THUNDER BAY — A pilot project to get more fresh vegetables to Thunder Bay food banks with minimal spoilage is showing encouraging results.
The produce comes from greenhouses in the Windsor and Leamington areas in southwestern Ontario.
A dozen retired volunteers with Plentiful Harvest in the two communities filled a large truck with veggie hampers for shipment to the Regional Food Distribution Association in Thunder Bay.
On Monday, workers at the RFDA delivered 26 pallets containing 70 hampers each to a number of local food banks, which will in turn hand them out to their clients this week.
Volker Kromm, the executive director at the RFDA, said when shipments of vegetables arrive in bulk, there's often considerable waste.
"This is a step up in our commitment to 'do healthy,' " Kromm said.
"We were in a quandary about how to minimize the amount of vegetables that went to waste while we were trying to re-box them and ship them to various locations."
Kromm noted that "Once you put plastic or paper around them, the decomposition process starts. So we have these boxes now that are open to the air. So they come in, and they're cooler, and it's really quick."
He described the delivery process as similar to hot logging, a process where logs are taken directly from stump to a stream landing or mill.
"It comes in, gets re-loaded, and right out again. So for us, it's stepping up our game in the logistics world to get more efficient."
Kromm estimated that each hamper has a variety of vegetables in sufficient quantity to feed two people for about a week.
Feedback on Monday from local food banks was positive, he said, adding that he expects those food banks that didn't participate in the trial run will want to get in on it the next time around.
