The most important step in our research process to get the ball rolling was to look at the big picture of our project and narrowing down the steps. So in the past week, my group has divided up the task of creating a list of names and locations of potential donors and recipients. This is our first step of the project and is mainly computer-based which allowed us to scope out the entire area of Vancouver efficiently. In terms of donors, some included: grocery stores, caterers, farmers, supermarkets, wholesalers and restaurants. For recipients, there was a range of food banks, non-for-profits, community kitchens and meals-on-wheels. Some of our group members’ reflections on their findings:

Stephanie: It starts out slow, but when you do a simple search on the map of Vancouver for a certain donor/recipient the number of companies, locations and possibilities are endless! I found it almost overwhelming at one point as to whether or not I covered enough names in one category. At the same time, I feel content with the fact that lists are exhaustive because then I know the future of decreasing food waste is at a reachable distance.

Amanda: I found it easy to find information on where potential and current recipients get their food, and I discovered there were more community food projects/organizations in Vancouver than I thought, (a good deal of which do not get 100% of their food supplies donated). It came as no surprise that there are ample coffee shops and cafes, which means that there should be lots of opportunity for these places to recover food. I have been focused on identifying donors and recipients as per our project action plan, so I have yet to look deep enough to find the details of current practices regarding food waste/recovery.

Jill: My part is focusing on Grocery-store donors in Vancouver. In the beginning, it was easy for me to find the donation from some grocery stores. However, when I tried to look for more information, especially in specific location, I was not able to access the information. Most of the main-chains markets or grocery stores claim that they participate in community events and help support local community by either food or financial donation. They state that they offer high quality of food donation and make a great contribution to the community. Yet, there was not much information about specific location participate at specific area, and not much description about food donation on their home website and most them emphasize on product flyer and costumer services. When searching grocery food recipients, most not-profit organizations or foundations do not display the donors on the site for privacy protection purpose. It is best for our team to conduct interviews via phone or in person to get the information in future progress.

Over the next week or so, we will continue to seek out a comprehensive list and then hopefully pool of findings together and create a master list which maybe has narrowed down and clarified the different categories. From there we can then generate our first mapping of the city.