This quarter, my action group’s goal was to tackle food waste. All of us, including myself, chose that topic because we knew there is an immense amount of food that goes to waste while many go hungry. For the project, we decided the best way for us to tackle food waste was to contact local restaurants in the area and see if they would donate their access food waste at the end of the night to local homeless or food shelters.
After days of calling restaurants (many who flat out said no – which is frustrating) we were lucky enough to get through to Einstein Bagels and Whole Foods. The shelter we worked with was Roots, a young adult shelter near the University of Washington. What we initially wanted was to donate excess food dozens of times, we fell short and only donated food a few times. Although this wasn’t our initial goal, I’m still very excited about the small change we made and hope to continue to make a bigger change in the future.
I was lucky enough to have a large part in working with Einstein Bagels. When I first went to Einstein Bagels to pick up the extra bagels, I wasn’t expecting too much. However, the bags of bagels were so big I could barely get them to my car! I had to take a QFC cart and wheel them to the trunk of my car they were so heavy. Then when I got to Roots to drop them off, there were a few dozen people my age waiting outside for dinner. That broke my heart because although I knew young adult hunger was a problem, I had never really truly seen it. When they saw the bagels their faces lit up and thanked me, which made it all worth it. However, a small part of me felt guilty because I know I probably would never have pushed myself to do this if it weren’t for this great project. I am so lucky to have been able to experience this because it has truly pushed me to be more involved in my community and help those in my community who are less fortunate than I am.
I think the main way this project connects with the class is through the constant reminder that eating healthy and well (or sometimes eating at all) is a divisive thing. “Well off” people like my group members and I don’t have to think about going down to a shelter to get our next meal, but there are so many people who aren’t so lucky. This is just another reminder of how separate and unequal we really can be, even if we are living in the same city.