Por Joyell Nevins<\/p>\n
Ever wonder where the leftover lunch items from your kids\u2019 school cafeteria goes? In the San Diego Unified School District (SDUSD), those last few hamburger patties from Roosevelt Middle or single breadsticks from McKinley Elementary no longer end up in a trash can. Thanks to the program \u201cLove Food, Not Waste,\u201d that extra food is being passed on to organizations fighting food insecurity.<\/p>\n
From its pilot start in September 2016, to full district incorporation in 2017, to now, 482,799 pounds of food have been kept out of the landfill. Rather than contributing to methane gas and climate change \u2014 that amount of food waste would have produced over 262,000 pounds of carbon emissions \u2014 that leftover food instead helped provide more than 402,000 meals to local folks in need.<\/p>\n
Staging a food rescue<\/strong><\/p>\n It started with \u201cChef Bob\u201d Brody, a SDUSD Food & Nutrition Services program specialist, who was concerned about the large amount of prepared food that was being wasted on a district level. So, he started a \u201cfood rescue\u201d initiative with his team.<\/p>\n \u201cWe don\u2019t always know what the students are going to eat,\u201d he said, explaining why it can be hard for food service workers to gauge the amount of food to prepare for a daily meal period. And if there was only a small amount left, like three peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, the excess food wasn\u2019t enough to carry over until the next day.<\/p>\n He also discovered that the amounts of food left over by many of the small schools, such as Dailard Elementary, wasn\u2019t enough to warrant a food relief charity making a trip to pick it up. But what happens when food waste is combined from the various school cafeterias?<\/p>\n \u201cBetween [that] little school, and this little school, that\u2019s a lot of food,\u201d Brody said.<\/p>\n The next question was how to get the extra food out of the school and into the kitchens of those who are feeding the needy. Brody and his team realized that there was already a process of delivery drivers in place bringing food products to the school on a regular basis. Now, those trucks just take the food waste out of the school when they leave, and bring it back to the cluster hubs.<\/p>\n \u201cIt doesn\u2019t cost us anything extra,\u201d Brody said. \u201cWe\u2019ve taken the process and increased its usability.\u201d<\/p>\n Actually, the process is saving the district money, Brody notes. Seeing how much is left over from certain meals is helping individual schools\u2019 food services budget their food amounts. Brody said he has seen a reduction in overall food costs and purchases since the institution of Love Food, Not Waste.<\/p>\n \u201cWe produce less, we buy less, and we see more revenue,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n From a cluster to a charity<\/strong><\/p>\n Now, once the food is at these cluster kitchens, how can it logistically get to charities that are feeding the hungry? Enter Feeding San Diego and its CEO Vince Hall.<\/p>\n \u201cThis [program] wouldn\u2019t happen if we didn\u2019t have a partner like Vince,\u201d SDUSD Food & Nutrition Services Director Gary Petill declared.<\/p>\n The massive hunger relief organization provides food and resources to a network of more than 260 neighborhood partners, serving approximately 63,000 people each week. Hall works with Food & Nutrition Services and the Feeding San Diego staff to take SDUSD\u2019s compiled extra food and distribute it in that existing network.<\/p>\n \u201cThey make the process feasible,\u201d Hall said of SDUSD\u2019s cluster concept.<\/p>\n Hall and Brody aren\u2019t the only ones appreciating this new way of sustainability. Brody notes that the individual school cafeteria employees have jumped on board as well.<\/p>\n \u201cThey bought right into the system. They know we\u2019re doing the right thing for the right reasons,\u201d Brody said. He laughed about the most common response he received, which was \u201cwell, it\u2019s about time!\u201d<\/p>\n \u2014 Se puede contactar a la escritora independiente Joyell Nevins en joyellc@gmail.com<\/a>. Tambi\u00e9n puedes seguir su blog Small World, Big God en swbgblog.wordpress.com<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" By Joyell Nevins Ever wonder where the leftover lunch items from your kids\u2019 school cafeteria goes? In the San Diego Unified School District (SDUSD), those last few hamburger patties from Roosevelt Middle or single breadsticks from McKinley Elementary no longer end up in a trash can. Thanks to the program \u201cLove Food, Not Waste,\u201d that […]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":826,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"11555","_seopress_titles_title":"San Diego Unified program fights food insecurity","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[11547,11551,11555],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-254438","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-features","category-news","category-uptown-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254438","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/826"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=254438"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254438\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=254438"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=254438"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=254438"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}