BY: ELIJAH BASSETT
Food insecurity is a major problem around the world, and although it is much worse in impoverished countries, even places like the United States and Canada have unacceptable amounts of people going hungry. For example, Food Banks of Quebec (FBQ) reports that over 400,000 people in Quebec struggle with hunger, including 150,000 children. One would be too many. And when you consider how big a problem food waste is on top of all that, the irony is striking, to say the least. Luckily, FBQ has found a way to use these contradicting problems to help resolve each other
The organization, which organizes food aid across the province, has announced their province-wide Supermarket Recovery Program (SRP) to prevent food waste in supermarkets and grocery stores after a successful pilot program that started in 2015. In 2016 alone, they managed to save and redistribute 2.5 million kilograms of food with a market value of $20 million, and prevented the equivalent of 2000 metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions. Now that the scope of the project has been more than tripled to include the whole province, the impact will be even bigger, with FBQ estimating that they’ll be able to prevent 8 million kilograms of food waste and 7,000 tons of greenhouse gases yearly.
The program works by having FBQ staff go to grocery stores on a schedule, taking food that they would otherwise throw out, and bringing it to a distribution centre where it can then be sent to the food banks that need it. This takes the burden off of grocery stores and leaves them little in the way of excuses not to help out.
This is a major success in the effort to reduce food injustice, because of how big a role supermarkets play in the problem of food waste. For example, it got bad enough in France that they recently had to pass a law to stop them. In comparison, the SRP is a bit softer, but it has still secured the cooperation of several of the province’s major supermarket chains, proving that corporations do not actually have to be that wasteful. Although France’s law is good too, SRP’s more voluntary approach makes the 611 participating supermarkets into role models for grocery stores across the rest of Canada, and the world.
Because although the Supermarket Recovery Program is the first and only program of its kind in Canada, the success of its pilot could make it a great option for other provinces, states, or even countries. With food bank use increasing in both Canada and the United States, they need all the supply they can get in order to keep people fed, and grocery stores are in the best position to help.
Of course, programs like this don’t address the root causes that make them necessary in the first place. Although they help treat one of the most pressing symptoms of poverty, they don’t change the fact that some people don’t make enough money to buy their own food, even when employed. That’s why Food Banks Canada doesn’t just focus on food banks, but advocates for poverty reduction strategies to reduce the need for them, such as basic income and more investments in social housing.
In the meantime, though, involving grocery stores in the efforts of food banks is still a great way to ease the burden of poverty and food insecurity while more holistic solutions are worked out. With Quebec’s food banks receiving about 1.8 million requests for emergency food aid yearly, they can use all the help they can get.