By Charles Lefebvre

Save-on-Foods working to eliminate food waste

Jun 14, 2019 | 3:53 PM

MEDICINE HAT, AB — A local grocery store is committed to ensuring there is no wasted food in their store.

Save-on-Foods has implemented a goal of reducing food waste to zero in all of its stores, including the most recently opened store in Medicine Hat.

“There’s all sorts of really great reasons to be doing that type of thing, and we’re happy to be a really progressive company,” said Jeff Woods, manager of the Save-on-Foods store in Medicine Hat.

Woods says there is a hierarchy for donations of food waste.

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“We try to take care of the food bank first and foremost, so we filter anything possible that can go to the food bank there,” he said. “Then, from there, we have local area farmers that go to the food bank with whatever they can’t use, and they also come here to pick up what may not be able to go to food banks, and that becomes animal consumption. And then, it works its way down to what would be compost.”

Celina Symmonds, the executive director of the Medicine Hat and District Food Bank, confirms they have received food waste donations from Save-on-Foods, saying they appreciate the support.

Woods says the company is proud to be able to give food a new life and help others.

“We’re trying to be a very, very responsible company,” he said. “We want to take care of people, we want to take care of everybody that we could and divert any food wastage that is going to the landfill.”

Save-on-Foods implemented the goal earlier in 2019, and recently announced more than half of all of its stores have diverted 100 per cent of food waste from landfills. The company partners FoodMesh and Loop Resource to complete the initiative.

NOTE: Save-on-Foods is owned by the Jim Pattison Group, which also owns CHAT Television and CHAT News Today.