The numbers are amazing. 96 billion lbs. of edible food tossed into landfills in this country a year. That works out to 3,000 lbs. of food per SECOND. Sure, it's not all vegan, but it is FOOD. The following trailer is most interesting and resonates to me in particular because of an experience I had a few weeks ago.
I was at a local Giant grocery store a few weeks ago, talking with one of the produce managers I've gotten to know over the past few years (such that he'd even ask my advice on vegetables with customers, and in return, he'd listen to me wail over personal issues). I noticed that he was removing slightly blemished HUGE green peppers from the "sell" bins to two boxes. He told me that people wouldn't buy them, and those two boxes of incredible green peppers were going to be thrown out. He couldn't sell them to me, or even give them to me (would have been easy to preserve in any number of ways). Apparently, this kind of practice is rampid in the industry and has to do with health laws, legal issues, yadda.
In thinking about this regarding all the other produce in the huge store, I realized that there must be a tremendous amount of viable useful and edible produce being tossed into dumpsters every week. The movie DIVE appears to address this matter directly. Had I the discretionary time, this is a social issue I would love to tackle: why are we throwing away all this edible food in current times of economic trauma? It's a larger social issue that's not being addressed. Some restaurants and stores do allow non-profits to "harvest" the throwaways, but that the biggies, WalMart, Trader Joe's, Giant, don't, is bothersome.
As consumers, most Americans are so damn conditioned to think produce must be pristine and blemish-free. As a farmer, I know better. Give me slighty blemished freshly grown organic broccoli, tomatoes, zukes, kale... over the antiseptic artificial store-bought stuff any time. A good paring knife can do wonders.
Here's the trailer, a direct link to the website, and an interesting article about it all:
Dive! Trailer from Compeller on Vimeo.
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