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| by Natalie Gibb, |
Oct 16, 2006 |
At the Co-op sur Généreux, dinner represents more than just a quick trip to the grocery store, twenty minutes in the kitchen, and a ritual of knife-fork-spoon. To the fifteen youths living at the Montreal-based housing cooperative, eating is a concrete means of challenging a food system that is neither socially nor environmentally sustainable.
In Montreal, half of all food is sent to a landfill without ever reaching a dinner plate because throwing out good food is often cheaper for distributors than sorting the good from the bad. Although this practice may make economic sense, members of the Co-op sur Généreux decry this waste as socially and environmentally unacceptable. Food embodies not only nutrients, but also the carbon emitted during transportation and the soil and water resources degraded during agricultural production. Add to this the labour invested—often provided by farmers in the South who earn too little to afford adequate health care or education. How, then, can we justify discarding food when a lack of food security and overflowing landfills plague our own urban centres?
By “dumpster-diving”, or retrieving food from dumpsters, members of the Co-op sur Généreux engage in daily protest against food waste. They also host weekly potlucks to mobilise Montreal youth around issues of food, social justice, and environmental sustainability. To reach the broader public, the co-op has collaborated with Radio-Canada to produce radio and television documentaries.
The message must be understood: an overhaul of our food distribution system is necessary if we are to achieve sustainability
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