INVUIK - The Christmas season is a crucial time of need for those who use Inuvik's food bank to help feed their families, but this year what the food bank needs most is empty bottles.

Inuvik's bottle depot has teamed with the food bank to offer a weekly recyclables pickup, with the deposit refunds going towards stocking the food bank's shelves.

Inuvik residents can now donate to the food bank by leaving recyclables outside their homes for pickup every Tuesday. Jesse Harder, manager of Inuvik Bottle Depot, left, and Bob Mumford, co-chair of the Inuvik Food Bank board of directors, hope to bring in enough donations to develop nutrition programs at the food bank. - Katie May/NNSL photo

Bob Mumford, co-chair of the food bank's board of directors, said he hopes they'll collect enough donations to start developing nutrition programs for food bank patrons.

"There are a lot of generous people in Inuvik who donate to the food bank - cash - constantly. But here's a way for people to donate without even reaching in their pocket," he said.

"There's obviously a certain amount of money basically being thrown into that dump every year so it's not going to cost anybody anything ... There's something nice about it - recycling what would have been garbage into food."

Jesse Harder and his staff at the bottle depot began the pickup service Dec. 1 and plan to continue it every Tuesday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.

"I would love to be able just to have a routine where I just go through the town and I see people putting out their recyclables," Harder said.

Residents who want to donate their recyclables should put them in a clear plastic bag on their front steps on Tuesday and phone the bottle depot to give their address.

"I hear that excuse - people say, 'oh I don't have any way to get it down there so I just throw it out,'" said Harder.

"Really there's no excuse for people to not donate. I mean, if people don't want to come down there and actually recycle (the bottles) themselves, then donate them."

The food bank, which has an annual budget of about $30,000, raised $500 the last time it held a daylong bottle drive. If it could collect $500 every week with this new pickup service, Mumford said the food bank would be able to branch out and offer a wider variety of services to Inuvik residents.

"We may be able to implement some programming that we've been thinking about, like nutrition and offering meat and things that we've never really offered," he said.

Julie Thrasher, a food bank volunteer who also sits on the board of directors, said more Inuvik residents visit the food bank during the holiday season.

"We have a lot of people who rely on the food bank just to get through the holiday season because there's a time-frame in between Christmas and New Year's where they have pretty low resources," she said. "Which one is going to take the top of the list when you need to know where to spend your money? Do you need to feed your children or can you afford to get them gifts? They have to choose and we don't want that to happen."

As a food bank volunteer Thrasher said one evening she saw upwards of 56 people picking up staples at the food bank - from pasta and spaghetti sauce to Jello.

"The food bank plays a real big role in the community, said Thrasher. "It might not seem like it from an outside view but for those people who rely on it, it makes a big deal in their family."

Thrasher knows - she was one of those people. As a single mother attending school, she lived on a tight budget and depended on the food bank to feed her family.

"Any little dollar that we can save a family, it goes toward feeding their children," she said.