Reminder: this subreddit is meant to be a place free of excessive cynicism, negativity and bitterness. Toxic attitudes are not welcome here.

All Negative comments will be removed and will possibly result in a ban.

I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.

I find it disturbing to see how much food is thrown away as any dumpster diver could attest to. How to distribute it safely is an economic and logistic problem that is tough to solve.

Good luck with that.

.

I used to work at a distribution center unloading trucks for Meijer (large grocery store). If any of the packages were damaged at ALL, they were to be documented and thrown away. So. Much. Food. Other goods, too.

One day we had a large order of diapers. The packages were damaged, but the diapers were fine. It was like, 100 diapers. I overheard my coworker saying that his wife had just had a baby and they could really use those, but he didn’t want to risk being fired.

It's only a problem because many believe that food security isn't a right, but that maximizing profit is.

The problem for Republican politicians is that if you give poor people a reason to vote, they won't support having all their money transfered into the pockets of the wealthy patrons who back the Republican party

I work in the Produce industry. The amount of pointless waste is disgusting. We have major grocery store chains throw out entire truck loads of produce because bags are not labeled correctly or the wrong size sent. They won't let you resell the product or a lot of times they won't let it even get sent to food banks (even though we send it there anyway) because they don't want their private label "hitting the street".

[removed]

Not uplifting at all.

The greatest flaw of capitalism is that we an excess of food and shelter that is thrown away or unused while people go hungry and homeless.

Best before dates are stupid.

That’s all I have to offer.

Lol, no

ctrl+f subsidy, subsidized, no hits. If you want to get rid of food waste the west is going to have to stop subsidizing their farmers so farmers in the developing world are competitive and the food can be grown and distributed closer to where it is consumed. "Entrepreneurs" aren't looking to solve the problem, they're looking to make a buck. That's how capitalism works

Poor people don’t vote in Florida because the incumbent Republican Party make damn sure they don’t vote. Poor people in NYC do vote because Democratic politicians don’t have a motivation to stop them

https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2021-nyc-mayoral-analysis/?leadSource=uverify%20wall

"Hitting the street"

Might as well not beat around the bush and say "out of poor people's hands, because fuck the poor"

Keeping that food out of the dumpsters is just going to starve more homeless people to death.

Also, Good Samaritan laws are a thing! People defend big companies on the grounds that “they’ll get sued if the food is bad” but there are laws preventing that.

The issue has, since the agricultural revolution, become an issue of distribution, not production. We could easily feed the world twice over at current production. Getting the food from farm to plate is the hard part.

In terms of climate, when food is grown, but then wasted, you've also burned fossil fuels to make fertilizer and transport the food, as well as possibly emitted methane during the growing of the food and its decomposition in a landfill. So waste reduction can have some real knock-on benefits in addition to feeding people, and be a part of how we lower overall emissions

Nope. They are beholden to the big companies causing the hunger and climate change. It's industries causing the latter, and they are not paying living wages. Lawmakers only write laws that benefit them, and these big companies will stall any attempts at laws that could hurt their bottom lines.

You are right, unfortunately, companies that profit from tossing food will pretend that their hands are tied.

Damn those politicians who stymied you.

Problem is that Good Samaritan laws don't protect all the time. Gross negligence is still grounds for a lawsuit, and expecting minimum wage employees to exercise dutiful care and not be negligent is still a big risk to businesses.