Imagine walking into a store, picking out all your groceries for the week and not having to worry about facing an expensive bill at the checkout.
For clients of the Regina Food Bank, that will soon be a reality.
Since the pandemic, there has been a spike in food bank users across the country, up 25 per cent in Regina alone. One in eight families — and one in four children — are now food insecure in the city. Of the 16,000 monthly clients, 44 per cent are kids.
The new Regina Food Bank Community Food Hub, modelled after a traditional grocery store, is set to open this summer in the former government liquor store location downtown.
Headline is misleading. This is a food bank that allows their clients to choose their own products and sets the product out like a grocery store.
Typically food banks will give clients a standard box of items but not everyone uses all of it. Allowing clients to pick their own items reduces waste and setting it up like a grocery store just makes sense.
Clients still need to register with the food bank and are restricted to $200 worth of items every two weeks.
Sorry but this model of foodbank was roughly over 70% the norm in most places prior to covid because it cuts down on wasted food (i.e. the hamper box system distributes a lot of food people either don’t, or won’t eat). Post-covid most banks had to go back to the hamper model to limit exposure to the sorting and storage areas.
I’ve both volunteered and worked at, as well as drawn from, several food banks. Idk if sask is just decades behind or what’s going on with this article but, no.
Sask is, in fact, quite far behind.
I wonder if letting people pick their own items really reduces waste more than the hamper system? What happens to items left on the shelf that no one takes? That’s probably the same stuff that would be ignored from a hamper? I’m admittedly pretty ignorant of food banks generally, but I would think that the hamper system would be trying to encourage people to eat whatever they get, to both reduce waste by making sure all items get out there from the bank, and to ensure there’s enough of everything coming in to go around evenly? I can see this maybe resulting in the better items going first, and a bunch of less desirable items always being left behind to rot. Does that tend to happen in this type of system or not?
Here’s the thing conservatives generally can’t get through their thick skulls… if you respect most people they’ll respect you and take a modest amount - those folks that will hoard are generally not worth policing more than the minimum amount… it’s cheaper to just account for their greed than hire security personnel.
I don’t give a damn if some people are taking advantage. I’d rather a small proportion of people exploit the system than folks who need it be denied.
Any unwanted item forced upon a family will go uneaten and become 100% waste. An item that most people don’t want that sits on the shelf at least stands a chance of being taken by someone who will eat it.
Food banks regularly communicate their needs to donors so that the most commonly needed staples will have abundant stock. In the hamper model where you’re just forcing people to take stuff then you don’t actually know what’s being used, what’s most commonly needed, and what you can mostly ignore.
I can answer this. The stuff that nobody takes off the shelf eventually gets thrown out too. But if you put brown rice and rice pasta in a hamper for someone that won’t eat them, and white bread and white pasta in someone’s hamper that won’t eat them, 100% of those staples go to waste.
This is anecdotal so take it or leave it but some of the best dumpster diving I’ve ever done was behind food banks in some regions because things like quinoa and apple cider vinegar and brown rice pasta are the last to go while white bread and Kraft dinner and instant rice are hot sellers.
I’m happy to stock up on the stuff other people find too weird to eat. If those things end up in hampers they get chucked anyhow. Letting people choose is a far more efficient system.
Lots of banks for instance will give you more veggie options if you don’t eat meat. Or more eggs if you don’t want meat. Or more frozen foods if you don’t want canned or instant meals. Etc etc.
The hamper system tries to shoot the middle. Nobody “eats what they get” if they literally can’t stomach the stuff “they get” and frankly expecting poor people to choke down calories that someone else picks out for them and expecting them to be grateful for it is kinda a sick way to look at it. Beggars can’t be choosers and all this… In a culture that throws away roughly fifty percent of the food grown and processed on this continent in the name of profit? Idk. Why not let people take what they’ll use and leave the rest?
If you actually understand how much food goes into the landfill vs what gets diverted to food banks the entire concept of food scarcity falls apart anyhow.
Besides what’s already been said, even if there is food waste from things left on the shelves, at least this allows us to know that certain items are undesirable for everyone and to avoid acquiring more of them. If you hand out a bit to everyone and they all end up in different trash bins, you’ll never know about it and you’ll never fix the problem.
How about we just feed everyone for free instead? This is 100% possible right now in Canada. Canadian Food waste alone could feed every single person in Canada for 5 months. About 4.82 million tonnes.
Gross right?
Next in line add Water, Shelter, Education, and Medical. Fully covered for every Canadian citizen and no exceptions.
Again this is 100% possible tomorrow without changing anything other than where tax money ends up and I am done pretending like all of the scraps Canadians are given for our money are worth what our “Leaders” get in their own pockets.
