Photo: Chaiel Schaffel/WBZ NewsRadio
ACTON, Mass. (WBZ NewsRadio) — A nonprofit based in Acton is collecting food that would otherwise be discarded and bringing them to food pantries. Boston Area Gleaners began their operations in 2004, and according to executive director Usha Thakrar, they’ve kept busy over the years.
“We probably do about 3,000 cases a week,” Thakrar said. That equals about seven million pounds of food a year.
Thakrar explained that the organization goes around with a team of volunteers to pick up produce that farms aren’t able to sell, saving tons of food from landfills.
The produce is then taken back to their headquarters at Stonefield Farm in Acton, where they sort and pack up the food to be sent to food pantries. Thakrar said that the change of season has impacted their work, but that hasn’t stopped them.
“The last few weeks have been very challenging because there's a limited supply,” she said. “We're getting to the end of the farming season.”
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Development Manager for Boston Area Gleaners Alyssa Ciolfi highlighted what has been going through their HQ most recently: apples.
“We have bins of apples that have been put on this machine that now dumps it, kind of lifts it off the ground, dumps it onto a conveyor belt,” Ciolfi said.
Ciolfi said how shocked she was by the sheer amount of food they collected.
“It is mind-blowing amount of food that comes through that would otherwise have been sent to a landfill,” she said.
According to Thakrar and Ciolfi, demand has been high for their services, but the desire to volunteer had been higher than normal in the last couple weeks, owing to the pauses in SNAP benefits.
More information on Boston Area Gleaners can be found here.
WBZ NewsRadio’s Chaiel Schaffel (@CSchaffelWBZ) reports.