Do you ever stop to think about how much food you waste on a daily basis? How about how much food everyone else wastes? Americans alone waste a grand total of 150,000 tons of food or more every single day. This doesn’t just count the food people don’t consume on their plate but also the food that goes bad in their refrigerator or pantry. Believe me, it’s a lot of waste!
44-year-old Tony Colley has aspired towards helping reduce the amount of food waste, all while helping the needy get access to food. So, he developed a food rescue program in the greater Toronto area last May that’s similar to the Uber app. It’s called Be One To Give (B12Give).
How it works is, retail partners who pay a monthly fee simply notify Colley whenever they have extra food available for him to pick-up. Once Colley picks it up, he takes it to a local shelter in need such as Dixon Hall and Margaret’s.
“You have clients who are hungry a lot. Once we have a food rescue here like Tony, it makes a huge difference,” Colley said.
The program all began when Colley was working as a part-time event manager for a catering company. Working there, he realized how much excess food goes to waste. It’d be completely thrown in the trash if there was too much food available, even if it was still very much safe to consume.
“In my head, I’m thinking, ‘We can’t throw this in the garbage because there are other people who could eat this food.'”
That’s when he developed his own initiative.
According to him, his program is nothing like anything else in Canada to date. He calls B12Give “Canada’s 1st barrier-free food diversion program.”
“We are the only one that operates similar to an Uber Eats style of platform, where we pick up, and everything we collect over the course of an hour is dropped off.”
Not only does Colley have a big heart towards helping provide others with fresh food, but he personally knows how it feels to be forced to go hungry.
“I would have my first meal around three o’clock in the afternoon. I would get up in the morning and go to the gym so I wouldn’t have to think about eating,” said Colley. “I just kept up with appearances by keeping a roof over my head.”
Colley went from a failed business owner with just $278 in his bank account, living on welfare, and never having enough food to eat to now making sure that the less fortunate are able to get their hands on nutritious food.
So far, Colley has delivered 8,500 meals (11,000 pounds of food) and counting. That’s amazing! Without his help, this food would otherwise have been tossed in the trash.
It would be great to see more people come up with similar ideas for reducing food waste. Hear more about what Colley does below.
