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Too Little, Too Much
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After a fundraiser this past weekend, we were faced with the disposal of 120 leftover hot dogs. We called around to a few downtown homeless shelters (no answer, we left messages!); we even tried to persuade the anarchist vegetarians at Food Not Bombs to take our all-beef franks. To no avail. (Interesting how you can be an anarchist and also very rule-oriented at the same time. No meat!) Then there was the hastily considered plan to strap on backpacks full of hotdogs and hand them out around 5th and Los Angeles.
What do YOU do with extra food?
It's an interesting question of how so much waste can be matched up with so much need. Based on Bureau of Santation figures, we estimate that the average Angeleno contributes about 35 pounds of trash to area landfills each week. Meanwhile, LA County’s levels of hunger and food insecurity are higher than anywhere else in the U.S. In fact, one out of every 14 Americans who goes hungry is in Los Angeles County (LACEH&H).
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We talked to Al Rossi, Gifts In-Kind Manager at the Los Angeles Mission; his organization will take ANY donation of food (cooked, frozen, sealed, prepared, perishable, non-perishable) at their receiving center at 316 Winston (behind the Mission). The best he could recommend was to build "leftovers giving" into event planning--call the Mission before the event and try to schedule a drop off or pick-up (yes, they even pick up!) of leftover food.
Any one else have ideas or suggestions about what they've done with leftovers after an event?
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