BC Living
How to Support BC Wineries Now
Embark on Culinary Adventures: 5 Must-Try Solo Dining Experiences Around BC
You Gotta Try this in April 2024
4 Tips on Balancing a Nutritious Diet with a Side of Indulgence
Choosing Connection: A BC Family Day Pledge to Prioritize Presence Over Plans
Embracing Plant-Based Living this Veganuary and Beyond
Inviting the Steller’s Jay to Your Garden
6 Budget-friendly Holiday Decor Pieces
Dream Home: $8 Million for a Modern Surprise
7 BC Retreats Where Solo Travellers Can Find Inner Peace and Wellness
Protected: Spring into Fun in Kamloops: The Best Events in the City
Travel Light, Travel Right: Minimalist Packing Tips for Solo Explorers
Melodies and Museums: Solo-Friendly Entertainment for the Independent Traveller
Arts Club Theatre Company Celebrates 60 Years
Films and TV Series that Inspire Solo Travel
8 Gadgets and Gear for Your Solo Adventures
A Solo Traveller’s Guide to Souvenir Hunting in BC
Sḵwálwen Botanicals – Changing the Face of Skincare
The jaw-dropping reality of Vancouver's food waste, BC's sinful child poverty rates and the local organization connecting hungry mouths with a meal.
It is jaw dropping to realize how much high quality food is produced locally (or even imported) and then simply thrown into the garbage. I’m not talking about leftovers scraped into the bin or even fruits and vegetables discarded for a minor blemish in high-end markets; I’m talking about entire pallets of perfectly good food.
Sometimes a marketing company will order a run of peanut butter jars with several different labels just to see what a wall of them will look like. Then they chuck them out. If a forklift crashes a pallet of soup cans, it is normal to toss the whole pallet rather than pay someone to go through the pile to determine which cans are still saleable. A produce shipper will ditch crates and crates of rapidly ripening fruit if demand has been met for the moment. There are all sorts of reasons that you have never thought of for throwing away warehouses worth of food each week.
The Quest Food Exchange is a not-for-profit organization that has devised a food recovery and redistribution model that makes this food available to low-income individuals and families in the Lower Mainland. More than that, it provides assistance in meal planning, budgeting and job skills development. Quest also has a community kitchen that prepares ready-to-eat meals for individuals and social service agencies to purchase for their clients.
Check out the Quest Food Exchange website for ways to make a donation or volunteer your time.
I spent a couple days photographing staff, volunteers and clients for their website redesign. These are just a few of the faces of the Quest Food Exchange:
Photos by Trevor Jansen
Trevor Jansen is a photographer based in Vancouver, shooting everything from international print assignments to local weddings. He explores the Vancouver experience through his series of photo essays with the assumption that imaginary boundaries can and should be crossed. People aren’t as unapproachable as they seem and more often than not, they will smile for the camera. Website