Most people see expiration dates as the end, but for Will Dittmar, they’re just the beginning.
“We waste enough food to fill Oracle Stadium on a daily basis. It’s unforgivable,” he said.
The Executive Director of an organization called Extra Food, Dittmar collects groceries from supermarkets in San Francisco that would otherwise head to the landfill and delivers them to local nonprofits and pantries.
About a third of the U.S. food supply goes uneaten. When it rots in landfills, it produces methane gas.
California now requires all supermarkets to give away food that is still fit to eat, rather than throw it away.
Now organizations like Dittmar’s are getting a boost from the state agency CalRecycle, which recently granted more than $2 million to the city’s Environment Department.
The goal is to rescue food that’s still fit to eat but has passed its sell by date. But Dittmar said many companies are dragging their feet.
“There has to be effective enforcement on the back end to make sure that there’s the carrot and the stick,” he said.
Alexa Kielty, the Zero Waste Coordinator at San Francisco’s Environment Department, said the city is giving businesses until the end of the year to comply with the law.
“You don’t want to rush it because what you’re going to end up with is organizations receiving food that may not be as fresh as we’d like it to be,” she explained.
On a sunny July morning, Dittmar delivered produce, meats and baked goods to the Derek Silva Community, a nonprofit that helps people living with HIV and other disabilities.
The food was a godsend to resident Vicente Macias, who’s been HIV+ positive since 1989. One of the few survivors of his group of 30 friends, his only income is $1,300 a month from social security.
“In the Supermarket those kinds of things they are very, very expensive. So, for me this is glory,” he said.
At the end of the day Dittmar was able to rescue more than 300 pounds of food, filling bellies instead of landfills.
“We have the food we need to feed more people we just have to waste less,” he said.
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