The Cranbrook Food Recovery Coalition held its first meeting Wednesday, May 1 at Farm Kitchen. Initial partners in the coalition are the Cranbrook Food Bank, The Salvation Army and Community Connections Society of SE BC.

The vision of the coalition is a coordinated and effective food alliance of community groups recovering food or using food in their community programs.

The coalition will share resources and knowledge, identify new opportunities to rescue high-quality fresh and perishable food, and enable community groups to support each other in preventing food waste.

All stakeholders recognize that local restaurants and grocers have been donating significant amounts of food to community groups for years. There are, however, many more opportunities to capture food before it is sent to the landfill.

The goals of the coalition are to decrease food waste in the community, increase nutritional value of local aid and community meals, increase collaboration within the community of food rescue by supporting, streamlining and improving the processes to increase available food, and lastly decrease food costs for local social programs.

Food waste has a significant impact on the environment as reported by National Geographic. “If food waste were a country, it would be the third largest emitter of greenhouse gas.”

Another report by Second Harvest claims 60% of all food produced in Canada is wasted every year. The amount of annual food waste for the city of Cranbrook is estimated at approximately 21,825,000 pounds. This project aims to reduce those numbers for businesses and the residents of Cranbrook.

Official collection will start in June and the coalition is looking for restaurants, farmers, and grocers who are interested in donating fresh healthy food that may no longer be sellable.

The coalition recognizes how generously the community has been donating food over the years, and we look forward to finding new ways to make donating food easier and more effective. This project will further support efforts, streamline processes and provide food rescue services that are easy and liability free.

This project gratefully acknowledges the financial contribution from Columbia Basin Trust, Bayer Canada and Canada Summer jobs. Without their support this project would not be possible.

For information about donating to the coalition without liability or to join the coalition please contact us at [email protected].

Cranbrook Food Recovery Coalition

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