November 13, 2013
Çnrtlanh (Obstruer
Page 23
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Junking Food is Bad for Everyone
Wasting food when
people go hungry
I found the waste offensive.
date on the package has passed.
Sometimes I snuck a bit of it out with me
“Food from the farm to our fork eats up 10
at the end of the night to hand to homeless percent of the total U.S. energy budget, uses
people. I could have been fired for that. The 50 percent of U.S. land, and swallows 80 per­
store feared the prospect of attracting a line cent of all freshwater consumed in the United
of homeless people begging for free food. States,” reads another NRDC report. Once in
And what if someone ate expired food, got the landfill, wasted food yields methane, a
sick, and sued? The food had to go in the greenhouse gas far worse than carbon dioxide.
trash.
But this wasted food doesn’t have to be
According to a new study, this kind of a problem — it can also be a solution. At a
waste goes on even after the food goes home time when 33 million Americans are “food-
with customers. Americans trash 40 percent insecure,” and don’t get enough to eat, di­
of the food we buy — $ 165 billion worth per verting just a fraction of perfectly good food
year — often because the food is past the from the landfill would feed all of them.
expiration date.
In my household, we also have a solution
“Best before” and “sell by” dates can be for the food that is no longer good for hu­
arbitrary, concluded the researchers with the mans to eat. We feed it to our chickens and
Harvard University Law School Food Law worms. We live in the city and keep a few
and Policy Clinic and Natural Resources hens for eggs. They are low-maintenance
Defense Council (NRDC) who conducted little pets who serve a number of purposes,
the study. We shouldn’t see them as indica­ like eating bugs and producing fertilizer.
tive that food has spoiled. If a food looks And they are ravenous for food scraps.
rotten or smells bad, that’s when you know
Whatever the chickens don’t take care of,
it’s time to toss it out — not just because a we feed to the worms. We keep a worm
J ill R ichardson
( copy , italics at end )
by
Several years ago, I
worked in a grocery store
bakery. At the end of each
day, we threw away piles
of perfectly good food.
Before the store closed,
employees walked down each aisle, check­
ing the expiration dates of bread, bagels, and
cookies to toss out whatever expired that
day — whether the food was actually still
good or not. Then we chucked all of the day ’ s
fresh-baked pastries, muffins, and bread.
And those were definitely still good to eat.
As employees, we weren’t allowed to take
it home and eat it ourselves. The store wor­
ried that if we could, w e’d start baking too
much on purpose in order to secure a larger
supply of excess food at the end of the day.
compost bin, one that has holes large enough
for airflow but small enough to keep rodents
out. If the chickens won’t eat something, the
worms certainly will. They turn rotting food
scraps into black gold — worm compost —
and we use it to grow strawberries, tomatoes,
and salad greens. (Gardening also helps cut
down on waste, since we can harvest highly
perishable foods like lettuce as needed.)
W hat’s more, sometimes food past its
prime is even salvageable as human food.
Stale bread makes for great bread crumbs,
overripe bananas become banana bread, and
other types of overripe fruit are best for jam s
and pies.
Wasting 40 percent of our food while so
many Americans go hungry is a national
disgrace. As the Environmental Protection
Agency puts it, we should “feed people, not
landfills.”
OtherWords columnist Jill Richardson is
the author of Recipe fo r America: Why Our
Food System Is Broken and What We Can Do
to Fix It.
The Power of a Shared Vision and Partnership
Our stronger, more
inclusive America
by
B enjamin T odd J ealous
Tw o decades ago, as a
young organizer in M issis­
sippi, I learned that there are
only two types of temporal
power: organized people and
o rg a n iz e d m oney. I also
learned that in a democracy, the people can
win every time - but only if we are organized.
Today, when I reflect back on my half­
decade at the helm of the NAACP, I am
deeply proud of what we have accomplished
together as we organized our communities.
We have abolished the death policy in
five states, defended voting rights from coast
to coast, freed multiple wrongfully incarcer­
ated people, and shrunk prison systems. We
have increased*funding for health care, de­
fended the rights of workers, held wayward
mortgage companies accountable and curbed
the school-to prison-pipeline in multiple
states. We have built powerful bridges to
help faith communities join the struggle for
marriage equality and against the scourge of
HIV, and come to the aid of our allies in the
struggles for environmental protection and
immigrants rights.
Through all this, we have dramatically
expanded the ranks of those who would
assist us in combating racial discrimination
in the streets and at the ballot box.
Five years ago, the NAACP was what it
had been for most of the past half century;
the biggest civil rights organization in the
streets. Today, we are that and also the
biggest online, on mobile and at the ballot
box as well.
All of this success is testament to the
power of our shared vision and partnership
to come together for a stronger, more inclu­
sive America.
Things could have gone a different way.
Since 2010, far-right wing extremists have
repeatedly and simultaneously attacked the
most basic civil rights protections of most
Americans. They've attacked women's rights,
b etter te the (^editor
SEI Model School
I read the Portland Observer
story about the Self Enhancement
Academy's outstanding achieve­
ments with African American stu­
dents (“Model School,” Nov. 6
issue). In the article, Tony Hopson,
president and CEO of Self En­
hancement, Inc., said the 9-year
old academy has proven itself... as
a uniquely positive force for Afri­
can-American students, and said
“it is time for more financial sup­
port for the school."
As a retired teacher who taught
in schools with diverse popula­
tions in San Francisco in the
1960s, I beg the Portland School
District to give this fine school
sufficient funding - whatever it
needs to continue and expand its
wonderful work.
Marian Drake
affirmative action, workers rights, immigra­
tion, LGBT equality, food security, health
care, and even our right to drink clean water
and breathe clean air.
One has to wonder whether their decision
to attack all of us all at once was motivated
by mere greed or by an even more devious
design to ensure that we would Balkanize as
we each retreated into a defensive posture.
However, together, we chose the coura­
geous path. We have marched forward arm
in arm, repeatedly embracing the motto of the
three musketeers: all for one, and one for all.
As a result we have passed powerful
anti racial profiling legislation in New York
City and even abolished the death penalty
in M aryland with the help o f leaders in the
LGBT community; passed marriage equal­
ity bills from coast to coast with increased
support from faith leaders and com m uni­
ties o f color; and most recently we have
built a powerful defense-and offense-for
voting rights by pulling the entire pro­
gressive fam ily together in ways incom pa­
rable in recent memory. O ccasionally, we
IJ o rth in ò ODbserUer
have even picked up new conservative
friends and allies.
Today, as I prepare to leave my position
at the NAACP, I am confident that there is
a bright future for both the Association
and the larger civil and human rights
struggle.
We may have started this century like
we started the last: fighting assaults on
our voting rights and pushing back against
attacks on our most basic civil and human
rights. N onetheless, this time we have a
distinct advantage.
We know that no m atter what happens
in the courts, every year our ability to
defend and expand civil and human rights
protections at the ballot box, in state­
houses and on city councils will increase.
M oreover, as organizers, we understand
that while the future will come no m atter
what, we have the pow er to make the
future come faster.
Benjamin Todd Jealous is the outgoing
president and chief executive officer o f the
national NAACP.
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