GOOD

TCU Donates 1,000 Pounds Of Food From Every Football Game To A Local Homeless Shelter

The American food waste problem is a major ecological and moral problem.

 Tod Perry
11.13.17

Food waste in the United States is a major ecological and moral problem. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, Americans in 2015 wasted 31% — or 133 billion pounds — of their overall food supply.

This is a tremendous waste of natural resources, contributes to climate change, and squanders food that could be saved for the country’s most vulnerable. Two years ago, the EPA decided to address the issue by announcing a new goal of reducing food waste by 50% by 2030.

The students at Texas Christian University (TCU) in Fort Worth have stepped up to meet the challenge of reducing food waste. Last spring, students organized to create the TCU Food Recovery Network. It began by donating leftover food from its dining halls to the Union Gospel Mission of Tarrant County homeless shelter. When the football season started, the group expanded its donation efforts by collecting the unused food served in the suites and club seats at each TCU home game.

The haul from their first game netted over 1,000 pounds of food for the shelter. “Everything that gets brought here gets used,” Robert Clethan, the food services director at the Union Gospel Mission, told the Star-Telegram. After the game, the food is frozen then transported to the shelter by the TCU Food Recovery Network the next day. The donations consist of delicious game-day munchies — including brisket, chicken wings, cornbread, potato salad, and cookies.

The Union Gospel Mission serves meals to about 300 people three times a day, so the food is truly a godsend. According to its website, its mission is “providing love, hope, respect and a new beginning for the homeless. We strive to end homelessness one person at [a] time.”

TCU’s efforts are a wonderful example for universities everywhere looking to reduce food waste while aiding their communities. “People really want to help out, but they don’t know how to help out sometimes,” Clethan said. “They just need to know there’s a place like this that can use things like that.”

Education

Youth activists gather to fight climate change at UN Summit: 'We need to transform anger into action'

Julian Meehan

Young leaders from around the world are gathering at the United Nations Headquarters in New York Saturday to address arguably the most urgent issue of our time. The Youth Climate Summit comes on the heels of an international strike spearheaded by Greta Thunberg, the 16-year-old climate activist from Sweden, who arrived in New York via emissions-free sailboat earlier this month.

Translated from Swedish, "berg" means "mountain," so it may feel fated that a young woman with Viking blood in her veins and summit in her name would be at the helm. But let's go out on a limb and presume Thunberg, in keeping with most activists, would chafe at the notion of pre-ordained "destiny," and rightly so. Destiny is passive — it happens to you. It's also egomaniacal. Change, on the other hand, is active; you have to fight. And it is humble. "We need to get angry and understand what is at stake," Thunberg declared. "And then we need to transform that anger into action."

This new generation of activists' most pernicious enemy is denial. The people in charge — complacent politicians and corporation heads who grossly benefit from maintaining the status quo — are buffered from real-life consequences of climate change. But millions of people don't share that privilege. For them, climate change isn't an abstract concept, but a daily state of emergency, whether it comes in the form of "prolonged drought in sub-Saharan Africa…devastating tropical storms sweeping across Southeast Asia, the Caribbean and the Pacific…[or] heatwaves and wildfires," as Amnesty International reportsare all too real problems people are facing on a regular basis.

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"We need to act right now to stop burning fossil fuels and ensure a rapid energy revolution with equity, reparations and climate justice at its heart," organizers say.

There's no doubt the visual images from the marches send a powerful message to those on the ground but especially those watching from around the world. GOOD's own Gabriel Reilich was on the scene for the largest of the Climate Strikes. Here are 18 of the best signs from the Climate Strike march in New York City.

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Woman dreams she swallowed her engagement ring and wakes up with it missing

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People often dream about their significant others and studies show it actually affects how we behave towads them the next day.

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