This project, in partnership with Anthesis and Enviro-Stewards, successfully prevents food Loss and waste of approximately 3,109,433 kg per year. However, the lack of manpower and covid-19 created challenges for this project to reduce waste. The food redistribution project directly saved 100,295 kg of surplus edible food and prevented this material from being wasted. In Canada, every year 58% of food produced for citizens is lost, of which 47% comes from the processing and production stage of products. When this wasted food ends up in landfills, it produces 56.5 million tons of CO2e, which has a significant impact on climate change. While good, healthy food is going to waste, nearly 1 in 6 Canadian families are food insecure and have trouble accessing food.

About the Second Harvest

Second Harvest is Canada's largest food rescue and waste prevention organization and a global thought leader in the redistribution of perishable food. As the world confronts hunger and protects the environment, tackles food waste, through food redistribution, research, awareness, and education, this project continually innovates and collaborates to ensure a more sustainable planet. By using new technologies, this project prevents the wastage of edible food and reduces it as much as possible, thus preventing the entry of greenhouse gases into the environment. This model ensures that healthy leftover food is sent to thousands of charities and non-profits across the country, providing food to millions of Canadian families experiencing food insecurity.

Some quotes about the second harvest

"It's been an incredibly rewarding process to work with these companies in preventing food loss and waste. As a food rescue organization, we are laser-focused on ensuring no good food goes to waste, but prevention at source remains the most important tool to manage the global food and environmental crises we're facing," Lori Nikkel, CEO of Second Harvest said. "The work from this project has redirected a significant amount of food to non-profits and community food programs and represents exactly the kind of industry-wide collaboration on measurement, management, and prevention that is needed." "Second Harvest has helped identify sustainable solutions that have the potential to advance food loss and waste practices across the food industry," said Naomi Gunnell, director of Walmart.org's Healthier Food for All initiative. "We're excited about how this work demonstrates that philanthropy can catalyze cross-sector innovation to realize positive social, environmental, and economic sustainability." "It was one thing to identify and bring awareness of the food loss and waste problem to companies and the industry in Phase 1," said Cher Mereweather, Agri-Food Sector Lead at Anthesis North America. "To have the opportunity to go back and demonstrate the actual impact and support the companies with goal-setting and change management in Phase 2 was powerful." Conclusion Second harvest can have a positive effect on controlling hunger and food insecurity throughout Canada, and in addition, it plays a role in reducing food loss and waste, and as a result, it can reduce many environmental pollutions.