QPS Catering and OzHarvest
Part of the ethos of Queensland Parliamentary Services includes minimising food waste and giving back to the community.
In 2016, we formed a relationship with the charity OzHarvest as Proud Supporters that allows us to do both.
Australia’s leading food rescue organisation, OzHarvest, who collect surplus food from donors including restaurants, caterers, hotels and airlines among others, was founded by the inimitable Ronni Kahn AO in 2004 after she noticed the huge volume of perfectly edible food going to waste. Food waste is a 36 billion dollar problem in Australia and if food waste was a country, it would be the 3rd biggest emitter of greenhouse gases.
OzHarvest delivers food from donors like QPC to more than 250 charities across Queensland, including emergency relief programs, community centres, domestic and family violence shelters and school breakfast programs, providing critical nourishment to households experiencing food insecurity and delivering significant cost savings to the charities that can be reinvested in other frontline services
Daily, when parliament is sitting, and as needed on other days, one of OzHarvest’s distinctive yellow vans arrives at Parliament House to collect surplus food from our catering functions, internal events and our café; food that would otherwise end up as landfill and delivers it either fresh or as nutritious meals to charities that help feed people in need.
In Queensland alone, OzHarvest has delivered more than 30 million meals to people in need and QPCS are proud to contribute more than 2,000 of those meals in 2022 alone.
You can find out more about the important work OzHarvest do here.
