Company was in town to deliver $25K award from Growing Homes contest

Heather Wright/The Independent

The Petrolia Community Refrigerator had some new volunteers Monday.

Max Vandenborre of BASF Agriculture Solutions helped Harvey Leckie pack hamburger for the freezer in the basement of St. Paul’s United Church, carefully putting small portions of the meet in plastic bags.

Vandenborre was one of two BASF officials in Petrolia to celebrate with the local organization which won a $25,000 grant in the company’s Growing Home awards.

Kasia Kostelski, external communications manager with BASF, got to see first hand how the Community Fridge operates and she was impressed.

“There’s so much more to this story than just bridging the gap of food insecurity,” she said taking a break from volunteering.

“They are doing everything they can to eliminate food waste completely. Whether it’s like recycling food, giving it to local farmers to feed to their livestock … it’s just like a really beautiful story from start to finish of the community coming together to help each other and feed one another, but then also to make sure that there’s no food waste.”

Kostelski and Vandenborre hosted a lunch for the PCR’s volunteers, after Monday’s work was done, and turned over the $25,000 cheque which the charity won in the Growing Home awards.

Larry Leckie of the community refrigerator says the money will be used to buy an upright freezer to extend the life of foods close to their expiry dates and to help pay for weekly groceries of things such as milk and meat.

Leckie says the refrigerator – a shed beside St. Paul’s United Church – serves between 45 and 50 people a day so the money will be put to good use.

“We can’t necessarily keep up with it all the time…We stock it Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, twice a day. But when you just do a one stocking, it doesn’t last.”