Found Nova Scotia feeds the hungry with forgotten fruit and vegetables

Volunteers trudged along the shore of St. Margaret's Bay in Nova Scotia this weekend to salvage apples that would have gone to waste and instead get them to the needy.

Found Nova Scotia is a growing eco-conscious enterprise that gleans leftover fruits and vegetable from crops, farmers' markets and home gardens and donates most of their haul to food banks and shelters.

Laurel Schut and Lindsay Clowes launched the initiative this spring after earning their master's degrees in environmental studies at Dalhousie University with a mission to reduce food waste and educate others about the journey from farm to plate.

"(We're) teaching people about agriculture, but at the same time, getting all this food to people who need it,'' Clowes says. "They can understand where their food is coming from ... and learn how to reduce food waste in their own homes.''

Schut estimates volunteers plucked around 90 kilograms of apples Sunday, adding to the roughly 835 kilograms of produce that has been collected as of late September.

Mike Lancaster, a co-ordinator with the St. Margaret's Bay Stewardship Association, says the trees haven't been formally harvested since 2008 and he's glad to see the apples consumed as nourishment rather than rotting on the ground.

Found Nova Scotia donates around 86 per cent of its yield to Feed Nova Scotia, which distributes the produce to community groups across the province. A slim share of the pickings are sold to local restaurants to cover the organization's costs of operation. Produce that is too spoiled to eat is turned into preserves that Clowes and Schut eventually hope to sell.

According to consulting firm Value Chain Management International, Canadians waste $31 billion worth of food each year. Meanwhile, Food Banks Canada says nearly one in eight families struggled to put food on the table last year.

Found Nova Scotia draws upon three sources of untapped produce, Schut says: the chunk of harvests that are left behind each season, fruits and vegetables that go unsold as farmers' markets close for the day and the unattended plants in our own backyards.