Leftover, rescued produce helping food banks reduce waste – National | 24CA News
Half-price strawberries in stacked pallets and freshly gleaned spinach from a farm sit in a meals financial institution’s walk-in fridge ready to be redistributed.
“There might be a few blemishes but you can just cut that off. It’s still good,” says Sieg Bressmer, holding a pack of deep purple strawberries at Edmonton’s Food Bank within the northwest a part of the town.
It all needs to be used inside two to a few days, says Bressmer, whose job is to select meals off pallets of rescued produce each week from over 200 grocery shops within the metropolis, together with Loblaws, No Frills, Safeway and Sobeys.
The meals financial institution has lengthy relied on gleaning, a reference to the biblical observe of selecting leftover produce from a freshly harvested farm that will in any other case go to waste. Gleaning, a kind of passive charity, was practised from biblical instances till the late 18th century.
Ahead of its time, the meals financial institution in Edmonton, as soon as referred to as the Gleaners Association, grew to become the primary food-rescuing group in Canada in 1981.
Gerard Kennedy, one of many group’s first volunteers and later the primary govt director of Edmonton’s Food Bank, says the thought was to scale back meals waste and serve hungry households. By 1985, the group was gleaning over 70 per cent of its provide from the meals business, together with retailers, farmers and producers.
Kennedy remembers how at first folks didn’t desire a meals financial institution. Back then, he says, folks had been in opposition to the thought of giving out free meals as an alternative of incomes a residing.
“But what prevailed was the practicality that food should not go to waste,” says Kennedy, who served as a Liberal schooling minister in Ontario from 2003 to 2006.
Forty years on, he says, the function of a meals financial institution has shifted – from specializing in gleaning surplus meals to attending to better wants of people who find themselves visiting meals banks extra ceaselessly.
Marjorie Bencz, the present govt director of Edmonton’s Food Bank, says about “60 per cent of our food coming in through our doors is gleaned.”
Gleaning is extra related immediately, she says, with a give attention to the atmosphere and sustainability alongside meals rescue. Last 12 months, greater than three million kilograms of meals was gleaned in Edmonton, Bencz says.
“It’s about a community feeding the community.”
Bressmer, who can be a chef, says modern-day gleaning isn’t about procuring meals from farms however seeing what’s good past the best-before date and the way it may be given to these in want.
“People have a misconception about the expiry dates and best-before dates,” he says. “The best-before are manufacturing dates to measure the optimum flavour of the food.”
He trains folks on the meals financial institution to look at objects, together with baked items and recent produce, to see what’s appropriate for human consumption. They test for mould, blemishes or discoloration. Food that isn’t good anymore goes to animals.
The solely draw back to rescued meals is that organizations don’t get to regulate the amount or select the objects, says Maggie Borowiec of Moisson Montreal.
“This is food that (manufacturers) would like to sell but weren’t able to,” she says. “It’s surplus food and their options are to either throw it or give it away.”
The group says 49 per cent of its meals final 12 months was rescued from locations greater up within the provide chain. About 17 per cent was leftovers from grocery shops.
“We’re fortunate in Montreal that there are a lot of food manufacturing companies, like a meat production company that gives away its surplus deli,” says Borowiec.
Loblaw, Canada’s largest grocery retailer, says on its web site that it gave away greater than 6.8 million kilograms of meals to associate companies, together with Second Harvest, final 12 months. It has set a aim of zero meals to landfill by 2030.
To lengthen the shelf lifetime of rescued produce, Moisson Montreal additionally makes use of an antimicrobial answer known as Chinook 110, for delaying spoilage, Borowiec says.
Despite efforts to rescue and glean meals, Graham Hill of Second Harvest says over 60 per cent of all meals produced in Canada is misplaced and wasted each single 12 months.
Most would have been edible, he says.
Hill, the chief income officer at Second Harvest, says the group rescued one in all its largest quantities of meals final 12 months _ over 24 million kilograms.
“The reason you’re seeing an increase is (because) people are becoming more environmentally conscious about the impacts of food loss and waste.”
Hill says there’s nonetheless lots of meals being misplaced in a wealthy nation the place individuals are combating meals insecurity.
“I’m not saying that rescued food is the answer for food insecurity. But while we have surplus food in the system, it is our duty to be able to connect as much surplus food to Canadians (as possible).”
© 2023 The Canadian Press
