Feeding Neighbors & Fighting Food Waste
With the Food Waste Fair coming up this June, the Sanitation Foundation’s blog will feature ways to prevent and reduce food waste.
By: Sophie Neuhaus
New Yorkers throw away millions of pounds of food each year, but over 2/3 of it is still perfectly edible. Meanwhile, over 1.2 million of their neighbors -- including 1 in 3 children -- are food insecure. How can that be and what can we do about it?
Hunger and waste, though often seen as opposites, are actually deeply related. Most of us are guilty of over-buying and, at times, thoughtlessly throwing away perfectly good food. Supermarkets and restaurants left with groceries or meals at the end of the day often are barred from selling them and feel like they have no choice but to toss them. At the same time, demand for food assistance is at a high and more New Yorkers than ever are turning to emergency services to keep their families fed.
But what if instead of relying on food shelves and shelters, New Yorkers could simply take advantage of the excess food from their neighbors and local businesses? That’s exactly what volunteer networks across the city have worked to make a reality.
Photo by @thegowanusfridge
Photo by @thegowanusfridge
Mutual Aid 101
Mutual aid is exactly what the name sounds like — it’s the act of helping others in your community, not as charity, but because you recognize that everyone needs help sometimes. Mutual aid is based on the principle of solidarity, not charity. It’s the support given to others with the understanding that you might need help sometimes too, and if everyone comes together to help out, everyone can have enough.
Community fridges are great examples of mutual aid. You may have seen these brightly painted fridges with “free food” or “comida gratis” popping up on sidewalks across NYC. These are public fridges maintained and stocked by community members and local businesses, neighbors can come and take what they need whenever they need it — no questions asked.
Photo by @gowanusmutualaid
A Network Grows in Brooklyn
Photo by Michael Anton
Community fridges first started popping up in NYC around 2019, but really took off during the COVID-19 pandemic as many New Yorkers battled food insecurity. While the City was able to provide large-scale solutions to New Yorkers in need, like the GetFood program, community-based solutions remained necessary to help fill the gaps and spread information about available resources. Just about every neighborhood in NYC now has a community fridge where residents can access supplemental food, but keeping all of these fridges stocked 24/7 is a tall order, and volunteers have had to get creative.
One group that’s been thinking outside the box is Gowanus Mutual Aid, a group of residents in West Brooklyn who help manage a network of community fridges, free stores, and other public resources. Volunteers soon realized that at the same time their neighbors were in need of food assistance, there were supermarkets and cafes throwing away perfectly safe, delicious, and nutritious food every day! The answer was obvious: work with local businesses to harness their food waste as a tool to help fight food insecurity.
Photo by @gowanusmutualaid
The Gowanus Community Fridge got to work building relationships with coffee shops, bakeries, and local grocers, to demonstrate how they could help business owners give back to their communities while also mitigating their food waste. Right now they’re partnering with a family-owner bagel store that donates their excess bagels and bread every day, local grocers and produce providers who share their overstock with the fridge, and volunteers who rescue high-quality unsold goods from larger supermarkets.
Sharing, Not Scrapping
All of the thousands of pounds of delicious, nutritious food that are helping keep residents fed are items that are normally just thrown in the garbage. The Gowanus Community Fridge and many others across NYC are finding creative ways to transform waste into crucial resources by tapping into community networks -- and you can too!
There are so many ways to fight food waste, from reducing waste at the source to making the most of your scraps, but sharing safe, delicious ingredients and meals with your neighbors is a powerful way to help the planet and the people around you. Learn more about mutual aid in NYC and find your local community fridge here!