Fruit rescue crew seeks funds to teach rather than harvest
Operation Fruit Rescue Edmonton is raising money to allow it to shift from saving the fruit that falls to the ground across the city to teaching people what to do with that fruit once rescued.
The operation, created in 2009, is hoping to raise $1,600 through crowdfunding to buy apple presses, start workshops that teach people about preserving fruit through cider pressing, canning, and fermentation, and also build its roster of volunteers.
"We have some startup costs to getting workshops going," Nathan Binnema, the treasurer of Operation Food Rescue Edmonton, told Taproot. "The crowdfunding is just to kind of bridge that gap and keep us operational until our funding plan starts to come into effect."
The operation, which organizers call OFRE (pronounced "offer") for short, was created with the mission of rescuing "fruit that would otherwise go to waste in the city." Fruit rescues took place in backyards, at commercial growing operations, and beyond, with fruit harvested split evenly between volunteers, a rotating charity, and homeowners when applicable — plus a share for OFRE to use in demonstrations.
Binnema said work on the new teaching programs is underway. "Cider pressings have been a traditional event that we've done in the past, and that we will continue to do — maybe we'll do more of them," Binnema said. "There's never a shortage of apples. So that's that's usually not a problem."
The organization can shift without worry that fruit will go unharvested in Edmonton, as OFRE has delegated that since 2024 to the Leftovers Foundation, a food rescuer that operates in six cities in Alberta and in two in Manitoba. Leftovers has greater capacity than OFRE because it is a registered charity with volunteers as well as paid staff. The Leftovers homepage cites data from Second Harvest that said Canada wastes 3.2 million tonnes of food every year, and only 100,000 tonnes of that is rescued.
As of March 19, OFRE has raised $850 of its $1,600 crowdfunding goal. The funds will partly go towards purchasing apple presses for workshops and rentals, which would both become a source of revenue. As of now, there are no plans to sell preserved foods made at workshops. Binnema anticipates the volunteer-run organization will also make use of grants
There are other ways to rescue food that would otherwise go to waste in Edmonton, too. OddBunch, a Toronto-based delivery service for produce that grocers reject due to aesthetics, launched in Edmonton this month. Loblaw shoppers can find deep discounts on soon-to-expire and excess food using the Flashfood app, which Loblaw says has diverted 86 million pounds of food from the landfill since 2019. Waste Free Edmonton does not have an initiative specifically to rescue food, but it practices waste reduction in many ways, including with a lawn transformation campaign that promotes growing food instead of grass, among other things.
This story has been updated to correct the name of Nathan Binnema and to clarify what equipment Operation Fruit Rescue Edmonton intends to purchase.
