Unused food in groceries be donated to food insecure people/ homeless/ churches

Food
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Almost expired food is nearly always still good a few days past the due date. The country throws away so much food. We should have fruit bearing trees in cities, we should have an abundance of food programs- open to any and everyone- essentially a large scale community food bank

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Yep. This is a largely overlooked easily done thing that for some reason isn’t done.

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Sounds good to me.

What do you think about restaurants that prepare food speculatively, and then have to throw it away if it sits for a few hours? It’s clearly food waste, but it’ll be harder to make use of it compared to groceries.

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I work in restaurant- I think it should be donated as well. I have seen so much food waste- pounds upon pounds of food since I started working in food service industry. Started with Dunkin’ Donuts when I was a teenager- bagels, muffins, EVERYTHING trash bags filled to the brim of perfectly good food.

This is important though- the community food banks should be accessible to EVERYONE- open door policy. Not like going through a process to see if you are approved- food should be available to everyone in this country…this is an easy way to do this.

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France does something like this

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Can be worked by volunteers or Community service for people who need a second chance. Food is life. Meals bring people together.

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Let’s drill down on these 2 issues (maybe France has already solved them, IDK)

  1. Some foods, once prepared, don’t stay good for long. Sure, that Little Caesar’s pizza is still edible when they have to throw it away, but it’ll be tricky to get it to a food bank in good shape.
  2. What stops people from tricking restaurants into preparing extra food and never coming to pay for it, since they can just wait at the food bank?

I want to be clear, I don’t think these problems are some kind of gotcha, I just want to know the idea is thought all the way through.

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Maybe first start with groceries- it would probably be easier to start- and for restaurants, maybe not all the food but certain foods such as bread items- these I’ve seen be thrown away the most.

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And an idea to consider- if we were able to achieve a change like this on a large scale- could it alleviate the need for government food programs like EBT? Or could we implement an idea like this into these programs?

I think it should be a large scale food bank open to anyone!

Trying to tackle prepared meals from restaurants seems way too complicated- unless it had certain regulations like just bakery goods like bread. But then packaging would be a lot. If we could just start with food from groceries I think that would be enough to make a real change.

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Oh yeah I get that. We can leave prepared restaurant food alone for now.

I absolutely agree that groceries should be donated to an open food bank. I think it would easily replace food stamps in smaller cities (Less than 100k people, a few percent food insecure, 5 or 10 grocery stores). In big cities, I don’t think it would be enough, unfortunately. Still, it would be an improvement no matter how you slice it.

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I think that by this can be achieved just by lifting existing restrictions on retailers donating out of date goods. Canned goods especially are good WELL beyond their expiration date.

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I used to work in the resturant business around the time it became illegal for them to donate their food to shelters. Remove that law making it possible to do what most were already doing. They can take it to shelter or the shelter can pick it up. Totally optional for the resturant owners. It could go to an open to public buffet manned by local persons getting a wage that is decided on by the local community weather it be volunteer, below minum wage or even a high salary, the community should decide and police it themselves. Consumers could be asked to donate to help cover the cost.

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13

I love this idea.

I just typed my own just now and I’d love to hear your thoughts and maybe we can merge them together.

What do you think?

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YES! I’m so glad to see others who agree!!

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I would love to merge these ideas together! New to this website, not sure how to or if we can attach them together somehow…

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Would be government over reach. Create tax deductions and the companies will do it voluntarily…or not. But expecting the federal government to force it be done through legislation is over reach

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I submitted a merge so that way they both support each other. This is such a crucial need for America right now. I totally agree with you.

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In my proposal that’s exactly how I outlined it. Tax incentives and also a liability protection to promote participation.

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Why is this not practiced now? Legal issues if someone gets sick from the food?

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Nice idea. I think this is something that should be community lead (by someone like you!) instead of a government program. I think in general we need more citizen-driven initiatives and this would be a great example of one that could and should be done.

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