ENGLISH 2210

Analytical Report

“Saving
Restaurant Food
from Landfills
to Feed the Hungry”

Paul Douglas Irwin

Spring 2022

1
 Table of Contents:

Introduction .............................................................................. 3-5

Methodology ............................................................................. 5-7

Results ................................................................................... 8-19

Discussion ............................................................................ 19-23

Conclusion ................................................................................ 23

Appendices/Works Cited/References ................................... 24-29

2
Introduction

The topic of this analytical report is the amount of good food wasted by Albuquerque

restaurants and the impacts it has on the economy, the environment and on humanity. The

country’s food resources have been diminished since the COVID outbreak in 2020 which caused

a world-wide pandemic. The Food Depot’s, Northern New Mexico’s Food Bank, website, it

mentions how the pandemic has affected the hungry in New Mexico, by stating, “1 in 3 children

is at risk of hunger during the pandemic, pre-pandemic 1 in 4; and that 1 in 5 people overall are

at risk of hunger during the pandemic, pre-pandemic 1 in 6.” These statistics are rather

frightening considering the pandemic isn’t over yet. Food resources in New Mexico, and

Albuquerque in particular, have become scarce as shipping has slowed down as COVID

continues to spike.

When food becomes a necessity and people go without food, it seems paramount to help

those who need assistance when hungry. Restaurants have a history of throwing perfectly good

and edible food away in the garbage instead of giving it or selling it to their employees, donating

it to charities (such as shelters, food banks, and the homeless population), or recycling it through

companies to reduce the amount of methane, greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) being released

into our air. According to Chris Vogliano and Katie Brown’s article, “The State of America’s

Wasted Food and Opportunities to Make a Difference,” states that, “Greenhouse gases are at

least 25 times more potent than the carbon that is released from vehicles that are driven daily

around the world” (1201). Restaurants need to become aware of the problems generated by

throwing good food into the garbage. In a world where the environment is constantly in

endangered, it becomes prudent to try and halt any unnecessary pollution from occurring.

3
Fig. 1. Other beneficial options for good and edible food being thrown away daily by restaurants

at the end of the business day/evening; including environmental, economical, and social impacts.

(Managing Food Waste in NM Restaurants; https://www.nmrestaurants.org/food-waste-

management-restaurant/. Accessed Mar. 2022)

There is a gross amount of food waste being generated by restaurants in Albuquerque.

The New Mexico Recycling Coalition’s (NMRC) website’s PDF article, “Managing Food Waste

in NM Restaurants,” states the fact that, “almost 40% of food in restaurants is wasted and throw

away into the garbage in the United States each year at an annual cost of $100 billion dollars.”

Restaurants need to become aware of the money and food being wasted by them. They need to

understand how it affects everyone and everything around them.

There has to be a better solution to this problem than continuing down the path this city is

taking. New Mexico leads the nation with adults and children that go hungry on every day, and

4
with the size of Albuquerque’s population, this problem needs to be solved if we really do care

about our fellow human being. NMRC’s website PDF article, “Managing Food waste in NM

Restaurants,” stated that, “close to 40,000 New Mexicans seek food assistance on a weekly basis

and more than 8% of those seeking help are homeless.” I would like to find better ways to

address this food waste situation by making restaurant owners see there are other ways to solve

their problems rather than taking the easy and simple way out by throwing it away in the garbage

(See figure 1, previous page).

My hypothesis is to find a way for the edible food being throw into the garbage and given

to those who go hungry. Can edible food be saved from the dumpster to help those in need of

food? I intend to find a way for this to happen. My mission is to save food, save our precious

environment, and save people from going hungry when the resources are right here to help them

out.

Methodology
Step 1: Develop Evaluation Criteria

I plan on researching the impact of good food going into landfills by restaurants when so

many go hungry in the state of New Mexico. I will research the following areas that become

impacted from this gross negligence of edible food going to rot instead of feeding those in need,

such as the large homeless population, not only in Albuquerque, but all over the state of New

Mexico:

• The Economic Impact of Food Wasted

• The Environmental Impact of Food Wasted

• The Humanitarian/Social Impact of Food Wasted

5
Each of these areas alone should warrant general concern by the public who cares for their fellow

human beings who go hungry on a daily basis.

Step 2: Gather Information

I will search UNM’s Zimmerman Library base for scholarly or peer-reviewed articles

about restaurant waste and the homeless and hungry population within Albuquerque’s city limits.

I will examine Google Scholar for any useful articles that may not be in the Zimmerman

Database. I will explore the vast web of Google and specifically look for city and state

publications about restaurant waste and the homeless population in need of food; and specifically

investigate any newspaper or news station reports that help with showing the dire need of the

food that is wasted by restaurants on a weekly basis. I will also search the public library

databases for anything that can help with this analytical report and make it so that it raises the

attention needed to finally do something about it.

Step 3: Study the Food Needs of the Hungry in Albuquerque

I will study and look up information relating to how much food is thrown away—by

restaurants in Albuquerque—on a daily, weekly, and yearly basis. I will find out how many

homeless—adults and children—go hungry and need assistance with food.

Step 4: Interview Restaurant Cooks/Managers/Owners

I will set up interviews with friends who are cooks and kitchen managers, three who said

they would agree to meet for an interview about restaurant food waste (See figure 2, next page). I

6
plan to talk to an owner, as well as a friend who is a restaurant general manager. I also plan to set

up interviews with them. I will design a list of important and informative questions to ask during

the interview.

Step 5: Conduct Survey of Homeless People Who Go Hungry

I will explore the busy streets of Albuquerque and talk to the homeless population to get a

better understanding of the problems of hunger they face on a daily basis. I plan on creating a list

of non-offensive questions that can be asked during the survey.

Fig. 2. Amount of food wasted in the United States per year by restaurants.

(Managing Food Waste in NM Restaurants; https://www.nmrestaurants.org/food-waste-

management-restaurant/. Accessed Mar. 2022.)

7
Results
I spent a great deal of time searching for the information I needed and wasn’t surprised

by the fact that there wasn’t much to be found. New Mexico’s poor economy doesn’t warrant for

much information that isn’t commonly known by those who should care about the amounts of

food wasted on a yearly basis.

Step 1: Criteria Evaluated:

The economic impact of good food thrown away has a variety of consequences because

of restaurant food waste. Over the last 45 years of my life, I have observed how inflation works

and tends to rise when the demand for the product becomes greater. The amount of food a region

needs causes the prices of that food to go up or down depending on the need. Having so much

good food thrown away most likely causes the prices of food to inflate when the need becomes

great.

The rising cost of transportation and disposal causes those prices to go up, as well as the

extra resources it takes to keep that amount of food available for consumption, but in this case,

the lack of consuming it for hunger’s sake. Food security in Albuquerque suffers but could be

helped if restaurants were more aware of how their actions of throwing good food away impacts

everyone on a scale that is horrifying to try and understand.

The environmental impact of good food thrown away is that it takes up land to grow the

food or needed for livestock. Good food thrown into dumpsters by restaurant owners requires

even more land for the purpose of landfills. Rotting food also causes an increase in methane

gases that add to the greenhouse gases hurrying climate change at an alarming rate. In Vogliano

and Brown’s article, “The State of America’s Wasted Food and Opportunities to Make a

8
Difference,” they stated that, “currently food in landfills contributes to 23% of all methane

emissions in the United States” (1201), (See figure 3, below). Wasted food in landfills also

means that more land and water resources are needed in order to keep the supply and demand up

in order to supplement the entire populations of areas with the food they need to sustain

themselves on.

Fig. 3. Environmental impacts of food wasted in the United States each year.

(Preventing Wasted Food at Home; https://www.epa.gov/recycle/preventing-wasted-food-home.

Accessed Mar. 2022)

The social impact of food thrown away is becoming the divide between those who have

homes and those that do not. Restaurants callously throwing away their leftover food instead of

giving it to homeless people impacts everyone on so many levels. The National Resources

Defense Council (NRDC) released their second edition of their original 2021 report in August of

2017. In the article, “Wasted: How America is Losing Up to 40 Percent pf its Food from Farm to

Fork to Landfill,” Dana Gunders and Jonathan Bloom state that, “4 to 10 percent of food

9
purchased by restaurants becomes kitchen loss, both edible and inedible, before reaching the

consumer” (11). That’s is a huge loss of food wasted from the start.

The restaurant owner continues to pay higher prices for the food that brings them profits.

The people who dine in the restaurants pay increasingly higher prices for the items on that

restaurant’s menu. Truckers need to charge more for transporting goods across the country to

make up for labor and fuel costs. Farmers and livestock owners pay more for their land and feed

to keep up with the high supply and demand for needing more food to be consumed. It all comes

to a trinkling down affect from a business owner dealing with food but on very unhumanitarian

levels of consciousness.

Step 2: Information Gathered:

Research for this analytical report was tedious and time consuming. The University

databases had no scholarly articles about restaurant food waste and the amount of hungry people

residing in Albuquerque, and New Mexico in general. I did manage to find an article in the

Zimmerman database on food waste and composting. States News Service’s article, “From Fork

to Farm Cafe’s Food-Waste Composting Program Keeps Leftovers Out of the Landfill,” is about

a composting company, named Solutions, and stated, “It takes a year to a year and a half for food

waste to break down completely into organic compost and that food composting is pollution

prevention as well” (2).

There doesn’t seem to be an academic concern for the analysis of food waste and the

amount of hungry people going without food on a regular basis. Google scholar also had no

results for this report. The main sources of information I found for my analytical report was

through city and state agencies concerned with people going hungry. I found some scattered

news articles that were also useful on Goggle. Its dismaying to me that more information is not

10
readily available to people interested in this problem that may have the solution needed to stop

restaurant food waste and help those going hungry at the same time.

Step 3: Food Needs of the Hungry in Albuquerque Studied:

New Mexico has one of the poorest economies in the nation and also is a leader in people

going hungry or without the proper resources needed to eat healthy and regularly. According to

the Feeding America Website, “In New Mexico, more than 298,000 people face hunger, and over

100,000 are children, which means 1 in 7 people go hungry and 1 in 5 children face hunger,”

(See figure 4, below). The amount of people with food insecurity in Albuquerque is frightening.

It’s not only the homeless who go hungry at times, but also poor income families and the Native

population living in substandard living conditions on reservations who are food insecure most of

the times.

Fig 4. Pandemic food insecurity in New Mexico, 2020.

(New Mexico Voices for Children. Ending Childhood Food Insecurity in New Mexico;

https://www.nmvoices.org/archives/15258. Accessed Mar. 2022.)

11
 Albuquerque has a huge proportion of homeless people who go hungry daily. UNM’s

Sustainability Studies Program’s ABQ Stew New Mexico’s Food for Thought website’s Blog

post, “Lacking Food Waste Legislation in New Mexico,” reported that, “the state’s population

faces the highest rate of food insecurity in the nation.” With so many people going hungry, it’s

frightening that something else can’t be done with the good food wasted by restaurants and

provided to the less fortunate that live in Albuquerque.

Step 4: Restaurant Cooks/Managers Interviewed:

My own experience working in restaurants in California spans over three decades. I have

worked all the various positions offered in that trade industry. I have first-hand experience with

the types of waste produced in the restaurant environment. Even though there was a ten-year gap

in between my experience with working restaurants, there hasn’t been much of a change except

perhaps there is more food being wasted presently than when I last worked in the food industry

in California in the mid-2000s.

When I first started my studies, at UNM, I worked at three different restaurants spread

out from the northeast side to the northwest side. I was shocked at the procedures these

restaurants used when dealing with left-over food at the end of the night. Each restaurant threw

away edible food every single night instead of donating it or giving it to their employees. I had

the chance to meet some friends working at these restaurants who were life-long cooks and/or

kitchen managers. The restaurants that I worked for were both of Dickey’s Barbeque, and Rio

Bravo brewing Co.

I choose three friends who have worked at a variety of restaurants, in Albuquerque, and

who have the experience and knowledge of the insides of the kitchens they have worked in. All

12
three of these cooks have the credentials I needed in order to better understand this food waste

situation considering the amount of hungry people living in Albuquerque. Each of these people

represent a wide range of the different types of setting establishments that Albuquerque has to

offer the people that live in this great city. The names of these individuals I interviewed are—

David Truman, Jake Plummer, and Tim Sanchez.

For each of my interviews that I conducted, the questions I asked were mainly about what

is done with the food after their business closes for the day/evening. The full list of questions that

I asked my interviewees can be found in Appendix B, on pages 24–25.

The first interviewee, David, has worked for over 15 years in some of Albuquerque’s

finest restaurants. He has also managed four different restaurants over his career. He has also

worked a few years for restaurants in Flagstaff, Arizona. David explains, “Most of the

restaurants that I have worked for throws away huge amounts of good food on a daily and

weekly business. The kitchens I have managed, it’s a general policy to give a meal at a

discounted price, but they rarely give excess food to the employees who loyally work for them.

The biggest excuse for this is that owners believe if they give food to their employees, then they

are more likely to steal from you. It’s a shameful way to act, considering how many needy there

are living in Albuquerque. I have personally seen new kitchen managers empty out an entire

walk-in of food to make way for their new menu and recipes to be used. All of it thrown into the

dumpsters instead of being better used.”

The second interviewee, Tim, has lived in Albuquerque his whole life and has been

cooking, for the past two decades, since he was a teenager. His family knows many prominent

other owners of local restaurants here in Albuquerque. Tim quotes, “I remember the very first

restaurant I worked for, in the westside, where they threw away food, at the end of each shift,

13
into the garbage bins out back. I asked the manager why they do that when there are people

across the street begging for food because they are starving. The response given to me was that is

way the easiest and cheapest way to dispose of the food. Most owners that I have worked for

simply don’t care and worry only about their image and the profits to be made. It’s truly sad for

me to see and wish more would find other alternative solutions to this problem. I have broken the

rules on more than one occasion, and risking my job doing so, and have given homeless people

in need some food that would have otherwise been wasted.”

The third interviewee, Jake, has worked in multiple states including New Mexico,

Arizona, Texas, Colorado, Montana, Oregon, and West Virginia. He has been a cook, chef, and

kitchen manager in his 25+ years of experience working in the restaurant industry. Jake says,

“Ha, the biggest employee discount that I have received in the past fifteen years was a free meal,

but it excluded most of the specialty items on the menu. Restaurants these days don’t know about

taking care of their employees and their families as well. In the old days, owners were more

aware of families in need and would help their employees make sure they were well fed. Not

only that, but food waste in the old days was so much leaner than it is now. One owner I worked

for, here in Albuquerque, hired a new kitchen manager who threw the entire walk-in’s contents

because of the way it was organized. She refused to use/reuse any of it, give it to any of the

employees, or even donate it. It was absolutely ridiculous to fill up an entire trash container with

meat and vegetables that the owner estimated to be around a 22k loss worth of perfectly edible

and good food. Not all restaurants were as and as that, but so many waste huge amounts of food

out of convenience and taking the easier and cheaper way out of dealing with the problem.”

What I have gathered from my interviews is that restaurants tend to do the wrong things

with good food due to convenience, or lack of staff and resources willingly to provide the food at

14
the end of the night to people who are in need. Some owners refuse to help the homeless with

food handouts at the closing of the shift because they view them as less than human. Some

owners worry about their image to their paying customers and some worry about catching a

random disease from them. There are plenty of alternatives out there, such as donating it to

places where the hungry can get it or recycling it to companies that can turn it into energy or

composted for nutrient-rich soil for growing agriculturally.

My conclusion to these interviews is that restaurant owners need to be made aware of just

what throwing their food is doing, environmentally, economically and socially. There has to be

better solutions to this crisis, especially with Albuquerque’s, and New Mexico’s, large

population of people who don’t eat regularly or adequately enough. New legislative state laws

need to be implemented in order to help change things. Restaurant owners need to change their

tact when dealing with the homeless population and remember that we are all brothers and sisters

on this planet that need to rely on one another in order to survive the tough times we all find

ourselves in sometimes.

Step 5: Survey Taken and Questions Asked:

I conducted this survey on the streets of Albuquerque while bussing around town to do

errands. The majority of the people I asked were at the main bus depot downtown, along the bus

stops around UNM campus, the bus stops along Central/San Mateo, Central/Louisiana,

Central/Wyoming, Central/Eubank, Lomas/San Mateo, Lomas/Louisiana, Lomas/Wyoming,

Lomas/ Eubank, as well as a few other locations too.

The places I choose to conduct my surveys were places that had high concentrations of

homeless people panhandling for money or food. I asked 200 people who appeared to be

homeless, hungry and asking for money for food or food itself. I recorded no one’s real names

15
and the ones used here are for fictional purposes only and for the purpose of this analytical

report. Every person agreed to partake in the survey because of the severity of the issue

surrounding hunger and the homelessness in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

The purpose of this survey was to find out those who go hungry, typically the homeless

in this study, and if they approach restaurants at the end of the day/evening for food that has been

prepared and hasn’t been sold. I wanted to gauge how many restaurants refuse to give the food

away because of the image behind being homeless. I wanted to see what the range of excuses

were and if any restaurants actually gave their food away to those who needed it instead of

taking the easy way out by throwing it in the garbage.

I asked four questions in order to make it quick and not to be offensive to anyone whom I

had partake in this survey on their own freewill. The questions I designed for this questioner

centered around restaurants wasting good and edible food and those who go hungry on a daily

basis. I wanted to know what the general reaction was to asking restaurants for food that would

otherwise be thrown into the garbage. I needed to find out if there were any restaurants that were

merciful towards the homeless population.

This becomes a question of humanity and caring for our fellow human beings. Homeless

people are people who truly don’t desire to be in the situation they find themselves in. Once

people lose their homes due to an eviction, then it becomes nearly impossible for them to get

back on their feet. People with “homes” need to remember that important fact about the homeless

and that losing everything can happen to anyone at any time. This sense of being humanitarian to

others is the basis of why I chose to ask the questions that I asked in this survey. The main kind

of questions I asked were if restaurants helped the homeless with food when they closed. The full

list of the questions can be found in Appendix A, on page 24.

16
 The answers I received were the following:

• 181 out of 200 people will ask restaurants for food when there is nowhere else to turn to

(see Appendix C, fig. 7, page 25). Only 19 said they were sick of being treated like

garbage by asking for food and would rather find some other way to feed themselves.

• One who refuses to ask restaurants for help, Tammy states, “After being told to get a life

by some 18-year-old kid for asking for something to eat, I’d rather dumpster dive than

feel degraded like trash!”

• 148 out of 200 people ask restaurants at the end of the night for anything that is left over

(see Appendix C, fig. 8, page 26). 52 out of 200 would rather figure out some other way

to get their food. Out of the 148 who ask, only a mere 23 said that restaurants helped

them with something to eat. Among the excuses given for declining them food were:

“The owners don’t allow it,” “It’s against management policy,” “We can’t risk the

transmission of diseases,” “There’s too much drama involved trying to help you

people,” “You homeless are nothing but druggies, alcoholics, and criminals,” “You

are all filthy animals that don’t deserve help,” “All you animals do is leave garbage

everywhere you leave so get off my property before I call the police,” and “If I help

you then you may break in and rob me,” to name just a few of the reasons homeless

people say restaurants don’t help them out.

• Rick says, “It sucks, man, it just sucks. We are treated worse than animals, yet we are still

humans.”

• Jane quotes, “The only kindness I’ve received in a long, long time was from forty-

something-year-old looking woman, a waitress, who seemed to recognize that I was

17
 starving, and snuck out a plate of food, even though she was risking her job doing so. She

was a saint to me that cold and dreary night. Makes me believe that Angels do exist!”

• 163 out of 200 people salvage food from dumpsters that they can find that aren’t locked

up; surprisingly it appears more dumpsters are locked up than unlocked to prevent

homeless people from dumpster-diving (see Appendix C, fig. 10, page 27).

• Timothy said, “Some restaurants even go out of their way to mix the food they throw

away with their garbage, or grease/fryer oil, just so we don’t come around to get it from

their garbage bins after they close.”

• Keri says, “Once, I did find a nicely wrapped bag amidst the garbage, that had meat and

vegies individually wrapped by someone with care, considering most of the food was

intentionally mixed with rotten food and garbage. Someone made my night.”

• 197 out of the 200 people feel that most restaurants are unhumanitarian when it comes to

the homeless population in Albuquerque. Most feel that the spread of Hepatitis is a

ridiculous excuse. Some agree that certain drama has ruined it for the majority but think

throwing food away is a waste (see Appendix C, fig. 11, page 27).

• Cindy quotes, “It’s a god damn shame that food goes to waste. I don’t know how many

times I’ve asked for food and only to be turned away. It saddens me and angers me that

the homeless are viewed as less than human by those that are in control and have plenty.”

• Jerry says, “I am a human being too! I’m just down on my luck and going hungry

because of my current misfortunes. If I could wish for one thing, that would be not to

remain homeless and try to survive in a city that no longer cares for us.”

My analysis of this survey is that homelessness people in Albuquerque are treated

unfairly as if they had a choice to be on the streets in the first place. The matter of public image

18
remains a matter of pride among restaurant owners as they would rather throw away their food

than do the right and humanitarian deed by giving it away to the homeless. The excuses of the

restaurant’s image and risk of catching hepatitis, or some other disease, is a rather callous

viewpoint and can be easily resolved.

Considering that we have lived in a pandemic state of being for the last two years and

have taken precautions to avoid being in contact with COVID, the solution to wasted food

thrown away is readily available to be implemented with the owners and managers of restaurants

all over Albuquerque. Masks and gloves can be used when giving out the food to prevent

catching anything when handling the food and giving it to the homeless. The people in charge

during the closing shifts at restaurants can give the food away after they are closed, so it doesn’t

affect their image to their paying customers.

There needs to be more done with this edible food than simply taking the least profitable

way out. By turning it into garbage and creating excessive unwanted and unneeded methane gas

released into our precious atmosphere and environment, we are only polluting mother earth and

speeding up the greenhouse gases that are slowly poisoning the planet and all living creatures

upon it.

Discussion
The local issue in Albuquerque is with the vast majority of restaurants operating in

Albuquerque that waste good food and throw it away into the garbage. A pandemic still rages

across the states and food has become scarcer, as companies still wait to hire employees lost to

the economic shutdown. The rising inflation has caused the price of food to go up and has caused

more people to go hungry during this COVID crisis.

19
 Albuquerque, and New Mexico, has one the greatest rates of hungry people in the nation

and feeding those who go hungry should be of paramount concern to those who are more

fortunate. In the New Mexico Recycling Coalitions web PDF article, “Managing Food Waste in

NM Restaurants,” it states that, “Only 2% of food waste is diverted for a beneficial use”. The

blatant and negligent waste of food by restaurants doesn’t make sense when there are other

things to do with that food being disposed of (See figure 5, below).

Fig. 5. Food waste in the U.S. and what can be done about it.

(Managing Food Waste in NM Restaurants; https://www.nmrestaurants.org/food-waste-

management-restaurant/. Accessed Mar. 2022.)

20
 My research indicates that there are better uses of this food than simply taking up space

in landfills. There are better uses than that food turning into toxic gases that pollute the

atmosphere, and all the life on this planet. There are so many beneficial options available; other

than the food spoiling and speeding up mother earth’s climate change. Vogliano and Brown

mentioned in their article that, “Dan Glickman, a former Secretary of State at the USDA (United

States Department of Agriculture), is quoted as saying, ‘I can’t tell you how shocking it is that

there are 31 million food insecure people in the richest, most abundant nation on earth, a nation

that throws out over a quarter of its food” (1204). The numbers are shocking and horrifying at

the same time.

The country that supposedly leads the world in advancement actually leads in the gross

amount of food wasted. The other options that I found have very helpful ways that are

economically, environmentally, and socially beneficial to the restaurants themselves; to the

hungry people in Albuquerque; and to those who have compassion for those in need.

Restaurants have other options to do with their food at the end of the evening. There are other

places for that food to go besides it being thrown away into the dumpster. Restaurants can

become consciously aware of these other options through the generation of knowledge that is

readily made available to them. The sources that are perfect to make people become aware of

this problem can include: newspapers, television news broadcasts, brochures through the mail

and email sites, and social media engines.

The other options that I found through researching include—donating the food to shelters

and food banks; finding ways to give it to the homeless; donate it to farmers for feed for their

livestock; donate it to farmers to be composted and reconditioned into the earth to create

healthier soil for future agricultural projects; as well as donating it to companies that can make

21
fuel from it. On the Adelante website, the Desert Harvest Food Rescue Program states that,

“Desert Harvest rescues approximately 1.5 million meals a year, getting it to people in need to

help reduce food waste and feed hungry families in New Mexico.” There are so many useful

ways to do with leftover food that it seems shameful for restaurants to take at least one of the

options and help out others than just themselves.

The social benefits for restaurants choosing to do something else with their food

include—helping feed the hungry and less fortunate fellow human beings; a less amount of

overall food produced and then wasted; and a sense of pride in helping with food diversion

programs and making sure their access leftover food isn’t simply thrown away.

The environmental benefits include: less food being sent to landfills, attempting to reduce

any food waste at its source of problem; less harmful methane and other gases being released

into the air; a better sense of land and water conservation for future uses; as well as creating

healthy composited soils for future agricultural projects.

The economic benefits include: the possibility of food prices not inflating as high as they

do; the lowered costs of disposing of the food; the positive environmental image and

commitment that conserving food waste brings; as well as tax deductions given for donating the

food.

Restaurants can benefit from food waste by being alert to the operations of the business

itself. The solutions that I offer are just a few of the possibilities that restaurants can take

advantage of to deduce their food waste. They can watch their waste by adjusting their purchase

orders to fit the pattern of need by the customers themselves. They can manage their prepared

foods better, reuse foods in the kitchen, and cut back on the amount of food scraps created wile

prepping the food. They can develop food safety and storage procedures to prevent excess waste

22
and donate regularly to food banks and shelters. They can also offer it for free, or at a discounted

price, to their employees who struggle to make ends meet in an unstable economy.

CONCLUSION/
RECOMMENDATIONS
After my analysis, I have come to the conclusion that there is always a choice. Restaurant

owners have choices and must take on a greater responsibility to help out themselves, others and

out precious environment. The choices aren’t always clear and should be more readily available

to restaurant owners to help implement a much-needed change. Some of the beneficial choices

include—donating the food to places in need, composting it for future agricultural need, and

turning it into fuel. I would like to suggest another option that would benefit the homeless and

food-insecure in Albuquerque.

I would like to recommend a food-taxi service called “Wheels to Save Meals for the

Hungry,” that picks up the food from restaurants when they close down for the evening. The

food will then be taken safely to a commercial kitchen to be repackaged into meals. The meals

will then be transported to shelters, foodbanks, reservations, and anywhere else it can be used to

help the unfortunate and those who lack the proper resources to eat healthy, regularly, and

consistently. I would also develop the routes taken and pass out plates of food, ready to eat, to

anyone in need along those paths to other places where the food will feed the needy. This would

become a non-profit organization called, All Food is Good Food to Feed Those in Need.

23
 APPENDICES
APPENDIX A: SURVEY QUESTIONS:

1. How often do you ask restaurants for food when hungry and nowhere else to

turn to?

2. Do you ask restaurants for food when they are closing up, and if so, what are

their general responses when asked?

3. When restaurant owners/managers deny you food, do you attempt to salvage

food that they throw away instead of giving to the needy?

4. What do you think about restaurants throwing away the food into their

dumpsters because they feel that giving it to the homeless may cause

unnecessary drama around their business or they are afraid of catching

hepatitis or something else that they may have?

APPENDIX B: INTERVIEW QUESTIONS:

1. What does your restaurant do with good food left over at the end of the day?

2. Does the owner /management give any food to the hungry homeless after the

last shift and the restaurant closes for the night?

3. How much food is thrown away weekly at your restaurant?

4. Does your restaurant give access food to employees or offer them the chance to

buy it at a discount?

24
 5. What do you think about good food thrown into the garbage and into landfills

when there are other alternatives than creating unneeded methane gas harming

the atmosphere?

APPENDIX C: SURVEY FIGURES (CHART AND PIE CHARTS):

Albuquerque & New Mexico

Risk of Hunger
100%
80%
60%
40%
20%
0%
Children Pre-Pandemic Children During Adults Pre-Pandemic Adults During
Pandemic Pandemic

At Risk Not at Risk

Fig. 6. Amount of Albuquerque and New Mexico people facing food insecurities before and after

the COVID pandemic. Made by Paul Irwin, Mar. 2022.

Number of Homless People

that Ask Restaurants for Food

10%
Do Ask
90% Do Not Ask

Fig. 7. Humber of homeless people who ask restaurants for food when business closes. Made by

Paul Douglas Irwin, Mar. 2022.

25
 Albuquerque Homeless who ask
Restaurants for Food when they Close

Homeless who Receive Food

Homeless that ask

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100%

Fig. 8. Albuquerque homeless people who ask restaurants for help with food insecurity. Made by

Paul Douglas Irwin, Mar. 2022.

Homeless People who Received Food

(Blue) from Restaurants at the end of
the Night

16%

84%

Fig. 9. Amount of homeless people who receive food from restaurants when they close. Made by

Paul Douglas Irwin, Mar. 2022.

26
 Homeless People that Salvage or
"Dumpsterdive" for Food
19%

81%

People that do People that don't

Fig. 10. Amount of homeless people who salvage food from restaurant dumpsters when they

throw it away when closing at the end of the business day. Made by Paul Douglas Irwin, Mar.

2022.

Homeless People who think

Restaurants are Unhumanitarian to
Them

2%

Do Think So
Don’t Think So
98%

Fig. 11. Amount of homeless people who think restaurants treat them inhumanly. Made by Paul

Douglas Irwin, Mar. 2022.

27
WORKS CITED/REFERENCED
“Food Rescue.” Adelante Desert Harvest Food Rescue Program, https://goadelante.org/

community-resources/hunger-initiatives/desert-harvest-home/. Accessed 24 Mar. 2022.

“From Fork to Farm Café’s Food-Waste Composting Program Keeps Leftovers Out of the

Landfill.” States News Service, 21 Apr. 2011. Gale Academic OneFile,

link.gale.com/apps/doc/A256840187/AONE?u=albu78484&sid=ebsco&xid=9bf66e9b.

Accessed 15 Mar. 2022.

Gunders, Dana, et al. Wasted: How America Is Losing Up to 40 Percent of Its Food from Farm

to Fork to Landfill. NRDC Issue Paper, 2nd ed., 2017.

“Hunger in New Mexico.” Feeding America,

https://www.feedingamerica.org/hunger-in-america/new-mexico, 2022. Accessed 24

Mar. 2022.

“Hunger in New Mexico.” The Food Depot, Northern New Mexico’s Food Bank, 2022,

https://thefooddepot.org/hunger-in-new-mexico/. Accessed 24 Mar 2022.

“Lacking Food Waste Legislation in New Mexico.” ABQ Stew New Mexico’s Food for Thought,

UNM Sustainability Studies Program, Apr. 2022,

https://abqstew.com/2021/04/15/lacking-food-waste-legislation-in-new-mexico/.

Accessed 24 Mar. 2022.

“Managing Food Waste in NM Restaurants.” New Mexico Restaurant Association, November

2104, https://www.nmrestaurants.org/food-waste-management-restaurant/. Accessed 24

Mar. 2022.

Plummer, Jake. Personal Interview. 10 Mar 2022.

28
Sanchez, Tim. Personal Interview. 12 Mar 2022.

Truman, David. Personal Interview. 13 Mar 2022.

Vogliano, Chris, and Katie Brown. “The State of America’s Wasted Food and Opportunities to

Make a Difference.” Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, Elsevier, July

2016.

29