Trina Jiggins, food bank co-ordinator, originally got the idea for the food reclamation program after hearing about a similar program elsewhere on Vancouver Island. However, when the food bank investigated obtaining a commercial cooler, they were given a quote of $25,000.
“The unique part of our program is that we built our own 20-by-12-foot cooler using a high-powered air conditioning unit and a coolbot device to regulate the temperature,” says Jiggins. “The one that we constructed, following the Health Board specifications, cost us under $5,000 and it is energy efficient.”
In the first eight months of the cooler's operation, The Salvation Army was able to repurpose nearly $175,000 of usable produce and dairy.
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