Food For Thought

Yesterday I saw a documentary about a family in New York trying to survive for 1 year making as little impact on the environment as possible. It was titled "No Impact Man". The show was interesting as one follows the family's journey of creating less waste (garbage), minimizing fossil fuel transportation, eliminating chemical cleaners and even doing laundry in the bathtub and finally turning off the electricity. A bit overboard to make a point but a bold experiment nonetheless.

Then last night I saw 4 chefs on The Food Network compete to create a meal for 100 people by using food that was tossed in the trash but actually still viable for consumption. I saw the chefs dumpster dive, drive off to produce and chicken farms and explore meat purveyors where products are tossed in the trash in enormous numbers due to blemishes, non-uniform sizes and for other silly reasons. The chefs then created a meal and were judged for the best tasting one. When finished, all 4 chefs agreed that they need to take a second look at how they purchase food products for their restaurants as they agreed that they were guilty of only wanting the best looking food from which to cook.

This morning I put together a post on our company site about recycling and repurposing of electronic products (such as laptops, cell phones, etc.), the new law in Illinois that does not allow these items in landfills and how we are participating in helping connect the dots with retailers and consumers in this effort. We provide the package for consumers in which they send to a recycling center for their old laptop which hopefully gets a second life somewhere else. Anyways, that's a story for another time.

The point I want to make (and thanks for your patience here) is how we can combine the Food Network effort, The No Impact Man experiment and the recycling/repurposing project in some sense. What if we take the idea of capturing the food waste (as in the Food Network special), hire people who are out of work, and create a food kitchen or restaurant where the menu depends on the products attained?

In this effort, we're taking the tossed food products ("food waste"), out of work people ("worker waste") and creating an enterprise that repurposes these resources. I understand we need a restaurant, some cash, permits and such but we have an idea here with a viable outcome. We can also offer a payable menu and a free one for those unable to pay (or they pay through working for us).

I'm not looking for "Top Chef" staff, or "Whole Foods" products or a big name restaurant where you wait forever for a reservation. Maybe just a good meal with quality food made and served by people who just want to work and get back some self respect in a crummy economy. Who knows, it could turn into a chain of restaurants.

What's on your plate?

Every Day's Different.

- Chuck