I work with CHOW, the Community Hunger Outreach Warehouse of Broome County, in Binghamton, NY. I’m actually an Americorps employee here, and I used to be homeless. I spent a number of years Hitchhiking around the country, and spent a bunch of time with the Rainbows living in the woods, and organizing kitchens in the woods around dumpster-diving and other guerrilla food recovery techniques. Now, I’m on the up and up.

Part of my job is volunteer recruitment, and the other part (thus far) is increasing and improving our food rescue and recovery operations. We currently rescue about 1 million pounds of food a year (that’s half of what we distribute each year), and distribute it to over 28 agencies in our county. It’s truly an amazing organization with some very thoughtful people working here.

Now, I’m sure that many people out there have college campusses whose dining services are under the control of Sodex Ho. They do all kinds of stuff with CHOW, like catering our promotions and events–even going so far as to organize some themselves–and they donate their surplus food to us at the end of each semester, and before each break as well. They also compost and recycle unused food, and go so far as to claim the title for SUNY Binghamton as of one of the most green dining services in New York State. Cool, right?

Well, everyone I have gone to thus far, with Sodex Ho, local restaurants, and supermarkets make the claim that they “don’t have any waste,” which is ridiculous to me. So, we’re seeing a rise in the need amongst our agencies and I’m looking to move quickly on recovering more food before the wintertime, yet I’m encountering this mantra of “we don’t waste,” everywhere I go.

That being said, I want to thank you for the produce project. I think that what I will do is to go into the markets and ask to work with them for a day to assess their waste stream, and help them bring it under control and to donate the surplus to us.

Something else you all might consider broadcasting through your blogs, is the Good Semaritan Food Donation Act (1996), and Enhanced Tax Deduction for Food Donation–two tools I have been using to talk up the idea of food rescue and recovery.

Thank you for this food waste tracking system though, I think I will add it to my repetoire of resources for businesses.

Peace and Love,
Dan

I think composting is a great idea for when food waste can’t be avoided, or for stuff that’s inedible(egg shells), but I think it needs to be done in conjunction with some work towards reducing food waste in the first place.