone that was skipping meals is now able to have
01:34something to eat.
01:35It really pulls at the heartbeat of Second Bite.
01:38The market is the City of Melbourne's biggest source of fresh produce.
01:42There's more than 25 stalls and so far five have signed up to be part of the initiative.
01:47Three different food relief organisations receive the produce, including social enterprise Meals With Impact.
01:53It creates halal and culturally appropriate meals for diverse communities.
01:58We can feed up to 600 people a week and that week usually say that there's five members to a
02:06family.
02:06So that's 30 families within a week.
02:10There's hopes to expand the number of stall holders involved and eventually branch into meat and packaged produce as well.
02:16I'll find out on theTube channel.
02:17I'll find out on the Forecast City of Melbourne's annual and of the
02:21two speakers.
02:22I'm going to get to the end of the stage tonight.
02:22I'll be thinking.
02:23You're looking for a bajand.
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