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Wasted Opportunity

Featuring ground-breaking research into Canada’s food system, Wasted Opportunity explores what foods end up in landfills and why so much of this surplus edible food is not being rescued.

3.2

M

metric tonnes of surplus edible food produced by Canada’s food industry each year.

96

%

surplus edible food is NOT rescued nor redistributed for human consumption.

127,177

businesses are potential donors of surplus edible food within Canada’s food industry

PUBLISHED

April 12, 2022

Only 4% of surplus edible food is rescued and redistributed.

Wasted Opportunity (2022) is our third report in a series that began with The Avoidable Crisis of Food Waste (2019), a roadmap showing how almost 9 million metric tonnes of food is lost or wasted by the industry each year.

Our second report, Canada’s Invisible Food Network (2021), quantified the network of more than 61,000 charities and community groups across Canada that distribute food to people in need.

In our third report Wasted Opportunity, we take a deeper dive into the food loss and waste in the food industry specifically. We look at types of surplus edible food, where it comes from and we provide solutions.

These unprecedented findings are the result of a year-long research project undertaken by Second Harvest and Value Chain Management International, a leading public and industry voice in food waste.

More Research

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