A citywide effort to feed hungry people with food that otherwise would be wasted will be explained Feb. 1 at the downtown Nashville Public Library.
The “Waste Not, Want Not” event is part of Vanderbilt University’s Thinking Out of the (Lunch) Box series. A limited number of box lunches will be provided on a first-come, first-served basis starting at 11:30 a.m. The program will run from noon to 1:15 p.m.
“[lquote]We waste 40 percent of our food supply even as people go hungry[/lquote],” says David Wood, the W. Alton Jones Professor of Philosophy at Vanderbilt and founder of the Thinking Out of the (Lunch) Box series. “The Nashville Food Waste Initiative [a project of the Natural Resources Defense Council, or NRDC] has chosen Nashville as a pilot city to develop initiatives and policies to address this problem.”
According to NRDC, 95 percent of the food that is thrown out ends up in a landfill, where it emits methane and contributes to global warming. If food waste could be reduced by 30 percent and the food was distributed efficiently, the needs of all 50 million food-insecure Americans could be met every day of the year. The federal government has set a national goal of reducing food waste by 50 percent by 2030.
Thinking Out of the (Lunch) Box: Conversations with a Philosophical Flavor is sponsored by Friends of the Nashville Public Library, with additional funding provided by the Kendall Berry Charitable Trust. No reservations are needed. The lunch and talk are free and open to the public. A $5 donation is suggested to help defray costs.
Participants in the “Waste Not, Want Not” discussion will include:
- Linda K. Breggin, a senior attorney with the Environmental Law Institute, adjunct professor of law at Vanderbilt, and project coordinator for the NRDC;
- Seema Prasad, proprietor of Miel Restaurant;
- Tallu Quinn, executive director of the Nashville Food Project; and
- Matthew Beadlecomb, operations manager of Compost Nashville.