Even the most environmentally-minded people can struggle to find ways to avoid trashing unwanted — but still edible — food.
Now, a born-in-Metro Vancouver program introduced three years ago to help reduce food waste has gone national in an ongoing effort to ease our collective conscience.
The Love Food Hate Waste Canada movement launched Wednesday in Toronto and Montreal.
The goal of the program is to help reduce the 2.2-million tonnes of food that is thrown out every year in Canada, according to Richmond Mayor and Chair of the National Zero Waste Council Malcolm Brodie.
“The statistics are both sobering and compelling,” Brodie said at a news conference on Wednesday.
“When you consider that one-third of all the food that is produced globally is wasted, and that’s according to the World Resources Institute, it’s easy to see that food waste is an urgent global issue that demands immediate attention,” he added.
He said 37 per cent of the food waste in Canada happens at home and suggests most is avoidable.
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“For the average Canadian, that amounts to 140 kg of food waste each year; that is the equivalent of taking one car off the road each year,” he added.
It’s not only expensive, costing $17 billion overall, but it comes at a huge cost to the environment.
To further put the stats into perspective, Brodie said one in four bags of groceries we buy are never eaten and thrown away.
“Canadians are unbelievably wasteful with food. We are among the worst of any developed nation in the world, and most likely, we don’t even realize how much food we are throwing away. It’s really quite shocking.”
The problem? We buy too much, we don’t store what we get well enough, and we throw out food that’s still edible.
Some tips include storing food properly so it stays fresh longer, making a habit of using up more of what you buy, and planning so you buy only what you need.
Click here for more tips on how to reduce waste from the National Zero Waste Council.
– With files from Linda Aylesworth
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