The Aotearoa Food Rescue Alliance (AFRA) Data Impact Project has been nominated for a WasteMINZ Award for Excellence.

The project was identified as a key priority for the emerging organisation by the founding members of AFRA so the sector would have data to help tell the story and value of food rescue across the country.

“As a young organisation we are delighted that our data project has been recognised and we are humbled to stand with the other nominees who have also undertaken such important mahi,” says Meghan Hughes, AFRA’s Data Lead.

“Already we are seeing some incredible results, and the proud nerds amongst us are very excited by the potential of the data to give us so much more insight and opportunities than we originally anticipated.”

The data platform was built on four key outcomes: understand the picture of food rescue at a national level; demonstrate the impact of the food rescue sector to government, funders, food donors; provide tools for AFRA members to assist with data collection and strive for best practice; and make aggregated food rescue data open and available for research and analysis.

The project aggregates standardised data from across the national food rescue sector. It has six key metrics that are used to calculate a range of social and environmental benefits including total food distributed through food rescue organisations, water and greenhouse gas savings from rescued food and how much quality food has been diverted back into the community that would otherwise have been sent to landfill or animal farms.

Alongside collecting data, the project expanded a people-centred approach to encouraging member involvement and buy-in.

“Too often data is seen as a holy grail but it comes at a cost to the people who are expected to collect it. We were focused on building a tool which provided maximum benefit for our members, and do everything we could to break down any barrier which would make it difficult to contribute data.”

“AFRA was built on the pillars of collaboration, best practice, capacity building and advocacy. Good, quality data helps us to understand and promote all of those objectives as well as bring our members closer together as a community.”

The project is almost two years old, and one full year of the standardised data platform will be celebrated by the organisation in July this year.

The winners of the Awards for Excellence will be announced at the WasteMINZ Conference on Tuesday 23 May.

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