Candy Buy Back
| Halloween Candy Buy Back |
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The Halloween Candy Buy Back is here again for 2010! We're excited for this healthy and fun event where families can enjoy Halloween without the weeks of eating too many sweets and junk food. We're getting started for the 2010 event and are excited to meet more families and like minded healthy businesses. Contact us at: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it for more info and join the Facebook Event page to share with your friends. See below for some pictures from last years event.
 The 2009 Candy Buy Back saw more than 150 kids from the community bring a whopping 525 pound mountain of Halloween Candy to the Evans Centre in a 3 hour event. The Evans Centre paid the ghouls and goblins of Halloween, a loonie and an entry for an IPOD Nano for every pound of candy they brought, plus each Trick-or-Treater received a Firefly LED Toothbrush.
Two enterprising students, Ryan Dickie and Logan Neill, students at the Calgary Academy and also Ashley Perry, a Student Teacher at Westmount Charter School, collected 225 lbs and 150 lbs respectively. The money collected for their candy will be used for their school’s favorite charity. Many kids who came to the Evans Centre donated a portion of their take to various Charities. Dr. Evans matched all these charitable donations. In essence, those kids who donated to charity were giving up their hard-earned treats for two dollars a pound. With the help of these schools, the Evans Centre collected an amazing 900 lbs of candy!
 
The two most common questions asked at the event were:
What do we do with the candy? Why do you do this?
(Dr. Evans responds to an inquiry below)
We are a health-centered office and we worry about the effects of this much sugar on our clients. The annual consumption of sugar has accelerated for the past century to a yearly 44.2 kg per capita in Canada in 2005. More alarming is the increased consumption of High Fructose Corn Syrup which we believe is much more harmful to health and is the sweetener used in nearly all Halloween Candy. At a time when our community is very concerned about strengthening an immune response to such health threats as H1N1, eliminating 900 lbs of candy from the diets of our children is the right thing to do. For those great kids who gave their candy up for charity, a number of other important groups have been helped in their ongoing efforts to improve our community. If the collected candy is unhealthy for our clients and families, it can not be good for others. So we destroy the candy. There are alternatives to candy. This was a fun and Healthy event to end the Halloween activities this year.
We are pleased to announce the winners who have received an ipod nano:
Please enjoy these photos from the event. Feel free to contact us for any information about this years event, next years buy-back or to schedule an interview with Dr. Evans. Please email us at: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it or call the office at 403-286-2622.
I can't believe this is really happening.
I was very upset after hearing about your buyback initiative and the fact that you destroyed candy which parents and community members paid significant money to provide to children. I am sure parents spent much more than $1 per pound for the candy. This to me is another example of waste in our society, even though it may benefit the health of children, it is not an efficient use of community resourses as a whole. Wouldn't it be better to ask parents or communities not to buy the candy; Obviously, I completely agree with you. We have to raise awareness somehow and this is my gesture. We make several suggestions for an alternative to candy in our office around Halloween time. Many of our patients have chosen to hand out alternative Halloween treats. One dentist fighting a huge Halloween Candy marketing program is just a start. But it is a start. to donate the money instead, Many of the kids turned around and donated their own money to charity. We had four charities in the office and we matched every contribution dollar for dollar so those kids actually received $2.00 a lb for their candy. for children not to collect it, Well that's a bit unrealistic since it is the dress-up and socialization that is the real attraction here. Even I like to dress up and be silly occasionally, it is a lot of fun with friends and family, plus there are few community events that compare with Halloween at getting people to lift their garage doors and get together out on the streets. or even to send the candy you buyback to a worthy cause (ie Dentists in the US bought back candy and sent it to their soldiers overseas, they didn't throw it in dumpsters) This is an ethical dilemna. Since I believe the consumption of all the high fructose corn syrup in Halloween candy suppresses the immune system and increases the risk of illness in our children, and since I don’t agree with a media/pharma sponsored vaccination program, and since the media made such an extravaganza of the mystical H1N1 non-pandemic, I had to decide if it was ethical to send the candy to a third world country where it would be distributed to children who do not have access to health and dental services like the kids in Calgary. I couldn’t do it and sleep at night so ... To the dumpster we went. Although I support the principle behind your gesture, I believe there are ways to avoid wasting community money (& food - candy is food) of those who supported children for Halloween. Again, I am in complete agreement. I am trying to do my part in changing the world. When I own Halloween (like I plan to do) we will have better access to the community with our alternative solutions. I ask that next year you give more thought as to how best to structure your program to be less wasteful. If you think we did this without thought, I apologize. We carefully considered all the aspects you mentioned, and decided we had to start somewhere. Our first attempt resulted in about 200 lbs of candy and a small article in the herald. Our second attempt (this year) resulted in 900 lbs of candy, involvement of two schools, donations to various charities in the city of nearly $1000, and a chance to spread our message a little further, not to mention the tremendous benefit of taking 900 lbs of high fructose corn syrup out of the homes of the families that participated.
Thanks for your concern and we will try to better next year.
Regards,
Thom
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