Watch Your Waste Line

Tips on how to reduce food wastage from NICHOL NG, founder of food distribution charity, The Food Bank.

- Yip Jieying

WHO IS SHE? Nichol Ng, 39. The managing director of local food distribution company and her family business, Food Xervices, started a non-profit charity initiative, The Food Bank, in 2012. The ‘bank’ collects food donations and redistributes them to beneficiaries to help the less fortunate. “We just wanted to marry excess food with people who need them,” Nichol explains. She recently partnered with Nespresso for the coffee company’s One Pod at a Time recycling campaign, which supplies local farm Quan Fa Organic Farm with coffee grounds from used capsules for compost. “The organic veggies [grown from the compost] are then donated to us and we include them in our Healthier Food bundles. It’s our way of supporting the local farming community,” she says.

8 DAYS: What gave you the idea to set up The Food Bank? 

NICHOL NG: My brother and I started The Food Bank ’cos we realised that the price of food in Singapore is escalating. In 2002, a tin of oil was about $12, and it is over $20 now. Oil makes up the basis of many recipes, so you can imagine how much people have to spend on food these days. Times are hard now. Even middle income people are coming to us for help while they are in between jobs. Some of them are sole breadwinners who have suddenly lost their jobs. We collect food donations from people who either drop them off at our warehouse [in Tanjong Pagar], or bring them to our bank boxes located in [some] shopping centres or offices. We tell people that as long as they have food in their home that’s unopened and has not expired, they are more than welcome to donate it to us, instead of buying new stuff from the supermarket to donate. We try to make it sustainable.