Consumer-level food waste is a pressing issue. An average Canadian household can generate up to 79 kilograms of food waste per year.
ON THE
FRINGE
TASTE WASTE
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Of the 13 million tonnes of food that Canada throws out each year, most is generated at the consumer level. Some folks are finding creative ways to make a difference. b y G A B R I E L L E R O S S I G N O L
PHOTO: ULIAB/ADOBE STOCK
Joel Derksen was in his third
year at the University of Waterloo the first time he hopped into a dumpster to shop for his weekly groceries. “For the stretch of a good year or two, over half of the food I ate was out of dumpsters,” says Derksen. “The amounts would vary from time to time. Some weeks we would have to buy our groceries, and others we would have more of a bounty.” Shocking? Derksen doesn’t think so. He’s since retired as a dumpster diver, but he looks back fondly on his university years, where he decided to source a large portion of his food from grocery store dumpsters. It saved him money on groceries—but just as importantly, he was concerned about the amount of waste he MAY 2022 unspoken
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