Volunteers Jackie Bishop (left) and Sharon Brown (right) prepare 'rescued vegetables' for service at the Gathering Place Thursday. Photo by Dennis Chippa.
The saying goes that ‘one person’s trash is another’s treasure’.
That is certainly the case when it comes to some ‘gently used’ food that makes its way to the Gathering Place, rather than a dumpster.
The city’s soup kitchen has been able to make use of fruit and vegetables that some retailers or farmers can’t sell, through a concept called food rescue.
Candice Benson, the Community Programs Manager for the Gathering Place, explains food rescue is about, first and foremost, preventing waste.
“For example, right now we are currently working with a couple of local retailers, Orchards and Giant Tiger and the Farmer’s Market sellers. Whenever they have extra produce and there’s produce that’s a little bit past best or damaged produce they’ll give us a call and we’ll go and pick it up and then we can use it in our meals.”
Most Saturdays, volunteers appear at the end of the Farmer’s Market to pick up what the sellers can’t sell and choose to donate.
That produce is turned into product for the more than a hundred people a day who use the soup kitchen.
Benson is clear that the food being rescued is far from rotten or no longer fit to eat.
In most cases, it’s good, just not good enough to sell.
“An apple that is bruised on one side, because we have the volunteer power we can use that apple and cut it up and throw it into the fruit salad, the parts that are good still. The vegetables, if there’s a little bit of wilted lettuce we can take away the extra wilted lettuce and use the usable parts in our salads or in our soups.”
The retailers don’t have to throw the food out, saving them money in garbage removal in the long run, while making them feel good about not contributing to the thirty-one billion dollars in food that gets wasted every year in Canada.
Benson says the kitchen’s food rescue program is expanding beyond vegetables and fruit.
“For example, barbecues, whenever there are barbecues and there are pre-cooked hamburgers or hot dogs if they are unable to use them they will be able to give us a call or drop them off. We also accept anything from any commercial kitchen so we’ve had a lot of people that have events or conferences, stuff like that. We take fruit trays, vegetable trays, anything that’s been prepared in the kitchen we can take the soups and pastas that have been prepared in a commercial kitchen.”
That of course, saves money for the soup kitchen in purchasing, and also contributes to the goal of a daily healthy meal to those in need.
It’s the kind of concept anyone can sink their teeth into.
