The Ugly Bone Initiative
Every year, approximately 31,000lbs of Hock Bones sent to waste.
~
30%
Sustainability. It’s a word we’ve all heard before, and has been quite the buzz word in marketing recently. We see “sustainably sourced” or “sustainable alternative” pasted on many products these days. But to us, sustainability isn’t about selling products to the “green” market. It’s a stepping stone to the solution of a problem far bigger than any one person or one company can fix on their own.
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In this day and age, there is an overwhelming excess of food that gets thrown into landfills every single day. According to “The Avoidable Crisis of Food Waste” by Second Harvest, 58% of all food produced in Canada — around 35.5 million tonnes - is lost or wasted every year and nearly a third of that food could be “rescued.” When it comes to food waste, we have to consider that it’s not just the product itself that is wasted. It’s resources required to make that food including water, land, and clean air that are also affected.
“If we want to move towards a low-polluting, sustainable society, we need to get consumers to think about their purchases.”
- David Suzuki
What Is a Hock Bone?
Hock bones are joint bones that are made up of softer joint bones and connective tissue. They are much gentler on the teeth than femur bones.
Why The Ugly Bone?
In the pet food industry, production often leads to waste of materials that don’t quite meet certain standards - with bones for example, if they are not the most appealing to look at, they are often discarded. This doesn’t sit well with any of us here at Red Dog Blue Kat, so we decided to become a small part of the solution and started The Ugly Bone Project back in July of 2020. Beef hocks are one of the commonly unwanted bones during bone production. On average, this equates to around 30% of the bones in the animal itself. In our facility alone, this would equal around 31,000 lbs of bones per year that goes to rendering facilities to be used for animal feed or waste.
A Little Perspective...
31,000 lbs Is The Equivalent Of:
2 Tyrannosaurus Rex
OR
1/5 Of A Space Shuttle
We believe that we should show all animals in the food chain respect by treating them ethically and by using as many parts of each animal as possible. So instead of allowing these sometimes-ugly bones go to waste, we have bulk beef hocks available at select retailers.
Where Do The Profits Go?
By purchasing our beef hock bones to give to your pets, not only will you be providing them with many of the benefits of chewing bones, you can feel good about contributing to a food waste solution & an eco donation! 100% of the profits from our Bulk Beef Hocks will be donated to Canadian eco-charity.
Amount
Donated
Since Start of Project
$4,306.00
"Dear Inna,
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On behalf of Global Footprint Network, my sincere thanks for your recent gift of $177! Your generosity helps us work towards ending ecological overshoot and creating a sustainable future.
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living beyond the ecological means of our planet erodes a future where all can thrive. For this reason, we founded global Footprint Network in 2003. The goal was clear: to make ecological constraints central to governmental and corporate decision-making.
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To expand our reach, we launched our Ecological Footprint Explorer open data platform in 2016 (data.footprintnetwork.org), making our footprint calculator (www.footprintcalculator.org) currently draws almost 3 million users per year, for a cumulative 13 million since it was launched online in 2007. In 2018, the annual Earth Overshoot Day campaign (www.overshootday.org) reached more than 3 billion media impressions in more than 100 countries. On that website you can also watch our Earth Overshoot Day interviews with leaders from around the world.
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You can learn more about our impact on our website at www.footprintnetwork.org/about-us/impact. it shows how your gift is helping us #MoveTheDate.
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From all of us at Global Footprint Network, we deeply appreciate your support and send you our very best wishes.
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Warm regards,
Rachel Roberts"
Stay Tuned
Keep up with our progress with the project over on our social platforms, we release donation updates at the beginning of each month along with announcing the donation numbers for our other initiatives!