SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
In the Food Rescue production kitchen, Mona Durkee puts the heads of the city's three largest grocery stores to work prepping apples and tomatoes for sauce and puree, and sorting eggs to be washed and re-packaged.

Mona Durkee, with Food Rescue, and Glenn Meek, owner of Glenn's Independent pour out freshly blended tomato puree to be frozen and distributed by Food Rescue. Trevor Bayer watches on while peeling apples to be made into apple sauce. - Elaine Anselmi/NNSL photo

Holding up one of several dozen cartons of eggs from his own store, Co-op general manager Justin Nelson said that at the end of the day, it's good to see the food that can't be sold isn't going to waste.

"That stuff would have gone to the landfill and become methane gas but instead it's going to people," Durkee said. "When you have a family and you have low income, you have needs."

Earlier this year, Food Rescue celebrated a milestone in the food it diverted from waste to the mouths of people who need it. Since the organization was established 2008 in Yellowknife, Food Rescue counted two million pounds (or 907,185 kilograms) salvaged in February, including produce, dairy, meat, bread, canned and dry goods from three main donors: Glen's Independent Grocer, Trevor's Independent Grocer and the Yellowknife Co-op.

Food items past their best before date, have damaged packaging or produce that has begun to turn are pulled from the shelves and packed up by staff at the grocers for Food Rescue. Though Glen Meek, owner of Glen's Independent, will mark down prices of goods nearing their best before date, anything past that can no longer be sold. For the good of the community, he said he's happy to be working with an organization that can make use of these items.

The food is well-accounted for by Food Rescue volunteers - both in what it receives from the stores and the amount that is sent out to its clients including the Centre for Northern Families, the Salvation Army, the Food Bank and others.

"It's a system," said Durkee, describing the process of receiving, weighing, sorting, cleaning and processing every item that comes in - sending anything that can't be salvaged into the compost.

"We treat it as we would in our own homes."

In the stores, Trevor's Independent owner Trevor Bayer said the company accounts for "shrink" - the dollar figure of the inventory in the store that cannot be sold.

Seeing much of it laid out before them, Nelson said food waste can come from a number of factors, such as the seasonal popularity of certain items that later drops off or goods shipped up from the warehouse that are already beyond their best before and expiry dates by the time they arrive.

"Some people forget it's an 18-hour trip up," Bayer adds in. Between the three stores, food products are sourced from warehouses in Edmonton, Calgary and Vancouver.

About 700 kilograms of food comes through Food Rescue's kitchen five days a week on a rotation - starting with the Co-op in the morning, followed by Trevor's Independent and then Glen's Independent. Each week, that accounts for approximately 35,000 kilograms of food.

"When I moved to Yellowknife three years ago, it was nice to see that this was here because so much does go to waste and you feel terrible throwing out one-day-old bread," said Bayer.

The program also benefits the grocers in a way, said Nelson, alleviating the cost of disposing of all of the food taken off the shelves.

"You're not paying the tipping fee at the dump," he said. "But also, there is a lot of waste in all retail, not just food, and it's nice to see that go to someone."

The food is brought in by Food Rescue's delivery driver - the organization's only paid employee, who works on a part-time basis. Three to four volunteers work in the kitchen at a time, getting the food ready to be brought out later that day to clients.

In total, the organization has 30 volunteers and relies on the generosity of businesses including the grocers, wholesalers, camps, and individuals that donate supplies and food items.

"You can't do something like this without it being a collaborative effort," said Durkee.

"It's a milestone and it's something amazing that Yellowknife does that a lot of other cities don't."

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