Nelson's environmental food programme raises enough money for EV

Tuesday, 31 January 2023

The Nelson Environment Centre’s Kai Rescue programme raised enough funds to purchase an electric van, an environmental step to helping the community.

Kai Rescue is a 100% charitable programme that saves good food from going to landfill, and redistributes it through a network of more than 55 community groups.

In 2022, Kai Rescue redistributed 173.6 tonnes of food from landfill - the same as 495,882 meals, more than 9,000 meals a week preventing around 347 tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions being released into the atmosphere.

**READ MORE:

* Covid-19: Gourmet meals from cancelled Seafood conference to be donated

* Kai Rescue service expands to save more edible food from Nelson's landfills

* Hard work of Kai Rescue volunteers acknowledged

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Kai Rescue depends on volunteers, donations and grant funding to operate and last year, Nelson and Richmond's Rotary Clubs helped the programme make enough money to get its very own EV.

“The biggest part about having an EV is twofold, one is obviously environmental, we’re an environmental centre, so we’d like to be as low impact and sustainable as possible,” funding co-ordinator Joanna Pahl said.

“Secondly it lowers our operating costs year-in and year-out by not having to pay fuel or the amount of repairs.”

Pahl said the EV played a massive part in saving costs for the programme.

“It costs around $250,000 a year to run a programme like Kai Rescue so because we’re not able to earn much through the programme, it's really dependent on us being clever about maintaining lower operating costs as possible.”

Pahl also said this year’s goal was to find a new home to expand Kai Rescue.

“2023 is about us finding a long-term home for Kai Rescue so that we can increase our capacity and improve the long-term security of our programme.”