A community fridge has been set up at a school in Mill Woods designed to help provide meals for low income families and stocked with restaurant food that would otherwise end up in landfills.

Five restaurant kitchens are volunteering to be part of the program and are donating food to be picked up by the Islamic Circle of North America Sisters and Road to Zero Waste, two community groups that are organizing the project.

From there, the food will be packaged, labelled and taken to Grace Martin School where it will be available for pickup.

ICNA Sisters organizer Afshan Fatima says billions of dollars in useable food goes in to landfills each year.

Grace Martin School was an ideal fit for the program because of its proximity to low income neighbourhoods, according to Fatima.

“This school has a lot of low income housing around it so it would be really helpful," she said.

"We can prevent that food going into landfills and then supply meals to people who actually need it.”

Dale Cooper, principal at Grace Martin School, agreed there was a high need for this kind of service in the area.

“This is an opportunity for families to come in without being judged, but supported ... without any questions or negativity with that,” he said. “We’ve taken some of those stresses off these families to support them and then we all win.”

The group plans to expand the program and take it to other communities. The food will be available during normal school hours and can be picked up by anyone that needs it.