I love this concept- Replate.
The Replate website takes that gut feeling you have- wanting to give away your leftovers to someone who needs them- and gives it a graphic identity. Hopefully this will make the concept solid enough to flow into action.
I was introduced to the related concept of Scrounging from a former Reedie. For decades, Reed College has sponsored the loosely organized practice of allowing students, identified as Scroungers, to have access to leftovers and other unwanted food from the campus cafeteria, often directly from the hands of the boarders (those offering the food).
I support Scrounging, yet have found it hard to put into practice in the real world. There is always that loaming stigma regarding food scarcity. Whether is be from the side of accepting an offer of someone’s leftover pizza, to picking up that uneaten sushi from the restaurant bus bin… I will be amazed to see the day of casual scrounging being accepted by society.
6 Comments
Thanks for passing this along! Way to be an activist. I might blog about this too.
It happens a lot in the corporate world. Executives have a meeting catered with all kinds of goodies. When they abandon the meeting, the “scavengers” come and take some of the food before the catering staff get around to carting it off.
Yeah, we do that at work too. Also with lunch leftovers.
–McAuliflower
It’s a great idea, scrounging, I think the reason why it isn’t more widely accepted by the general populice though is because of the germ scare. Everyone is so afraid of… well, cooties… just my observation. It’s especially noticable amoung the younger parents. Thanks for blogging about it!
Over twenty years ago, my husband and I went to a Portland Ethiopian restaurant with another couple. When we sat down the previous patrons plates had not yet been removed. They clearly had not been so enamored of Ethiopian food. When no one came promptly to clear the plates everyone but me started scooping up injera and stew into their mouths. I only refrained because I was pregnant with our son who graduated from Reed last year. The last two years without a meal plan, he did a lot of scrounging.
Ah funny coincidence that!
–McAuliflower
Replate certainly is interesting. I don’t think it’s all that effective, but it forces people to consider how much food they waste and whether someone else could put it to better use.
Reed College scrounging sounds like a better scheme for utilizing food that might otherwise go to waste. I’d love to hear more about this practice…
You’re dead on with your comment about the stigma surrounding eating others’ leftovers. That’s one norm that’s hard to break. But as a result, we waste so much good food.
[...] fellow students’ leftovers. The school of about 1,500 undergrads has a tradition where “scroungers” scrape together a meal from what paying students don’t [...]
