I volunteer at a food bank, and the company that sends us our food decides what we get. Last Tuesday they sent so much produce we could not fit it all into fridges. We were trying to give away cases of the food on Wednesday, but people were turning it down because they had no place to store a case of tomatoes, or cauliflower. This was what we had left after last Wednesday’s morning give away. Not pictured the 5000lbs of watermelons, the 2500lbs of onions (those will last a lot longer).
The company that supplies us wants to move from sending shipments every other week, to once a month. This would cause even more no produce loss.
It is so frustrating to have all this food for it to go bad. Even if we got the same volume of produce, but there was variation in what it is we could give it away easier.
Edit: I posted this in a comment.
Because of bureaucracy we have to request this. If it is found out we are giving away the food to unapproved recipients we can lose all of our funding. If we give to unapproved recipients and they in turn give us prepared food to give out, that is okay.
Word got out that we were loading up my pickup with food and taking it to the homeless camps. I did get a number of them to start coming to the bank to get food. But it was easier when I could take stuff to them.
We are not allowed to simply give it out to anyone. This is not like a church pantry where all of the food is donated by the community and’s parishioners. There is government funding, as well as private businesses, which I am guessing get their money back from the government for funding this. If we could simply give it to anyone we would not be in this situation.
Naive as fuck. How old are you? I literally take unrefridgerated veggies from my neighbor (so grateful. He just doesn’t want to cook and barely sees it as food. That’s fine. I can do it.) and make stew with damned near rotten vegetables every week. And, I have a refrigerator, a place to cook, a place to hang out, and don’t have to confine my belongings to something I can carry while randomly getting kicked out of any area I’m just trying to exist in. You’re either a propaganda plant, or fucking 12 years old. Grow up. Man up. Suck less. By the way, pizza places that precook their shit before it’s ordered (like Little Caesars) are great places to dumpster dive after close of the business day. I’ve gone weeks on preservative-filled, pre-cooked pizza. Really helpful in a conservative state with no food banks you could hope to walk to without freezing to death.