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Perishable food recovery program in Maple Ridge

The Friends In Need Food Bank has launched the program with Shopper’s Drug Mart in Maple Ridge.
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The launch of the Perishable Food Recovery Program at the Shopper’s Drug Mart 224 Street and Dewdney Trunk Road location. (Colleen Flanagan/THE NEWS)

Forty per cent of food in Canada ends up in landfills. Yet, much of that food was still fit for human consumption beforehand.

With that in mind, the Friends in Need Food Bank launched a new Perishable Food Recovery Program, with retail giant Shopper’s Drug Mart, at the store’s downtown Maple Ridge location on Wednesday.

After receiving $77,000 in provincial funding, distributed by Food Banks B.C., Friends in Need purchased a new refrigerated van.

The food bank will also be able to upgrade the refrigeration systems at its downtown location, allowing it to expand the new program throughout the community.

The van will be making daily runs to predetermined stores in Maple Ridge and Pitt Meadows to pick up perishable foods, diverting them from landfills, said Mary Robson, executive director of Friends In Need.

The Perishable Food Recovery Program is meant to take advantage of viable, surplus items and get them to those in need.

At Shopper’s Drug Mart, this will include dairy, fruits, vegetables, grains, as well as canned food.

Prior to the launch, the food bank, along with Michelle Poirier, front store manager at the test location, collaborated on a set of standards to ensure that the food is safe for consumption.

“From our standards, from our shelf point, we have processes and procedures that we follow so that it is off of our shelves. That being said, it is not necessarily meant to go into the landfills,” said Poirier.

“Milk is good as long as it is stored correctly and for the amount of time it is good for is about seven days after the date. And for anything that is boxed on our shelves, it is good for about six months after,” she said.

That is using the best-before dates.

“Expired we don’t do. As soon as it’s expired, it’s expired,” added Poirier.

This is the first phase of the new program.

During a trial run over the past two weeks, Poirier said the Maple Ridge store filled 10 totes, provided by AtSource Recycling Systems Corporation.

Cheryl Ashlie, coordinator of the new program, has been looking at what a food bank in Nanaimo has been doing. It used to divert $800,000 worth of food from the landfill. But that total is now $3 million, she said.

In Nanaimo, the food bank has also gone to a system of a warehouse and decentralized distribution centres Ashlie explained.

It’s an easy way for retailers to dispose of their outdated food because one agency has become the one distributor, she said.

Robson can’t wait to get the van rolling. She is expecting to sign up a number of large food retailers to the program within the coming months.

“This is the way of the future. We have to be more proactive in diverting the food, edible food from the landfills.”



Colleen Flanagan

About the Author: Colleen Flanagan

I got my start with Black Press Media in 2003 as a photojournalist.
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