this post was submitted on 03 Jun 2024
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Imagine walking into a store, picking out all your groceries for the week and not having to worry about facing an expensive bill at the checkout.

For clients of the Regina Food Bank, that will soon be a reality.

Since the pandemic, there has been a spike in food bank users across the country, up 25 per cent in Regina alone. One in eight families β€” and one in four children β€” are now food insecure in the city. Of the 16,000 monthly clients, 44 per cent are kids.

The new Regina Food Bank Community Food Hub, modelled after a traditional grocery store, is set to open this summer in the former government liquor store location downtown.

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[–] wpuckering@lm.williampuckering.com 0 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (9 children)

I wonder if letting people pick their own items really reduces waste more than the hamper system? What happens to items left on the shelf that no one takes? That's probably the same stuff that would be ignored from a hamper? I'm admittedly pretty ignorant of food banks generally, but I would think that the hamper system would be trying to encourage people to eat whatever they get, to both reduce waste by making sure all items get out there from the bank, and to ensure there's enough of everything coming in to go around evenly? I can see this maybe resulting in the better items going first, and a bunch of less desirable items always being left behind to rot. Does that tend to happen in this type of system or not?

[–] howrar@lemmy.ca 5 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Besides what's already been said, even if there is food waste from things left on the shelves, at least this allows us to know that certain items are undesirable for everyone and to avoid acquiring more of them. If you hand out a bit to everyone and they all end up in different trash bins, you'll never know about it and you'll never fix the problem.

Yeah that's probably the strongest point in favour of letting people pick what they want. But I guess a potential downside of that could be if people start stocking up mostly on only a few select items that everyone else also wants., leaving nothing behind for them. But I guess that's mitigated by seeing that happen a few times then specifically trying to get even more of those select items going forward.

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