GUELPH – On Feb. 7, the Smart Cities Office will provide Guelph City Council with an update on how Guelph-Wellington’s Our Food Future program is exceeding its goals as it builds a local circular food economy, expanding with new funding, and attracting attention as the worldwide circular economy movement gains momentum.
Our Food Future launched in 2020 supported by $10 million from Infrastructure Canada’s Smart Cities Challenge, a national competition that declared Guelph-Wellington a winner in May 2019.
The proposal aimed to reimagine how the community produces, distributes, sells, and consumes food.
The initiative is currently overseeing more than 60 active projects.
Notable achievements at the two-year mark cited in a Jan. 27 press release include:
– supporting economic and social recovery efforts during COVID-19 through Grow Back Better, an initiative which provided grants, interest-free loans and mentoring for food sector businesses, invested in emergency food delivery exceeding 77,000 meals, and helped 740 families learn about growing food at home;
– victory on a goal to support the development of 50 new circular businesses and collaborations, with more than 181 businesses adopting or expanding their circular practices;
– distributed more than $206,000 to advance community initiatives designed to strengthen food security, including neighbourhood food gardens, affordable food markets, and to pilot new systems designed to improve food access;
– demonstrated the value of connecting food businesses to explore food waste diversion with the launch of the world’s first circular restaurant meal; and
– prevented 1,769 tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions by diverting 6,479 tonnes of food waste from landfill.
These activities are making food more accessible, giving families options in their neighbourhoods that they can afford, and allowing for businesses to contribute to the circular economy rather than landfill, officials state.
They are also positioning Guelph-Wellington as a circular economy innovation hub and attracting more funding.
Since announcing the initial $10 million prize, the project has secured an additional $14.2 million to support the work of city, county, and community collaborators.
The figure includes nearly $5 million from the Federal Economic Development Agency for Southern Ontario (FedDev Ontario) in April 2021 to launch the Circular Opportunity Innovation Launchpad (COIL).
COIL is a business acceleration platform that pioneers new, sustainable approaches aimed at creating, proving, and scaling transformative solutions across the food and environment sectors in southern Ontario.
“We’ve had a lot of early success, completed many research studies, and analyzed a ton of data to help bring more precision to our understanding of critical areas we want to address: where businesses need to focus to support sustainability as well as profitability, where food waste hotspots occur across the entire food industry, the kinds of food we’re throwing away at home that can be saved, the barriers to people in our community accessing nutritious foods, and more,” stated Wellington County director of museum, archives and economic development Jana Burns.
“With all we have learned, we will be able to share and engage with our community and industry stakeholders to define the most effective interventions to create significant and permanent change,” Burns added.
“The innovations tested here, and lessons learned, are informing and inspiring change locally, and globally,” said Smart Cities executive director Barbara Swartzentruber.
“Our example has been shared on world stages as nations commit to adopt circular principles that take us closer to our goals to tackle climate change and food insecurity,” she added.
“Project leaders and partners from Our Food Future have presented at more than 115 broadcasts and events, locally, nationally, and internationally, reaching an audience of more than one million people.”
Additional information about the project’s progress, upcoming initiatives and how community members can get involved is available at foodfuture.ca.
