“Unfortunate to see food go to waste”: Pile of oranges dumped in North Vancouver
Mountains of oranges seen dumped at the North Shore Recycling and Waste Centre have stirred conversations about food waste in Metro Vancouver.
General Manager of Solid Waste Services at Metro Vancouver Paul Henderson released a statement regarding the waste of the fruits.
“Metro Vancouver is aware of unusually large quantities of fruit being dropped off as source-separated organic waste at the North Shore Recycling and Waste Centre. While it’s unfortunate to see food go to waste, there are no rules against accepting edible items,” the statement reads.
Sonia Rivest tells Daily Hive, she’s visited the centre for years but has “Never seen something like this.”
She said she first noticed the “striking pile” of oranges in mid-fall and has since seen about eight piles accumulate over the past few months.
After seeing the pile build up at the waste centre, Rivest said she spoke to an employee who suggested the oranges may have been ripening too quickly and this produce was not “trending” or “they weren’t fashionable to eat because they’re Christmas mandarins and not November Mandarin.”
Daily Hive has reached out to the distributor of the fruits for more information but did not hear back in time for publishing.
Submitted to Daily Hive by Sonia MJ Rivest
During one of her visits, Rivest had witnessed four gardeners unloading their truck of oranges to ask what was wrong with the product. She said one gardener responded saying they didn’t know but were paid to dispose of the items.
Rivest said when she went through the pile, she noticed some were a little bit softer, “like you’d find in a pile in a grocery store.”
“We started just opening them and eating them, and they were fine,” she added.
Many people online condemned the waste. One user noted how many people struggling with food security in Metro Vancouver would happily eat the oranges.
Very sad & wrong. So many struggling people who would love to eat these oranges & all foods that are thrown away. We have to develop a system so this food will not end up in landfills.
— DebbieforMJ (@ChelseaBeach) December 12, 2023
Amid the outrage at the wasted fruits, Henderson went on in the statement to say that minimizing avoidable waste is a priority for Metro Vancouver moving forward.
“Diverting avoidable food waste is a priority for Metro Vancouver, and those efforts are supported through organizations such as Food Mesh and the Love Food Hate Waste campaign under the National Zero Waste Council,” the statement continued.
“Staff from the Solid Waste Services team are actively working on contacting the company responsible for the orange loads in hopes of connecting them with food recovery resources.”
The efforts to minimize food waste were echoed by Sheila Malcolmson, minister of social development and poverty reduction. In an email statement to Daily Hive, Malcolmson said that the government of BC has allocated additional funding to improving food security.
“We all want people to have access to nutritious, healthy food. That’s why we funded $14 million to community groups intercepting and redistributing fresh food, helping them build the warehouses and refrigeration they need to get healthy meals to people in need,” the statement reads.