MISSION Leftovers rescues and redirects good food from becoming waste by connecting, empowering, and mobilizing communities through logistics, collaboration, and leadership.

VISION Communities where all food reaches its potential and none is wasted.

OBJECTIVES

To protect our people and planet by keeping good food out of landfills and moving to the people who need it most. Through community and vendors, our objective is to dramatically reduce the amount of food waste, the associated GHG’s and the costs of managing food waste for local governments, while also providing agencies with food they can use.

GOALS

1. Keep good food out of landfills.
2. Educate and create awareness about food waste.
3. Effect change in policy and regulatory framework at the farming, transportation, and food retail levels.

HOW IT WORKS

Since 2012, we’ve been working to make sure that good food doesn’t get wasted. We connect food donors with service agencies through the efforts of our amazing volunteers across Alberta and Manitoba.

Our Rescue Food program operates in Calgary, Edmonton, Winnipeg, Airdrie, Red Deer, Lethbridge, and Selkirk, mobilizing volunteers to pick up and deliver surplus good food from local vendors to service agencies offering food access programming to community members in need.

In Calgary and Winnipeg, we also do large-scale warehouse-based distribution, with volunteers helping us to break down and re-package large donations of produce and other good food to distribute to service agencies.

Our Home Harvest program, operating in Calgary, Edmonton, and Winnipeg from June to October, supports community members with backyard gardens and fruit trees to donate their excess fresh produce to support local food access programs. 

FOOD RESCUED 

Leftovers rescues an average of 9 tonnes of food per week.

Every $1.00 that is invested in Leftovers saves our service agency partners $6.70 in food costs to support Albertans and Manitobans facing crisis and chronic hunger.

The need

Fighting Food Waste

There’s no other way to put it - we have a food waste problem. Millions of pounds (worth $49.5 BILLION dollars) of perfectly edible food ends up in Canadian landfills each year. Not only does this food loss and waste have an enormous economic cost to businesses and society, it also has a significant impact on the environment. We connect perfectly good, healthy, unsold food to service agencies that help those in need.

Fighting Inequitable Food Access

Despite the abundance of food in Canada, not all Canadians have access to healthy and affordable food. More than 1 in 4 Albertans and Manitobans experience food insecurity, meaning that they cannot obtain enough food to lead an active, healthy life. Limited food access has been found to disproportionately affect low-income individuals who are more likely to live in communities with limited availability of healthy foods, specifically fresh fruits and vegetables. These types of underserved communities, often referred to as “food deserts”, tend to have few food retailers who sell healthful and affordable food products and more food retailers who sell less healthful foods. 

Low-income individuals living in communities with limited healthful food access tend to have less healthful diets and run a higher risk for chronic disease, such as various cancers, cardiovascular disease, and Type 2 diabetes, compared to individuals living in higher income communities.

Fighting Climate Change

From 2010 to 2016, food waste accounted for 8 to 10% of human caused greenhouse gas emissions. According to a recent study, food loss and waste represents 60% of the entire food industry’s environmental footprint. In addition, food that ends up in landfill creates methane gas which is 25 times more damaging to the environment than carbon dioxide.

The need to tackle food loss and waste is an urgent priority that must be addressed by all levels of government, industry and individuals. If any progress is going to be made, we need society to rethink how excess food is viewed. We need behavioural change from consumers and industry. By redirecting food to be consumed rather than wasted, Leftovers has already significantly reduced the amount of methane gas produced in Alberta and Manitoba. In 2023 alone, Leftovers diverted 660 tonnes of CO2 from the atmosphere.