HOW IT WORKS
We provide simple systems with safe liability structures that enable food wholesalers, retailers, and producers to divert one hundred percent of their unsaleable food away from landfill, and towards those in their community who can use it best.
For stores, it means diverting unsaleable food away from the landfill while reducing staff time and saving disposal costs.
For charities, it means access to food for their programs without overwhelming their resources.
For farmers, it means food that can be used as feed for their animals, as bio-energy, or as compost.
For all of us, we believe it's a simple, sustainable way to do the right thing for the environment while helping strengthen our communities.
FOR CHARITIES
Loop is committed to using the surplus food received from our partner stores to do as much good as we can. To that end we provide access on top of our system to charities and outreach organizations. Although some brands require that we do not allow human consumption, Save On Foods does allow donations of the goods we receive. If there is a Save On Foods in your area, and the Loop program is running, there are a number of options for expanding your food diversion and community support work. In working with charity organizations, we want to allow maximum access without undue obligation.
Loop currently works with over 60 locations in Western Canada. Our role is to backstop surplus food diversion and ensure that there are positive homes for everything without involving the landfill.
Historically it has often been complicated to connect social programs to the large volumes of food that Loop now has access to, as the organizations and their requirements differ from region to region.
In many regions we have been asked to act as the liaison from the stores to the local food banks, churches, and outreaches. In that capacity, we take any items which can be used for human consumption and allow the charity to make their assessment of those goods. If they are suitable, they are received into the charity organization and its food handling system, and from there into the hands of the outreach workers. For the outreach organization, we can often in turn provide waste disposal of unused food items, reducing the overhead of a typical non-profit organization. We liaise with any existing system of community outreach to ensure the maximum community benefit is realized from the waste resource.
Sometimes mistakes happen during delivery or warehousing, and our system is flexible and adaptable enough to absorb rejected shipments. This offers substantial labour and disposal savings.
We work closely with the corporate food safety teams in each region we start, to ensure that all food-safety concerns and requirements are effectively met and dealt with. We start at minimum with the industry standard food safe procedures, and tailor our training to each specific store.
What was once a waste product, with negative connotations and environmental impact, is now a net positive for business, the community, local food production, and the environment.
FOR FARMERS
Our ideal farm is diverse enough to be able to utilize 100% of the product they receive. Biodiversity on farms enables every feed source to be utilized optimally, and returned as healthy food for people in the community. We select our partner farms carefully, and prefer family farms engaged in mixed, holistic farming. We work with farms and stores of varying sizes, and our selection criteria match stores with farms by size and diversity.
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“When you support at risk families, and small farms; you invest in the heart of your community. Benefits large and small ripple outwards from the growth of dynamic, vibrant, and sustainable communities, while securing ethical food production close to home.”
Almost all grocery store surplus can be utilized as animal feed. Through the Loop program, goats, sheep, llamas, pigs, chickens, ducks, cows, buffalo, dogs, cats, horses, and more are all treated to living, fresh, real food. Farmers routinely find that their animals’ condition improves with the additional feed.
With food retailers working together with nearby farms, they support the local community and help close the loop on local food production.
Farmers are responsible for feed decisions for their animals, and Loop trained farms are guided by the Loop Farm Manual which points farmers to resources on this topic. Loop works with grocery store staff to keep food items in good condition, at display temperature, and sorted by department. We further ask the store’s Deli/Kitchen team to keep their unpackaged counter-sale items separated into two categories: meat items (sandwich meat ends, etc), and non-meat items (veggies, fruit trim, etc). All packaged food remains in packaging with ingredient labels. These and other Loop policies allow farmers to make careful and informed feed decisions. Loop is not a “mixed swill” program. Loop requires farms to follow CFIA guidelines.
Stores send Loop meat in separate packaging so that it can be used to feed guardian dogs, or house pets. Loop’s training and documents follow CFIA guidance that items which come in contact with meat, meat byproducts or meat juices are not to be fed to livestock. Meat items that pets don’t eat must be composted in keeping with biosecurity best practices. Participating farms sign a waiver stating that they are aware of and are in compliance with Loop policies. Loop was built by farmers for farmers, using methods that keep unsold food at high quality and provide nutritious supplemental feed to farm animals. Loop takes violations of its policies seriously. If you believe a violation may be happening, please reach out to Loop by emailing: support@loopresource.ca
For those items that are more difficult to feed (such as large volumes of oil, or cardboard packaging), we work to find local bio-energy solutions. Bio-diesel products, cellulose to electricity, and alternative solid fuel products are all solutions utilized in the past. We work with existing programs where possible, and encourage our farms to participate in creating a solution when a working system isn't currently in existence in their area.
We encourage farms in our program to have an active composting system to ensure that none of the received goods are wasted. North American farmland is losing soil at an unsustainable rate, and good carbon stewardship starts with healthy, active soil. Loop farms are active participants in this, and any carbon materials that cannot be used as feed or for energy production are used in the production of compost.
FOR GROCERS
We work with individual store management, regional operators, and corporate leadership to develop a custom-fit, sustainability program for each region. We aim for 100% reclamation and redirection of food, oils, and organic waste, in keeping with the core ethics of food production and food waste management.
Loop offers a single point-of-contact solution to the stores we work with, with one Loop partner taking 100% of the organics that the store has that day. With minimal space in-store.
The average store we work with produces 600-1000 lbs. of surplus product in a day, and is served by daily pick-ups from Loop partners. This waste is immediately diverted to local farms that meet our selection criteria, resulting in a large reduction of traditional disposal tip frequency, and closing the loop on local food production. We require minimal space in-store to accomplish this.
Common items include:
Sometimes mistakes happen during delivery or warehousing, and our system is flexible and adaptable enough to absorb rejected shipments. This offers substantial labour and disposal savings.
ABOUT US
We started out in Dawson Creek, British Columbia, trying to reduce the operating cost of our family farm so that Dad could be home with the kids more! With one grocery store ready to reduce their landfill impact and a couple of meetings: Loop Resource was born. We now work with grocery stores across most of Canada from BC to NL, diverting unsaleable grocery store food to hungry animal mouths on farms of all shapes and sizes, and to registered charities where possible.
Loop helps close the loop on organics waste disposal in the food supply industry, taking food from the end of the line at the store, back to the beginning as feed and compost at local farms.