connection between farming consuming local foods sustainability and the reduction of food waste thank you for listening my name is peter sinclair i am the executive director of loaves and fishes food bank and we run the very successful food for you feed recovery program here and i'm a food for you is a program where we partner with local grocery stores to access the perishable food that they are throwing out so we give them an opportunity to redirect food from the landfill to people in need and we found it to be hugely hugely successful when we started food for you in september of two thousand and twelve we have two grocery store partners then and we've since grown it to include five grocery store partners over the years partnered and got information on how to start it from the kamloops food bank they had run a very successful food recovery there and after seeing what they were doing we realized we needed to do a similar program here and imo so with their help and support we got the program going here and have just grown it over the years we've also become very active in helping other food banks start their own food recovery programs just sell one launch in parksville there's another third initiative beginning in port alberni campbell river is getting it going and i recently just received news that they're doing it in revelstoke too so we want to pass on the good work so to give you a sense of the amount of food that we're recovering in two thousand and twelve before we started food recovery we were handling about five hundred thousand dollars worth of food a year and that's a significant amount of food  two thousand and fifteen that figure grew to two point four million dollars worth of food so we have seen an increase of almost two million dollars over the last four years simply because of food recovery in two thousand and sixteen we're expecting to handle over three million dollars worth of food so one of the big things that often gets associated with food banks is scarcity and empty shelves and what we have found through doing food recovery there's actually an abundance of food in the community abundance of healthy food that we can offer to people so we've seen a huge huge increase our trucks are on the road seven days a week and every day we're picking up between two thousand and twelve thousand dollars worth of oh absolutely we had less food to distribute to the community before we did food recovery and we were entirely reliant upon donations from the public and you know while those donations are good over the year they do tend to drop in the summer so over the summer months we definitely had empty shelves and we're offering people less food than we would like to because of food recovery we have a consistent flow of food coming in and we do see fluctuations in terms of for id but there is always lots of food to make available to people because of food recovery so the systems to make food recovery work are actually quite simple you provide donation bins to local grocery stores and seven day a week pick up from them once you pick the  food up we bring it back to our warehouse where we have volunteers that sort that we sort in our warehouse five days a week and then on sunday afternoons we sort at different churches throughout the community so that we have food ready to go on monday morning so it's a simple program but it does get complex in terms of all the logistics of it keeping trucks on the road and ensuring trucks are properly maintained ensuring that you have the equipment to the hand of the food when we started the program we started out with for the dems and we now have almost eight hundred that we use to collect and distribute food some of those bins of products once you know we can get for nine dollars each but the actual collection thems we pay thirty two dollars each so we have a significant investment collection and distribution dems so we have to make sure that we make wise decisions on our infrastructure purchases while the simple program is simple in its idea it gets complex and the actual implementation and how you make it work day to day so what people think of the food bank they think of plants in need of food showing up at a food bank and getting a hamper food and loaves and fishes certainly does that but we also recognize that this huge infrastructure that we have been entrusted with from trucks to warehouse to crew or should have maximum possible benefit in the community so we also make that food that we collect available to any nonprofit or school and then and imo area and so we have over forty other nonprofits and schools that pick up food from us every month and this makes a significant difference in their budgets and two thousand and fifteen we've supplied four hundred thirty thousand dollars worth of food to these other agencies in two thousand and sixteen it looks like we're going to be close to seven hundred thousand dollars going to these other agencies it's not about scarcity it's about of pundits there is certainly enough food in and i'm out to feed everyone the challenge is making sure that we have the physical infrastructure in place and in the volunteers in place to actually you know sort of get that food  recovery has had a huge benefit for our community not only for the agencies that we serve and our clients but in specific situations that clients face there was one particular gentleman who was picking crying and he says no these are tears of joy he said i love cheese and look what i have here and he opened up his bag and he had brie in there and do some chatter he says i haven't had cheese in over ten years says i i'm going to go home and i'm going to enjoy this cheese and i'm going to feel like somebody and i just thought if that's not a reward for what will do i'm here to ensure th cheese doesn't end up in the dump and instead just make someone's day that they can enjoy good food step food that they love and and really feel that they're part of the community you know i find that deeply encouraging and i'm happy to be a part of it one of the challenges in our community is youth having access to food at school and so we partner with a number of community agencies that actually deliver food programs in the schools so we make food available to them because as tragic as it may sound there are kids who are pretty much their sole source of food our school meal programs so we want to make sure that those kids get some food over the weekend so we do operate those two school depots o thursday afternoons to make sure that they have some food but making sure kids have access to food is is certainly an important part of what we do the food should not be wasted we need to provide an opportunity and the infrastructure for food to not be wasted in most cases grocery stores want to do the right thing they don't want to throw it out but if there's not their appropriate infrastructure in place to handle it they can't make the right decision so our approach is to make sure that and  has the infrastructure in place to handle food waste and give retailers an option other than then throwing it out and so we've been successful at that we want to continue to be successful to ensure you know food isn't thrown out what happens to the food that you can't distribute so somewhere between five and ten percent of the food we lacked we can't distribute so it might be that it's damaged it might be that it has spoiled but for whatever reason five to ten percent we are not able to actually distribute to people so the vast majority of that we connect with local farmers to feed to chickens pigs go it's cowards and the idea is rather than us throwing it out we can repurpose it to local farmers and so farmers take away most of it now there is some that we are not able to give to farmers the majority of them not goes to the recycler composted harshman waste innovations gives us free waste disposal o so they are too organic spends here for us and we fill those up every week and then we do have a portion of the food that we actually have to pay to get rid of and we've had stuff say well what are we going to do when know someone asks why is the food bank truck at the dump you know throwing food out and i didn't just think we're transparent about it i mean the fact is there is going to be some waste you can't save all of the food and there's going to be costs associated with it and so the majority of the food that we actually have to pay to get rid of our meats that are so heavily spoiled it's just can't ask a volunteer staff member to separate the packaging from  you know the compostable product in there so we do dispose of some food at the dump but as i say the vast majority goes to local farmers and then we put it into the organic spam and then after the dumps so those are the three some ways that we dispose of what we can't use we would definitely like to expand our food recovery efforts as i mentioned we serve five five local grocery stores we would like to increase that to summer between seven and nine we think you know between seven and nine would give us as much food as we could handle and actually distribute to people in need and so we're hopeful that other local grocery stores will come onboard and raw actually planning over the next couple weeks to actually specifically be in approaching some of the grocery stores and saying hey we've got this program going on here in and imo would you like to participate and frankly i think it's a no brainer it's good for them they're going to save some money they're going to get great p r out of it and the community is going to be better for it or do you need to be able to do that in order to keep this program going and in order to keep it expanding we need money every single month we need forty thousand dollars  that's forty thousand dollars to pay truck maintenance fuel wages hydro bills the fact is we're collecting a huge amount of food but we need a significant amount of money tax we go get it out so there's two ways that people can help out they can volunteer we definitely need more volunteers and people can make a cash donation for every dollar in cash that we got our program is able to turn it into four dollars and thirty cents worth of food so it's a pretty good return on investment and certainly makes a difference in  street here and i'm listening you can hear in the background a lot of noise we're actually on top of the warehouse in peter's office and we're going to take a little tour now of the warehouse so you can visualize a little bit of what is done here in daily bas absolutely so one of the big things about food recovery is the food needs to be moved out as quickly as possible so we're actually just going to walk over to the loading bay doors here and we've got food that's just about to head out to one of our  depots this is all food that we collected this morning our volunteers absurd it and now it's getting out toward people that will be open at one o'clock today so we don't sit on the food for long we get it out as quickly as we can so what you can see here is we have a so when other agencies pick up food from us they need to actually weigh the food that they're taking away and record it and so we have a google form where the individual agencies can complete it and record the food that they're taking out so if you look here we just click on contributions to outside agencies and you see we have a list here of all the different agencies that pick up from us so everyone from community kitchen seven ten club salvation army  to vi you child development center john howard society i mean the list just goes on and on a number of schools but they need to record this as to who they're picking food up for and how much food they're taking so they can yes so we have a big pallet scale that can weigh up to five thousand pounds ago gives you a sense of just the sheer volume of food that we're working with that we need a pallet scale to operate it and actually i'm just noticing here they're unloading a pallet of food that we've just picked up from local grocery store so i'm seeing everything on it from pineapple and bananas to honey dew and broccoli and lots of open a couple  are crocked and they've made a bit of a mask on the other ones i don't know about you but i certainly won't buy this dozen eggs in the grocery store and so the grocery store needs to do something with it and so you know a lot of it just gets cosmetic stuff there's other i don't see the see over here yes we've got yogurt here that stated august nineteenth that's a best before date you show that to most people they'll think it's an expiry date like it is unsafe to consume that food beyond august nineteenth it's a as my mom used to say growing up it's best before not right now after she's absolutely right on that food banks canada has provided the guidelines for how far we can go beyond the best before date and still be safe for people to consume so on a dairy item like this we can go one week beyond so it's still safe to eat and you know we make sure that we get it out to people in a timely fashion i'll give you a tour of the warehouse we've got to  loading base here are five ton and three ton trucks can unload all the food they've collected we then have an area here in the middle of the warehouse where volunteers can sort all of the food so we have sorting stations set up we have the cycling collection bins available so for plastic bags and hard plastic we can get that sorted so it can be properly recycled and then we have a huge walk in cooler and this cooler is twenty eight feet long seventeen feet wide and fourteen feet high the amazing thing about this cooler is it's actually a recovered cooler regional recycling gave us the school when they purchased the facade richardson food group facility on old victoria road we looked at the cooler and we thought that's a perfect fit for us how to call interiors take it apart and put it back in here we got this cooler set up here for less than five thousand dollars and the quote on a new one like this was over thirty thousand  but it's a massive cooler we can drive the forklift into it it looks a little rough but it does the job and so i think it's pretty cool thing that a food recovery program uses a recovered crew or there was no commercial value in the school or but because of the volunteers we had we were able to get value out of it and get a cooler in here for relatively inexpensive that means you can keep the food here for longer absolutely so if you come in here so here in the cooler first area that you see on your right hand side is the area where other agencies can count shot so anything in this area here is available to them so you can see we've got everything here from potatoes and  is waste so anything in these grey rubbermaid bins is for local farmers so our farmers know they can come in here and anything integrate them is available for them to take we run a similar program with the farmers as we do with the other agencies  self serve they come in help themself to the food they would like they weigh it on the same scale and take the food away so here we are in the back of the warehouse this is the area where we handle all of the nonperishable food along with brad so this is food that has a bit of a shelf life on it doesn't need to be refrigerated and so as you can see we have quite a bit of it but looking up you see all of these pallets full of boxes they're not actually full of food that's in preparation for the thanksgiving food drive the local mormon church organizes the biggest food drive of the year for us and one day they collect and sort seventy thousand dollars worth of food so to make that happen we need to make sure we have boxes for it so we've been collecting these boxes over the last few months to make sure that we're ready for it and so one of the huge advantages of this warehouse is we're able to prepare for events like that in the past we had been you know storing boxes in closets and clubhouses and nooks and crannies around the food bank this is just a quick efficient way to do it so we're pretty excited that the food drive is coming up it's happening in september  so we're ready for it so if you look up on the rocks we've got a fair amount of nonperishable food in it most of this is actually come from cold star they have a warehouse facility just south of the airport and we go there every week and we pick up a full five ton load of food and the value of that food has ranged anywhere from five thousand dollars top herds of thirty thousand dollars in one go and pick up from them so what's been great about picking up  run a client choice system where people get to choose the food they receive so all of the food gets sorted into color coded categories and then our staff build pallets that have a certain number of each color coded category on it so when it goes to the  depot they'll be the right amount of green boxes the right amount of white boxes the right amount of red boxes all down the line the food is then put out and then as people come through depending on the number of people in their household they will get a certain number of choices from each one of the c coded boxes so when a person comes to pick up their food they will actually pick up a box when people come to pick up food from us they will get to pick from each one of the color coded categories so we don't actually assemble a hammer or hamper in the first place we just put the food out and then the clients actually choose the food that they would like it's had a huge advantage first and foremost it provides food and with dignity gives people choice to get food that they want and will actually eat and it's actually made things much more efficient for us because we don't have to deploy volunteer resources to actually make the hampers those volunteers who are making hampers we can redeploy them  abundance of food coming in and then the clients when they come through they essentially become a volunteer because they're assembling the hamper that is best for them so we found it a win all round not only for the cons but for us operation so if you come over here this is the section that we have for other agencies to shop from it's all nonperishable food here there isn't a huge amount of choice in here right now but you know we do have everything from flour and juice to syria all and i see some infant formula there's so much bread oh we get crazy amounts of bread we pick up from cobb's bakery at the north end of town seven days a week and from cob s terminal park four days a week and so we have an abundance of bread monday through friday we have volunteers that come in and slice that bread and bag it up and get it ready for people so again it's an example of people come into the food bank getting really high grade high quality products and so we're happy we're able to provide that thank you i'm sharon richmond and i'm sorting dry goods today so i am here from noon until three pm and to my job is just basically to try and make this flat of boxes go away how long have you been a volunteer here i actually started in january and i do here and i also help out at brechin church on tuesday so i do two different volunteer options for the loaves and fishes so i do the sorting here and at brechin what distribution so we get these boxes with different and we have people come and pick up what they need why did you decide to volunteer for the for that well i have been retired for fifteen years and i always have some volunteer options on the go and i'm coming off i finished with one board that i was on back last year and i'm coming off my other board in november so i decided i needed to have some other things to do and when i researched options i thought looked like a really good organization and so that i was going to give them some of my time so that's what i'm doing what has your experience been so far as a volunteer very positive wonderful people that i'm working with and for  and i see that there's a real need in this community to have this kind of option for people i've been amazed at the people that have come to the distribution center people are really conscientious about what they take and what their needs are and this is a wonderful community for donations i mean i'm really impressed with the merchants and what they offer to this organization nk you so much by well thank you and i'm all for your support i mean a lot of good things are happening here and it's because of the support we've got from the community and so i would encourage you if what you've heard  sounds interesting and you'd like to come for a tour by all means call me up and i'd love to show you around if you want to volunteer we'd love to have you volunteer and if you could possibly make financial donation would love that to garbage my name is travis barrington and i work at the and i'm recycling exchange as the environmental education coordinator and i host the changes show as well myself sometimes just to travis we're doing this podcast on food ways what are some of information you have around front ways to know i'm did a bit of research i found a couple really interesting things one being that this is a c b c article from two years ago there's estimate about thirty one billion dollars worth of food is wasted in canada every year and that includes the energy the water used to grow the food the labor the transportation and the estimate has also been thought to be low in a lot of cases and it could be much higher but the really interesting thing that that article had was that of that waste almost half of it is from personal waste after an individual has brought food home from the store or from a restaurant know it's and up in the garbage or hopefully the green been at the very least that really shocked me because i see a lot of initiatives happening right now the ugly produce movement which has a big campaign going with petitions and change out of work to get sort of less desirable looking produce in stores so it's not wasted and imperfect produce which i visited when i was in california who does the same thing taking food that would otherwise sit in a farmer's field because it's not a perfect shape or a perfect color it has a blemish or it has a you know an eggplant with a little growth on it and making food boxes out of those so they don't get wasted so those are great they're hoping waste at that level which is like the distribution in the institutional level of grocery stores and restaurants but there's a lot of the waste almost half is due to personal action from people or personal interaction i guess of people throwing away food in their own in their own homes so when you say almost half what are we talking about i believe the c b c article had it at if it was thirty one billion dollars of wasted food a year in canada it was fourteen point five or fourteen billion dollars worth of wasted food from individuals ending up in the garbage after it goes home you mention as an educator you talk about composting and as we know it's one of the ways that you can deal with your food waste at home what are other ways that residents can deal with their food waste well just like recycling and other materials that we talked about in zero waste there's a zero waste hierarchy of how to deal with materials reduce being at the top followed by reuse and recycling and then other ways with garbage or incineration being the least desirable there's also higher key for food waste in that same way and i like the other materials reduce is the number one so the number one thing with with managing personal food waste is reduce which is same with other materials just by what you're going to eat even if something on sale and there's you know two for one or whatever you know sometimes it's hard as a single person going shopping and seeing you know the bigger by is always cheaper but if you're not going to eat it it's not helping anybody and then after produce the next step in the food hierarchy is to feed other people so if it's food you have an excess to donate it and that might be more political at a institutional level but at a personal level if you can find it pay a neighbor or somebody or i know food chair does a lot of work in town with all the gleaning from the extra for treason and imo feeding it to another person isn't and the next and then after that feeding it to other animals and i know there's a few farmers  cedar and the surrounding area have programs with some some restaurants and i think one of the schools as well to donate the food was from their cafeteria to feed pigs and chickens and other livestock and then the next is to process it for compost or in some cities for biofuels which is is an option some cities are pursuing i don't there's a lot of debate over whether or not that's actually a great way to use up food resources but regardless composting and that kind of processing is the next on the list and then finally the last thing would be to landfill it or incinerate it so when food is goes to the landfill it  usually it'll break down in all rot bacteria will eat it and multiply and as happens with anything organic but because it's in a landfill and it's not given favorable conditions of oxygen and waster and warmth you get a lot of undesirable bacteria breaking it down and because they are trapped under a layer of other garbage these are anaerobic bacteria that multiply without oxygen and so because they cannot  this food or that oxygen they make methane gas as a byproduct instead of carbon dioxide gas and for those unaware methane is a greenhouse gas just like carbon dioxide except much more powerful at trapping  heat from the sun and from radiating back off the earth so we're all concerned about carbon emissions nowadays or at least we should be and in this case it's a lesser of two evils if we have a choice between methane or carbon dioxide being generated w will take the carbon dioxide over the methane so people are worried about driving they should be worried about their food waste think going to the garbage yeah well i hope they're worried about and they make and they make  effort to reduce both can you tell us a little bit about the green being program ok you have agreement program has been in and i'm all for six years now i believe maybe seven and the great thing about it is that it will accept everything organic so all the bread and meat and bones and dairy products that have gone moldy can go in it and it will get taken to a facility by dew point for processing and composting because it takes all those things the processors sometimes have a difficult time turning it into a very usable compost but they are experimenting with it and with a mix of other  actually yard waste materials to help bring up the plant content and make a better product out of it again people sometimes worry about pests getting into it or smell and one of the top tips is if you do have a lot of smelly foods to go in like meat or fish is to keep them in your freezer until the collection day which reply can in and i'm more lucky it happens every week so you shouldn't ever really have too much going in especially if you are changing some habits and reducing purchases there shouldn't be too much going into them the only unfortunate thing with the green program and imo is that it's only for the only guaranteed for single family residences multifamily buildings a few of them have adopted their own composing program and one in the beacon downtown we help to a study on last year to pilot a program for it but many other multifamily buildings don't have that yet but we're hoping that we will kind of go the way of metro vancouver and mandate that program for so tell us what was the result of the beacon program it was quite successful so this is actually going to affect these things and we addressed that and said well basically all the stuff that's going to go in the green bin is going in your garbage right now so these materials are already in the garbage room at your building and according to the building manager and everyone else there hasn't been a pest problem so far so putting them in and separate been having them picked up it was twice a week we settled on shouldn't result in any other problems and they really weren't so after a few concerns concerns residents bringing up that issue and some information sessions pretty much everybody there got on board with it they were provided with the same kitchen catcher bins that single family residence hav as well as composed of all bags to encourage them to adopt the program and it's been quite a success and terror hauling was was collecting the recycling and garbage in organics from them and they were providing us with data  on tonnage and i think we it was about a third of their they had about a third thirty three percent drop in in tonnage going to the landfill because of the greenman program over the six month pilot were we monitored it what's the percentage of food waste within garbage do you have that figure i don't know the exact figure but twenty nine or lets just say or thirty percent is pretty standard for municipal waste to be thirty percent organic that's a lot it is yeah so that's one of those things it's great to have a composting program to catch it but like i said earlier i didn't realize this all the food waste most most of it or half of it is from individuals so if we can just get that down to start to read the reductions is always more beneficial than collecting  next we'll be talking with jan cody who is the second of director of the local organization called food share we'll be learning a little bit about the connection between farming consuming local foods and the reduction of food two thousand so sixteen years has a charity in the community and our mission is to create through education and facilitation local community food the name food share says a lot what does the intention behind that food share originally where it came together with community gardens community kitchens and food and the food bank at the time and the idea of food share was to promote food water see in the community and increased access to food in the community as well how do you see the work that fruit share that us associated to food waste or prevention of food waste in and imo and ime of food share one of the things that we do to reduce food waste in the community is primarily is our green our greening program and the gleaning program works with the i'm a community gardens and we have a coordinator who then matches people who call in from the community who have access fruit from their fruit trees or excess harvest from their gardens and they match them with trained fallen tears who go out to the to the land request from the landowners and then they'll harvest the fruit often the share of the fruit is with the landowners with the gleaners the volunteers and also the fruit and the produce is distributed into the community and food share also benefits from some of those foods and utilizes the foods in our other programs literally tons of food was diverted from waste and so people who have fruit trees and are using that fruit then the volunteers use that fruit and then other people in the community also use the fruit and it also provides a service because it helps to keep those trees healthy because they're not getting weighed down too much by the fruit and the other thing that the gleaning program does and that future also does is contribute to reducing food waste because we're also doing food literacy programs in the community as well so we're teaching people about how to cook and also preserving and so when people have more of those skills then they have a better knowledge and understanding around to how to use foods that are vocally available usually non processed foods and there's a certain skill set that comes along with understanding how to use foods when they're in season to use a surplus of foods and then what types of things can you do you with the foods that are in a bind dense and canning is one of so types of skills that a lot of people their grandmothers or their mothers might have done it but they're not so much in the current generation and so we're working with families who are have an interest in learning those skills and we're teaching those skills in the community to help reduce food waste as well so  programs use some of the foods as well and so we have a number of cooking programs and and our summer lunch munch used a lot of those foods in our programs over the summer and they'll be used also going into the fall as well and some of those programs will be teaching kids about how to cook with local produce that's available in the fall season have the b c farmer's market and you should coupon program and as part of that program then we do education with the people who are attending that particular program at the time and then they learn about new foods that are locally available and then that helps them also to understand what's in abundance at that time and have recipes that allow them to use use the that are in abundance so for example we've just passed like the peak of cumbers and so there's q come all the many of the local producers have an abundance of q cumbers and we were able to have recipes at that at the market for cucumber soup which and tastes for the cucumber soupy people really enjoyed it a couple of the farmers came up to the market to our booth later and they were just like we sought out a cucumber so it was awesome and but what it did do was help people to understand that when there's abundance not only is it economically usually to your advantage to be purchasing foods that are in bun it's because the cost of those foods are less but you're also helping to make sure that those foods are being utilized in the community so in times of abundance then that the time to really like dig in and use those foods be creative around how you did using those foods in cooking and also in preserving so you're saying that eating local season prevents food waste but also saves you money exactly yeah so there you know often people talk about accessibility for local foods as  having barriers and i think when people are farming or if they're producing their own food then they have a better understanding that food comes in waves and cycles and being able to be flexible around what your diet is and enjoy the variation in your diet overseas since help helps people to reduce waste because i think that they make a better connection with what the ways that people or when they make a they make a better connection with their environment and have a better understanding about what the impact of their choices can be in supporting our local environment in being able to feed ourselves in some ways though the food waste happens when it's not part of a closed loop so you're producing food and then it's not being  so it needs to be discarded how do you see food share helping to close that loop in and imo the way that we close the loop in not producing food waste is b creating opportunities for people to access the abundance of food that's available in the community so where there is abundance than what food here does is helps connect people to the sources of that abundance and allows them to increase their access in the gleaning program then people meet at food share who might not have access to vehicles and they carpool and go out to the to the properties where the fruit trees are and they they come together as a community to help pick those trees and then to distribute that food between them and share it between themselves but also distributed in the community so there's a community approach to to being aware of where the abund is and then making that bridge between the abundance and the rest of the community and so it helps reduce sort of the perspective vice elation helps us to work together collectively you know to for us to be taking care of each other and taking care of our community and where the abundance happens to be so i think that food share connects people to abundance food share also connects people to the skills that allows them to use that abundance and so people who have skills in understanding about how to use whole foods in their cooking and in their preserving of those foods are able to extend the season that they're able to eat that abundance of food in because they're preserving this food and they're also able to in the season use that abundance of food because they have the skills to cook those foods into dishes and food that is culturally appropriate and that they really enjoy not everybody learns those skills at home any longer and so food shares working with kids and with families to help them to learn those skills so that they're able to use those foods it also to reduce waste because then they're not buying carrots  in a in and small pasta containers and then having to throw up those plastic containers and so when you're buying produce locally it means that we're reducing waste because there isn't the mount of packaging and the extra processing that goes into those foods which is wasteful for the foods and reduces the nutritional quality of those foods and reduces the quality of those foods overall so the very best quality really is the foods that are whole and  vocal and the best nutrition in the best the best health benefits from those foods really comes from foods that are local is there anything else you'd like  add well i think that the success of food share is really based on community support and we have we have been future has been so fortunate in having community supporters and volunteer throughout the entire year and i would say that just express gratitude to the people who have contributed so much to our organization and to our other community partners and encourage people who want to learn more about food share to contact us at two seven one pine street and we are always welcoming new people to become involved and learn more about food provide thank you so much thank you where stuff so the real question to ask ourselves is why is the society you are lead generating so much waste and the need jerk reaction is to blame the grocery stores why are they throwing out all this food they can't believe that they're so bad these big bad companies wasting all the food but i don't really think it's that i think it is because of the choices that each one of us make as consumers one of the ways that we encourage people to communicate with stores is not only with what they buy but comment cards you know anything from hey you know if you're not participating in moves and fishes food recovery program you really should  too i would like to see more local options or you know can we you know find better ways to source you know local meat products whatever it may be but you know grocery stores i assure you do read those and so if you're have a better connection with the seasons in how things change and your body becomes more in tune with and your skills become more in tune with that and then you're able to utilize the resources i think more effectively and reduce you know you can reduce our footprint on the earth by being more in tune with what what's happening in terms of local food production so what people can do as reduce and make sure their food lasts and you know this is the age of facebook and everything and it's sometimes we scared to give away food or or accept it but we should be able to do that with people  neighborhood and of the show for today i hope you learned a little bit more about food waste in and how you can decrease your own waste and start participating in a new culture of abundance