This is an urban problem that can be addressed. These folks are showing how easy it is. To start with every shelter is surrounded by potential suppliers and occupied by potential volunteers. It merely needs a licensed team leader to ignite. This could even be subsidized by the city to ensure trained leaders are available in quite the same way someone inspects sidewalks.
The capital requirements are minute and readily organized through donations.Those cats were likely heading for the scrap yard.
I have been thinking along these same lines and the good news is that folks are running serious enterprises to test out these ideas now. We are then not floating untested ideas.
How These People Are Trying to End World Hunger. It Just Might Work.
http://www.theepochtimes.com/n3/1391344-how-these-people-are-trying-to-end-world-hunger-it-just-might-work/
NEW YORK—William Gomez, 16, stood awkwardly in the entrance of
the Long Island Bagel Cafe. There were more bags of excess bagels than
he had expected, and he was the only volunteer on this sweltering summer
evening.
He called his supervisor to see if anyone could send a cart. But all
the carts were in use. And so, Gomez proceeded to carry 60 pounds of
leftover bagels to the NYC Rescue Mission, a nonprofit a mile away that
feeds, houses, and rehabilitates the homeless.
As he turned the corner after one block, he bumped into Tiffany
Perez, 18, who was rushing to meet him with her empty cart. The cart
was wobbly and it was held together by duct tape and string, but it held
the 60 pounds of bagels just fine.
Gomez and Perez are volunteers at Rescuing Leftover Cuisine, a
nonprofit food rescue organization that collects leftover food from
restaurants, cafes, and caterers and passes it on to homeless shelters.
It’s a loose network of 1,500 volunteers, and 100 of them are lead
rescuers who make sure the food gets delivered, rain or shine, with help
or no help. They are also licensed to handle food safely.
It feels good. The homeless are so happy to see me.
, Rescuing Leftover Cuisine
They collect bagels and bread, as well as fresh sushi, organic milk,
and grass-fed meats that would have otherwise been thrown away.
It’s not an easy job for Gomez and Perez, who are group leaders.
There was a time when Perez single-handedly carried 200 pounds of
surplus prepared food to a shelter. It took multiple trips, but she
didn’t mind.
“It feels good. The homeless are so happy to see me,” Perez said.
“People at the shelter thank me. They don’t stop thanking me no matter
how many times I say you’re welcome.”
Rescuing Leftover Cuisine is a relatively new food rescue
organization. It’s among several food recovery organizations throughout
the United States—such as Second Helpings, Food Rescue, and City
Harvest—that safely collect edible food that would have been thrown
away.
But Rescuing Leftover Cuisine operates with a low production cost and
minimal resources, creating a system that could potentially be
replicated globally.
How It Works
Rescuing Leftover Cuisine has grown exponentially with only one full-time staff.
In 2014, they recovered 50,000 pounds of food. In the first three months of 2015, they retrieved another 50,000 pounds.
Rescuing Leftover Cuisine requires few monetary resources. They
operate on a 10 cents per pound pickup cost, which allows a $10 donation
to go a long way.
According to Robert Lee, co-founder of Rescuing Leftover Cuisine, a
$10 donation enables them to rescue 100 pounds of food, which can feed
83 people.
“The cost of one lunch provides 83 lunches,” Lee said. “Our philosophy is that every small bit helps.”
Rescuing Leftover Cuisine is still a small organization compared to
NYC’s first food rescue nonprofit City Harvest, which has been doing
this type of work in New York since 1982. City Harvest retrieves around
136,000 pounds of food every day. But since they pick up food
using trucks, it isn’t cost-efficient for them to go to any locations
that are donating less than 50 pounds.
Rescuing Leftover Cuisine is able to have a low operating cost
because they avoid using trucks as much as possible. Most of their
volunteers walk instead.
For the most part, Rescuing Leftover Cuisine picks up food from restaurants and grocery stores within a mile from a shelter.
In the winter, their carts get stuck in the thick layers of snow.
The average amount of food they collect during each trip is 60 to 80
pounds. Ideally, it’s divided between five people so that each volunteer
would only carry 15 pounds.
This walking model can be hard on the volunteer leaders, especially if not many volunteers show up for a particular shift.
They walk during humid summers. In the winter, their carts get stuck in the thick layers of snow.
But that doesn’t stop the group leaders. Perez has been volunteering
since January. She covers three shifts a day, five days a week.
“Most days she carries in 60 to 80 pounds,” said Martin Bowman, a
front desk supervisor at NYC Rescue Mission. “She just keeps coming back
and forth, back and forth, until it’s all here.”
Tiffany Perez, 18, and William Gomez, 16, volunteers at Rescuing Leftover Cuisine, a nonprofit that picks up excess food from restaurants and delivers it to homeless shelters, deliver excess food from the Long Island Bagel Cafe in the Financial District to the NYC Rescue Mission, a nonprofit that feeds, houses, and rehabilitates the homeless, in Downtown Manhattan, N.Y., on June 10, 2015. (Petr Svab/Epoch Times)
“We call her the beast mama,” he said, laughing. “She looks skinny, but don’t let that fool you.”
Volunteers like Perez and Gomez don’t get paid in money or food. But
they continue with their efforts anyway, because it bothers them that a
significant amount of food is wasted every day while many are hungry.
One in seven Americans experience food insecurity, according to the
U.S. Department of Agriculture. Yet 86 billion pounds of food were
wasted by households, restaurants, cafeterias, and caterers in 2008.
“It makes me feel good to know that it’s going to help someone,” Gomez said.
Going Global
Lee, 24, knows what it feels like to be perpetually hungry.
He grew up eating instant noodles. His parents, who emigrated from
Korea to the United States, had a hard time coming up with the money to
pay rent and buy groceries. When his family decided to treat themselves,
they bought a slightly more expensive brand of instant noodles.
Lee felt a need to carry on with his food-rescue work on a larger scale.
When Lee was studying at NYU Stern School of Business, he joined a
student group that delivered excess dining hall food to shelters.
After graduation, he got a job as an Investment Management Risk Analyst at J.P. Morgan.
But he felt a need to carry on with his food-rescue work on a larger scale.
The United Nations estimate that 868 million people around the world are hungry.
The United Nations also estimates that by 2050, the world population is expected to grow by 2 billion.
So Lee quit to work full time at Rescuing Leftover Cuisine in 2014.
So far, Rescuing Leftover Cuisine has expanded to Hillsborough, New
Jersey.; Washington D.C.; and Albany, Miami, Portland, Los Angeles, and
Chicago.
Lee hopes the model can be eventually replicated in other countries.
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