A Kelowna teen who started a petition to end food waste in Canada has greatly surpassed his goal.
As of Friday morning the petition created by Justin Kulik, which aims to get rid of food waste in Canada, has gathered 150,000 signatures on Change.org.
“Every year, $31 billion of food ends up in a landfill in Canada alone. This isn’t just stale bread and mouldy produce. This is good to eat food of all sorts. Produce, dairy, grain, protein, and everything outside of those,” Kulik wrote in the petition.
“Yet, nearly one million Canadians rely on food banks each month, and about four million Canadians are food insecure, of which 1.5 million are children.
In just a few days, Justin will be delivering your signatures to the Minister of Agriculture on #WorldFoodDay.
He is asking our government to end food waste coming from supermarkets in Canada.
Why do you think we should end food waste?#WhyWasteFoodhttps://t.co/ofUtXSawN4 pic.twitter.com/EKgo8tB0ia
— Change.org Canada (@CdnChange) October 11, 2018
“In 2015, the French government passed a law forbidding supermarkets from wasting and deliberately destroying food that can still be eaten. Instead, supermarkets have since been required to donate all unsold food products to charity such as food banks.
“A similar anti-food waste law can and should be implemented in Canada, nationwide. As it is, Quebec is now requiring that all supermarkets give unused food to food banks. Doing the same on a federal scale is not inconceivable. It is doable, and it is already being done in communities worldwide.”
The petition will be presented to the Minister of Agriculture on World Food Day Oct. 16. Kulik’s goal was to reach 100,000 signatures.
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