Aloha Harvest has recovered 30 million pounds of food for Hawaiian families, an achievement Gov. David Ige calls "a big milestone," according to a tweet.
Since its founding in 1999, Aloha Harvest has become the largest food rescue and redistribution operation in the state, a proclamation stated.
Although Aloha Harvest is happy with a lot of food, it ran out of space to store it.
“We want to maintain this momentum as the ongoing supply chain disruptions, increasing prices of housing, fuel, food and other essentials is keeping the need for food assistance at an all-time high,” the organization wrote on its donation webpage.
Aloha Harvest collects excess food from donors such as whole distributors, grocery stores, hotels and restaurants. After collecting the donated food, the organization then gives the food to distributors, like food banks, according to the proclamation.
“We don’t grow food, we don’t cook food, we don’t feed people directly,” Executive Director “Phil” Augustus Acosta said in Hawaii Business Magazine. “But we work with over 1,000 donors and nonprofit organizations that feed the hungry and we try to facilitate those connections in the community.”
Aloha Harvest has collected an average of 2.2 million pounds of food in each of the last four years.
While the COVID-19 pandemic halted the world, Aloha Harvest continued its work because many Hawaiians faced food insecurity. It also had help with funding from a grant from the ReFED COVID-19 Food Waste Solutions Fund.
“The ReFED grant is helping us to scale the impact of our mission,” Acosta told Food Tank. “We are able to add to our staff and fleet; support our local economy by purchasing local produce, fish [and] other goods, and expand our food rescue and distribution efforts.”