With more than 500 clients, the biggest challenge for Vancouver's Meals on Wheels is keeping the 420 volunteers it needs to make deliveries. The organization offers to reimburse them for their gas, but not only does the price of fuel keep rising, on July 1 B.C. adopts a 2.4 cent-per-litre carbon tax. Executive director Inge Schamborzki says the organization has bumped up the reimbursement to compensate, but she hopes an innovative and green idea borrowed from Montreal will ease the impact of future fuel increases — as just one of its benefits.

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Inge Schamborzki, executive director of the Health and Home Care Society of B.C. CBCnews.ca: How much do you offer to reimburse volunteers for gas?

Inge Schamborzki: Currently we are providing 40 cents a kilometre. It went up from 36 cents the first of April, because in B.C., we knew there was going to be a [carbon] surcharge in addition to gas prices rising almost on a daily basis.

So one of our strategies was to increase the mileage.

What does that do to your budget?

We budget close to $60,000 a year for volunteer reimbursement, and what we have noticed for the month of April and May is that our costs per reimbursement for those months is $1,000 higher this year than it was last year.

Could you lose volunteers, the ones who take the reimbursement, if you can't keep up with the rising price of fuel?

I've not heard them say the price of gas would deter them as much as the fact they are also aging. But in an effort to attract younger people we initiated a Meals on Bikes program last fall.

'an effort to attract younger people we initiated a Meals on Bikes program last fall.'—Inge Schamborzki

Montréal has been promoting the idea of delivering meals on bicycles since 1996. Their organization is called Santropol and one of our staff and I had the opportunity last summer to visit with them.

We currently have six volunteers currently out on bicycles …. Bicycling is certainly a healthier alternative than driving your car and in parts of Vancouver where there is high density, many apartment buildings, it is difficult to park. So we thought, well, this would be a perfect environment to begin to see how people would do on bicycles.

Some Meals on Wheels volunteers are using bicycles to be kinder to the environment and avoid costly fuel bills. And you don't have to reimburse the bikes for fuel.

Exactly. Also…we've had our first volunteer deliver on a scooter. The price of gas in a scooter is obviously going to be less than a car. And we've also established a partnership with a local car co-op called ZipCar and … they will provide their vehicle free of charge to our volunteers to deliver meals.

We have volunteers coming forward who have driver's licences but can't afford a car, for example — university students or just others who get around the city using local transportation. But it would be impossible to go on one of our Meals on Wheels routes using the bus service. It would be faster to walk.

And the food would get cold. How many meals can a bike carry?

The volunteer is able to take eight to 12 hot meals. They have a rack on the back of the bike and what looks like a milk crate on it, and we have an insulated bag that can hold those eight to 12 meals.

How would a doubling again of fuel prices affect what you do?

The price of gas is also driving up our food costs.

We currently have contracts with a Western caterer and a Chinese caterer who provide our meals. But obviously as the gas prices are affecting their costs, they will charge more for food.

How will things be in five or 10 years if the price keeps rising?

I guess each one of us worries about what the impact will be on our children, our grandchildren, on each other, what the world will be like 50 years from now. But if each one of us takes little steps to try to whittle away at that, just by utilizing less ourselves, not driving big cars, using local transportation, using bikes, walking…each one of us can make a little bit of a difference.