Photo courtesy of Christina Sturgeon.
Throughout 2024, the Echo Food Rescue continued to grow, and ramp up operations to keep food out of landfills.
This year, more than 288,000 lbs of food was rescued, an increase from 2023’s 115,000 lbs.
“To me, that's absolutely mind-blowing how much food was kept out of the landfills and distributed back into our community,” said Christina Sturgeon, Echo Food Rescue Manager.
The food rescue started as a way to do good in the community and the environment, where food from grocery stores, restaurants, and farms that is still edible but past the best-before date is distributed.
The initiative has supported Central Albertans who need support with their grocery bill, individuals concerned about the environmental impact of food waste, and farmers who want additional feed for their livestock.
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On average, between 100 and 250 Lacombe and area residents visit the food rescue on distribution days, taking a minimum of one bag of groceries.
This year, the food rescue worked with an independent grocer, taking everything that wasn’t regularly donated to other organizations, contributing to the food increase.
“We started off with just a couple of boxes a day and that's turned into huge loads, which was also turned into additional grocery stores through word of mouth,” Sturgeon said. “That’s really where the explosion has come from.”
Taking on the additional grocery stores wouldn’t have been possible without dedicated volunteers.
“The beautiful part about Echo is there are so many wonderful volunteers and they're always up for anything,” Sturgeon said.
Photo courtesy of Christina Sturgeon.
With the influx of food this year, came storage challenges.
At the beginning of the year, Sturgeon worked to add additional coolers to the rescue for food storage through the Farm Credit Canada Agri Spirit Grant.
“We were just growing enough that we were struggling to keep it all, so we were doing a lot of pop-ups, but that was getting difficult on the volunteers,” she said. “I was trying to make sure that the food got to the community in a timely manner, but I didn’t want to overwork my volunteers.”
With support from local businesses, the food rescue has replaced all of the fridges with double-door coolers, dry storage options, and a sink.
The food rescue also had to revamp the food distribution process this year, to help manage lineups and prevent long wait times in the cold weather.
“It broke my heart that people felt like they needed to line up hours ahead,” Sturgeon said. “The amount of food that we're rescuing is a drop in the ocean of the amount of food that is out there to be rescued, and if we need more, we’ll find more.”
Going into the new year, Sturgeon is working to expand the facility, and is hopeful to work with surrounding communities to implement food rescues.
“There's not a lot of places that are just giving it back to the community with no questions asked,” she said. “We consider everyone who picks food up a partner to us, because if we don't have people picking the food up then we have no reason to be doing what we're doing.”
The food rescue is always open to accepting more volunteers.
“We built a great community of volunteers, it’s very flexible, and they always get to take food home,” Sturgeon said. “You can never have a bad day giving people food.”
To sign up to volunteer, visit the Food Rescue Facebook page, or website.
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