The action group project this quarter has been a whole new experience for me in my four years of attending a university. When we first began to pick topics I found myself interested in doing something with food. When the topic of food waste came up I knew that that topic was something I wanted to focus on. For our project my group members and I decided that we were going to focus on trying to decrease food waste by reaching out to local restaurants and grocery stores to see if they would be interested in donating their excess food and we would donate it to local shelters.
Unfortunately our group project was not as successful as we would have liked. The process and planning was definitely a challenge and at times frustrating. Having a big group it was very difficult to find time outside of class for all of us to meet up so most of the conversation and planning was done through messaging. When it came to contacting locations we reached out to quiet a few locations near the university but in the end we were only able to get donations from Whole Foods and Einstein Bagels. With the food that we collected we were able to donate it to the local shelter of Roots. While we didn’t make as big of a contribution as we would have liked the small amount we were able to collect did make a difference. Who knows maybe if we had more time we would have been able to get in contact with corporate and we could have gotten a bigger donation.
Throughout the course we talked about how many people all over the world are starving and have no excess to food. Some would argue and say that this is due to not having enough food to feed all the people but in reality the world has an excess of food but the problem is getting that food to the people in need. Carolan states “…wastes, or loses, anywhere between 33% and 50% of all food that is produced annually” (126). Knowing that all such high percentages of food are going to waste with so many people can barley get a meal a day was crazy. If we could get more food locations that typically throw their excess food away to donate that excess to their local shelters it would not make a huge change but it’s a start on addressing the problem of food waste.