Ricardo Miranda Zúñiga

Structural Patterns

Reflections on Art, Technology and Society

Archive for November, 2011

Interview with Joel Berg, Segment 1 – On Food Waste

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This past week, Brooke and I met with Joel Berg, director of the New York City Coalition Against Hunger and author of All You Can Eat, How Hungry Is America. We sought out Berg, because we’re collaborating on a food reclamation project with Spanish artist Jose Luis Bongore for a residency and exhibition at El Ranchito.

The goal of the project is to introduce mobile carts to food vendors in Madrid where they will place food that will otherwise be discarded as trash. Due to the high level of unemployment in Spain, dumpster diving is not uncommon. The desire is to present a system that will facilitate the reclamation of discarded food.

Here in NYC, Brooke and I have been researching food waste from supermarkets and in general the systems in place to salvage food. Questions we’ve been asking include: What goes to organization such as City Harvest? What stores participate in food redistribution? What becomes landfill leading to methane and greenhouse gas? So we decided to consult an expert. Joel Berg has devoted much of his career to eradicating hunger in the United States. We asked him if food reclamation at the supermarket level is a worthwhile endeavor. Below is the initial sequence from our interview. Shortly I will post more edits.

Written by ricardo

November 12th, 2011 at 7:30 pm