Once a karung guni (rag and bone) salvaging cardboard and old televisions for a living, Mr Daniel Yap now leads a group that saves the “lousy” food that feeds thousands of families every year.

Come rain or shine, the 47-year-old and his team of volunteers from the Fridge Restock Community (FRC) will visit the Pasir Panjang wholesale center about twice a week to collect fresh produce unsold items that would otherwise be wasted.

From 9 a.m. to noon, the team weaves through the bustling aisles of the wholesale center, browsing rows of crates and boxes while greeting familiar faces.

Vendors wave them around, showing them bins of fresh produce that would otherwise be thrown away. Some sellers, knowing the mission well, even bring boxes of their fruits and vegetables.

Mr Yap knows the sellers by name – a trust that has been built over the years since he started collecting food in 2018.

Today, his group collects between 8,000 and 9,000 kg of food per week. The food is delivered to 16 community refrigerators and 26 distribution points set up by community centers and resident networks across the island.

Mr Yap, a provision store owner in Little India, founded the FRC in 2020 after realizing there was a surplus of food that could be distributed to those in need.

What was once a largely individual activity has become a community of 50 volunteers who take turns participating in weekly rescue missions.

After finishing their tour around noon, the team distributes the products to different locations on the island.

After being loaded with fruits and vegetables, the trucks will deliver the produce to different locations, where residents will queue to await their arrival.

At the Serangoon Community Club on October 22, for example, more than 100 people were waiting to collect their groceries. Volunteers helped sort the food, cut off the rotten parts and ensure it was ready for beneficiaries to collect.

“The relationships built with fruit and vegetable sellers, as well as with the residents’ committees with whom we work, have required many years of trust, many rejections, for people to recognize the work we do and believe in us,” Mr. Yap said. , divorced and father of three children.

When he was growing up in the 1990s with two brothers and a sister, food was hard-earned, Mr. Yap said. His father owned a small construction company and his mother, a housewife, earned extra money babysitting for neighbors and relatives.

“My parents always told us, ‘Don’t waste food,’” Mr. Yap said. “The leftovers fed us for lunch, lunch and dinner. » He added: “I would make sure that nothing ends up in the trash, only in the stomach. »

After failing his secondary school exams, he abandoned his studies and went straight to work, scouring the neighborhoods in search of scrap metal to resell. From there, he held various jobs, working in hardware and convenience stores.

After his national service, he tried his hand at the hardware business and eventually joined his father’s construction company. After three or four years, he ended up running a vegetable stall in a dormitory in Tuas.

After the owner failed to renew his stall’s lease, he took odd jobs at the Pasir Panjang wholesale center in 2004 and learned skills such as sourcing, negotiation and customer relations. It was also there that he discovered the food industry.

“I don’t remember taking a break from work since I was 15,” Mr. Yap said. “I felt like I was in a football, with no control over where I was going.”

“At that point, I really didn’t know what I was doing and I still had no direction or goal. »

Things changed in 2006 when he got the opportunity to open his own provision store in Little India. A pivotal moment came in 2017 when he encountered two freegans rummaging through his store’s dumpsters looking for discarded vegetables.

Skeptical at first, he then realized what they were doing and started reserving fresh produce for them, which quickly became a habit.

However, he realized that he was setting aside more vegetables than there were takers, prompting him to step up his efforts to distribute food on a larger scale.

In 2018, Mr Yap and his mentor Mr Daniel Tay, co-founder of Freegans Singapore, started a community group called SG Food Rescue, where they distributed food to low-income families in areas like Bukit Merah and Marsiling.

Operations came to a halt during the pandemic, but in 2020 Mr Yap took the opportunity to launch Fridge Restock Community using the network he had built, focusing on stocking community fridges to combat waste food and creating a culture of sharing among residents.

“I wanted to work with the residents’ committees because I see it as a community sharing program,” Mr. Yap said. “When residents themselves have a surplus of food, I want to build a culture where they give and pay it forward, to pass it on to the next person who might need it more. »

“Without him, the FRC would collapse,” said volunteer Caroline Chia, 44, describing Mr. Yap as a “grassroots person with a very big heart.”

Ms Chia, a photographer, said collecting food is physically demanding and for a long time Mr Yap had done most of the work.

In 2020, she and her father began volunteering with Mr. Yap.

“To me, the organization is just doing what makes sense: vendors have food that they can’t sell and would throw away because they don’t have the capacity or time to send it to the community,” Ms. Chia said. “We’re closing that gap.”

Next on the group’s wish list is a cold room to store produce, which will allow vendors to store produce there on days when food rescue missions are not being conducted, Ms Chia said.

Challenges such as lack of manpower and funding remain, Yap said, although more corporate volunteers have joined in, helping to sustain their operations and raise awareness about sustainability .

His dedication to saving food will never stop, Mr. Yap said. “It takes a lot of time, effort and money. But it’s worth it and I’m very happy to be part of the community.