Nearly half of all food produced in Canada is being unnecessarily wasted annually according to a new report, however a food marketplace app is working to address the problem.
On Tuesday, non-profit group Second Harvest Canada and Value Chain Management International (VCMI) released a report titled, “The Avoidable Crisis of Food Waste: Update” Second Harvest which surveyed more than 1,000 organizations across the supply chain about its amount of food waste.
The report found that Canada’s food system is throwing away an estimated value of $58 billion worth of food every year, and 41.7 per cent is avoidable. In addition, 46.5 per cent of all food in the country is wasted every year, the report states.
“The 2019 report sounded the alarm on food waste in Canada, and while we’ve seen some improvements, it’s hardly cause for celebration when we continue to waste almost half of our food,” Second Harvest CEO Lori Nikkel said in a press release.
“The environmental and financial costs of food waste are staggering, especially in light of the current food affordability crisis. We must act now and work together to reduce food waste at every level,” she continued.
According to the report, there are two types of food waste: avoidable and unavoidable. For example, blueberries are considered avoidable food waste because it can reach the store and still be edible, even at the time of its disposal. Researchers say this type of food waste has increased in the past five years.
Meanwhile, unavoidable food waste includes items that are byproducts, such as animal bones and husks, that cannot be consumed. This type of waste is processed more efficiently and has been reduced since the report’s first study in 2019.
In addition, researchers say the two major drivers behind food waste over the last five years have been best before dates and climate change. In fact, 23 per cent of avoidable food waste is caused by people tossing out food in accordance with best before dates (BBDs).
“They can mislead consumers into discarding perfectly good items like canned vegetables, rice, pasta, dairy and fresh produce. Only foods with a shelf life of 90 days or less require BBDs, yet they’re found on almost everything,” the report noted, adding that best before dates do not reflect a product’s shelf quality or safety.
From an environmental standpoint, the avoidable food waste is equivalent to approximately 25.7 million metric tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions every year or an estimated 253,000 one-way flights from Toronto to Vancouver.
Overall, the report found that $58 billion in food waste is enough money to pay for the groceries of 3.7 million Canadian families for a year.
HOW TOO GOOD TO GO IS REDUCING CANADA’S FOOD WASTE
Food marketplace Too Good To Go is contributing to the reduction of food waste in Canada and globally by taking good quality food that’s no longer good for sale from stores and restaurants and selling it at an affordable price on its platform.
Too Good To Go Spokesperson Sarah Soteroff says there is some positivity to come from the report as the percentage of food waste produced in Canada has actually decreased to 46.5 per cent from 58 per cent.
“I think it’s important for us to acknowledge when progress is made, that there has been human change in human behaviour, and that’s a great thing to see,” she said to Now Toronto on Thursday.
However, she notes that the country’s percentage is still higher than the global average which is roughly 40 per cent and that the $58 billion in waste is an increase from four years ago.
“That progress is not a positive one and that trajectory is not where we want to see it happen. But I would like to acknowledge that both with increased knowledge on food waste, increased behaviour, consumer change and behaviour, retail change behaviour, that the total waste number has gone down, which is a positive,” she explained.
With this in mind, she says Too Good To Go was launched in 2016 to address this problem head-on and create a marketplace where the food can be of use. So far, in the last three years, the company has saved more than seven million meals from going to waste in Canada alone, across nearly 13,000 partners.
On average, the company is saving between 10 to 20,000 meals a day, depending on how much supplies are available on the app.
HOW DOES THE APP WORK?
Customers can download the Too Good To Go app and choose a surprise bag from a local restaurant to receive a meal. The contents of every bag is dependent on the supplies of the restaurant at the end of the day.
Soteroff says the food sold on Too Good To Go must adhere to the same standards if it were being sold at full price. This means hot or cold food still needs to be properly refrigerated once it is out of the heat lamp.
In the case of a best before date, the spokesperson advises customers to use their senses to determine whether the meal is still safe to consume.
“If it has the best before date, you might see some of those items in your bag that are at or just past the best before date, but it’s still perfectly safe to eat. They just cannot be sold for full price that date. So, on Oct. 24, you might get some items in your bag that are dated Oct. 24, it does not mean when the clock strikes midnight that those turn into rotten food,” she explained.
