CNN Hero: Gary Oppenheimer Gathers Excess Produce For Food Pantries

Gary Oppenheimer saw a big problem. Lots of food is thrown out in American every year -- and we don't mean a dump truck full, we mean lots Estimates are in the tens of billions -- the University of Utah estimates 28 billion pounds while AmpleHarvest.org puts the number at 100 billion. Either way, that's far too much.

So, Oppenheimer looked around his community and saw an obvious solution. Give farmers and gardeners with extra produce a way to use it -- donate it to a local food bank.

Honored as a CNN Hero, Oppenheimer's idea was perfectly simple, but it's made a huge impact on his community.

WATCH:

Organizations such as AmpleHarvest.org are popping up all over America to help solve the problem of wasted food. We previously profiled Food Forward, a nonprofit that utilizes volunteers to pick extra fruit, right out of people's backyards.

Comments

[Gary Oppenheimer]

09:56 AM on 05/25/2010

Just as a point of clarification.... the 100 billion pounds of lost food that AmpleHarvest.org quotes comes from the New York Times (see http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2008/05/18/weekinreview/18martin-popup.html)

As someone else wrote, agree with the number or not, a lot of food *is* lost.

You can help diminish that by encouraging a local food pantry to register at AmpleHarvest.org (http://www.ampleharvest.org/reg-pantry.php - its free) or encouraging your gardener friends to donate their excess garden crop to a pantry (post the flier at http://www.ampleharvest.org/InformingTheGardener.php around your community).

The AmpleHarvest.org campaign diminish hunger in America when it enables people to help their neighbors by reaching into their backyards instead of their back pockets.

[cassierwilliams]

01:41 AM on 05/24/2010

this is seriously one of the most vile and reprehensible problems facing our world, and the US is the largest perpetrator. we gotta continue exposing this stuff so that more of us can become more conscious of what we're using and what we're throwin' away

[Kiabell04]

03:59 PM on 05/22/2010

Our country is very wasteful, and it's utterly disgusting to see how many people are hungry yet these large corporations refuse to even donate the uneaten or unused foods. Publix Kroger are pretty big offenders

[prdamericanmom]

12:31 PM on 05/23/2010

I was just going to say... The amounts of food that are thrown out are shameful. How hard is it to make a phone call to a food bank and say, "Hey, we have to throw out X amount of food each night. Would you be willing to bring a truck over to pick it up?" The food banks are in dire need right now and it's sad to see so much go to waste.

[SickHippie]

06:59 PM on 05/23/2010

Kroger? The Kroger who owns Fred Meyer? The same Fred Meyer that donates almost all of its out of date goods to our local food bank here? Breads, produce, even milk?

[majordump]

10:58 PM on 05/21/2010

You ever read any Nietzsche? Nietzsche says there's two kinds of people in the world: people who are destined for greatness like Walt Disney... and Hitler.

Then there's the rest of us, he called us "the bungled and the botched." We get teased. We sometimes get close to greatness, but we never get there. We're the expendable masses. We get pushed in front of trains, take poison aspirin, get gunned down in Dairy Queens

[theryan]

08:36 AM on 05/22/2010

You have been waiting quite some time to use that quote, eh? I feel as though it is a little missplaced, though very well done.