Welcome to day #4 of the 2024 Billion Acts Earth Day Countdown! You can visit the main campaign page here!
There is no doubt that food holds special significance to us beyond the simple necessity of it. Foods can represent love, care, family, culture, tradition, and even faith. Despite this significance, the wasting of food is a pervasive problem around the world. A shocking estimate of ⅓ of all food produced for human consumption is wasted each year.
Take Action!
· Sort-out unexpired food items that you do not want and donate to a local pantry or shelter. After, identify and volunteer with an organization in your school or community dedicated to ending food waste.
Inspiration:
After noticing high levels of both food insecurity and food waste coming from local universities and businesses, 2021 Billion Acts Awardees Nicholas Ang and Camilla Cascardo Detroit Feedback Loop. DFL is a student-run, nonprofit organization, which aims to relieve hunger in Detroit by collecting leftover, unused food from local restaurants, grocery stores, events and more. One of their newest projects involves an urban community garden that will provide fresh produce into the same existing routes.
Education:
· In some countries, around 20% of such food waste comes from problems arising during the harvesting, storing, and transporting of produce. Food waste can happen at every stage of the food-system though - including storage at markets, tossing of blemished/imperfect produce, confusion around and unnecessary disposal of un-expired foods. The collective impact of this food waste shows deficits between a food-systems ability to meet human needs and environmental sustainability.
Let us know how you joined today's call-to-action by clicking on "Make an Impact" on the right side of the screen. We also welcome you to add your own Earth month events and calls-to-action to the campaign page as well. We're on a mission to reach 1,000 acts by April 22nd!
*The resources, links, and calls-to-action in this act do not represent official endorsements of the PeaceJam Foundation.
