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Stores join with community to end food waste

Partnerships between local grocery stores and community organizations are taking a huge bite out of food waste in Burns Lake.
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Save-On-Foods’ produce manager Nick Sackney (left) and assistant store manager Jared Obermeyer (right), stand in front of a load of unsold produce destined for farmers who will receive the food through the Loop Resource Program. The Loop links up stores up with farmers who give the unwanted food to their animals. (Blair McBride photo)

Partnerships between local grocery stores and community organizations are taking a huge bite out of food waste in Burns Lake.

Save-On-Foods in the Lakeview Mall is the main provider to such groups as the Lakes District Food Bank, the Elizabeth Fry Society, and the Food Share and Loop Resource programs, among others.

The western Canada supermarket chain has relationships with many other organizations elsewhere in British Columbia.

READ MORE: ‘Game-changing’ program to combat food waste to expand across B.C.

The store gives away unsold food items that are passed their expiry date but still edible, which has cut down on food waste by up to 90 per cent since around last October, Jared Obermeyer, assistant store manager told Lakes District News.

“I’m basically throwing nothing in the dumpster,” he said.

One of the biggest recipients of the store’s unwanted items is the Food Share Program, which Jennifer Peterson of Lakes Literacy started in 2014.

Peterson coordinates the daily food pick ups with the different organizations of the area and writes up a schedule for when they go to Save-On.

“Every Sunday the Woyenne Day Care picks up and uses the food in their community. On Saturday I have the Island Gospel soup kitchen. The Words on Wheels bus that goes to the Southside every Monday. Tuesday the food bank comes,” she said as examples of the March schedule.

She estimates that the monthly total of food gathered from Save-On is 1,000 to 1,200 pounds.

The Real Canadian Wholesale Club (RCWC) also helps feed the community and its parent company Loblaws has an agreement with Food Banks Canada.

“We’ve been getting food from Wholesale for about two years,” said Lakes District Food Bank coordinator Candice Little.

“We get all of their meat after they mark it down to 30 per cent off and freeze it. We get meat and bread and some other products. The focus is on perishable foods,” said Little.

Store manager Russell Perrault estimates RCWC gives the food bank between 200 and 300 kilograms of food per week.

“We probably donate around 75 per cent of what we aren’t able to sell. Twenty-five per cent of what we can’t sell goes to the landfill. If we get with the Loop program it will go even lower,” he said.

While other community programs focus on human needs for food, the Loop Resource helps meet the needs of animals by linking up farmers with stores, which pass off their unwanted food to the farmers.

Jaime White started the Loop it in 2016 from his farm in Dawson Creek and it has expanded to supplying 1,100 farms across the province and into the Yukon, Alberta, Saskatchewan and parts of Manitoba.

“When food goes in the garbage that’s a price we all pay..If we help the stores to succeed we help ourselves to succeed as well. Hopefully there can be a lower cost for food because we’re not throwing it out. The stores don’t have to pay to remove it. So for example, more carrots are being sold than are being wasted,” White explained.

Farmers can register to receive food from supermarkets through the Loop’s Facebook page.

“We want to pair farms with stores that suit their needs and are letting go of products they need. We don’t want to make waste,” White said.

In Burns Lake Save-On offers weekly pickups to seven farms, who in turn sometimes share the food with other farms.

“When Burns Lake was in trouble with the fires last summer, we contacted Save-On-Foods and asked them if they could accelerate help to the farmers. [It] came right to the table and we had our first load of food coming in the first 24 hours,” White explained.

The need became apparent during the Fall Fair last summer, which was eventually canceled because of the wildfires.

LOOK BACK: Organizers look forward to Fall Fair in 2019

“The fires jump-started it because they had all the animals at the fairgrounds and they were looking for food to feed the animals. So that spearheaded the Loop program in our town,” said Save-On’s produce manager Nick Sackney, who raises animals on his own farm.

“Anything that doesn’t go to the Food Share now goes to the Loop and it feeds all the animals…anybody with a farm and we’re trying to get to a point where it’s 100 per cent, we don’t throw anything into the dumpster at all, it’s recycled more or less.”

Sackney pointed out that farmers also share what they get from the Loop.

“They’re working together. If you have say, a frozen skid of lettuce or whatever - they’ll get [it] on their site and they’ll tell everyone so it’ll get spread throughout the Loop program.”



Blair McBride
Multimedia reporter
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