Local gleaning group looking to help pick fruits and vegetables to lower food waste

Last year the program was able to donate over 300 pounds of produce to be redistributed in the community. Photo: Joe Pugh / CHLY 101.7fm

Last year over 3,000 pounds of produce were saved in Nanaimo from ending up in landfills because of a local group of gleaners.

A partnership between the Nanaimo Foodshare Society and the Nanaimo Community Gardens Society runs a volunteer gleaning program that reduces food waste and redistributes food to community organizations. Volunteers pick surplus fruit, vegetables and other crops that would otherwise go unpicked and end up in landfills or left for wild animals.

Lee Sanmiya is the gleaning coordinator for the Nanaimo gleaning program. She said the program runs with local volunteers picking fruit trees generously made available by the tree owners who need their trees picked.

She said the joint program started in 2003 when they started seeing a need in the community to deal with the amount of fruit that was going to waste. From there the program expanded.

“So now we have a huge roster of gleaners. We have equipment and we can manage to pick–or at least try to pick–most of the fruit trees that get called into us,” Sanmiya said. “Of course, sometimes things are overripe, or sometimes the trees are too tall, or the terrain is unsafe, or for whatever reason, maybe it's overripe.”

Last year the program had 83 volunteers and was able to donate over 300 pounds of produce to be redistributed in the community.

Sanmiya said tree owners can take up to a third of the produce collected by the gleaner, but as the owners usually have picked what they want by the time they use the program, they usually take around five per cent of the produce collected. 

“The gleaners can take all the rest, in fact, but not necessarily for their personal use,” she said. “Gleaners are very generous with friends and family, and so they redistribute it [to] their workplaces, agencies that they know of, church groups they're involved with.”

She said allowing the gleaners to distribute the produce how they would like means the produce can reach more organizations across the community.

“It also means that it goes to a lot of smaller groups or individuals, housing projects, whatever,” Sanmiya said. “That produce can be dealt with pretty efficiently, whereas sometimes, if one organization is the beneficiary, they're inundated with produce, and then they're not able to deal with it before it rots.”

In addition to fruit trees, the program can glean various other fruits and vegetables including peas, blueberries, raspberries, corn and cherries.

Sanmiya said if any small amount of the fruit they picked rots or spoils it can affect the remainder of the fruit, so a lot of the fruit they pick does not often last as long as commercial fruits.

“So a lot of big places don't have the facilities to be able to store, sort and then redistribute large quantities of that really delicate produce in a timely fashion,” she said. “So by redistributing it in much smaller amounts more widely, we're able to find homes for the produce.”

She explains when they are picking the fruit and they find some that has gone bad they will deal with it there right away. She said most owners have green bins in which they put the rotting fruit in.

Sanmiya said the gleaning program is perfect for people who have an overabundance of produce that they cannot deal with themselves but want to make sure it gets used. She also highlights the camaraderie that comes with having gleaners come and glean your property.

“It is really nice to be able to go and pick fruit with a couple of people and just chat and be working towards an end that you think is really worthy out in the community somewhere you're not really familiar with. It's lovely,” she said.

According to WildSafeBC, an organization that offers education on preventing conflicts with wildlife, fallen fruit from fruit trees is a large attachment that can attract bears and other wild animals into residential areas.

Sanmiya said if people live in areas where there may be a lot of bears, sometimes they will have conservation officers refer them to glean certain people’s properties.

“We can do emergency picks to get fruit off the trees, just so that we can make sure that bears aren't tempted with fruit trees as an attractant,” she said.

Right now sign-up to be a volunteer gleaner is closed for the year, but Sanmiya said it will open for the 2025 season in early spring with the hope to have orientation training done before cherries are in season in the springtime.

More information on how to sign up for the program or become a volunteer can be found on their website.

Funding Note: This story was produced with funding support from the Local Journalism Initiative, administered by the Community Radio Fund of Canada.