Feeding the 5000 Los Angeles

FEEDING THE 5000 LOS ANGELES

11-4pm, May 4 2017 Downtown LA, Pershing Square www.feedingthe5000usa.org

What is Feeding the 5000?

There’s no shortage of fabulous food in Los Angeles. Yet every year millions of tons of it is wasted, at huge cost to our planet. Across the US, food waste accounts for one quarter of all water used. In California, that’s around 8000 million gallons a day, over half of all the water used by residents and businesses in Los Angeles county in a month.

Feeding the 5000 is a festival that celebrates the value of food, and calls on everyone to tackle food waste. It is a chance for everyone to come together, enjoy a delicious meal made from fresh, quality ingredients that would otherwise be wasted, and pledge to take food waste #offthemenu in LA.

On May 4 in Pershing Square, Feedback and partners will provide a free meal for thousands, made entirely from top quality ingredients that would otherwise have gone to waste. Feeding the 5000 events have taken place in over 40 locations around the world since the first in London’s Trafalgar Square in 2009, helping to catalyse the movement to end food waste in all its forms, whether that’s the kitchens of top restaurants, the supply chains of major grocery retailers, or the homes of each and every one of us.

In 2016, Feeding the 5000 events took place in six US cities, including Denver, NYC and DC, with the involvement of top chefs, local dignitaries and hundreds of local partners and volunteers. Feeding the 5000 LA is taking place as part of the LA Times Food Bowl festival: http://lafoodbowl.com/

What’s happening on May 4?

On May 4, thousands will gather in Pershing Square in Downtown LA from 11-4pm to feast on a delicious meal made from fresh, top quality ingredients that would otherwise go to waste. Chefs and speakers will take to the stage to talk about food waste issues, recipes and tips to try at home and fun activities for all the family will be available.

Hundreds of volunteers will be involved in sourcing, preparing and producing the food, including through gathering the ingredients and at a ‘Disco Chop’ event two days before, a party where volunteers prepare produce to the sound of music.

Who is involved in Feeding the 5000 LA?

Feedback has been hosting Feeding the 5000 events since the inaugural event in London in 2009. Their work in the US is supported by The Rockefeller Foundation.

The meal will be prepared by LA Kitchen using recovered produce sourced by Food Forward, and the event is produced and promoted with the help and collaboration of organizations fighting food waste and hunger across the city including LA Food Policy Council, Los Angeles Bureau of Sanitation, Los Angeles County Department of Public Health, Food Finders, Kiss the Ground, Waste Not Want Not Now, Hunger Action Los Angeles, So Cal 350, Fallen Fruit, Tree People, St. Francis Center, L.A. Compost, Downtown Women’s Center, Don’t Waste L.A., Swipe Out Hunger, Alma Backyard Farms and Council member Jose Huizar. Schedule of the events

Monday 1st May Gleaning, 11-12.30am – Alma Backyard Farms

Volunteers will head to Alma Backyard Farms, where the formerly incarcerated are empowered and reintegrated through programs in urban farming, food sharing with families in need and horticultural therapy. There they’ll glean fruit and vegetables to be part of the Feeding the 5000 feast.

Tuesday 2nd May

Disco Chop, 3-10pm – L.A. Kitchen

Join us to chop (fruit and veg) and bop (to the beat) at Feeding the 5000 LA’s fun-filled Disco Chop, where volunteers join the organisers to prepare the delicious ingredients for cooking the next day while dancing to some great tunes from our in-house DJ. Meet the organisers, volunteers and chefs. A great opportunity for interviews.

Wednesday 3rd May

Food preparation – L.A. Kitchen

Chef Ryan at L.A. Kitchen will lead the preparation of a delicious vegetarian pozole to feed thousands at Pershing Square the next day.

Thursday 4th May – Feeding the 5000 Los Angeles

11-4pm, Pershing Square, Downtown LA

As well as the meal for 5000, that will be served throughout the event from tents in the square, event partners will present fun, family friendly activities including: chef demonstrations, shared table school showcase by Long Bay Poly High School, composting workshops by Compost LA and Kiss the Ground, wonky veg twister, a public fruit map by Fallen Fruit, and a talk by food waste campaigner Tristram Stuart, founder of Feedback.

Spokespeople:

Tristram Stuart – Tristram is the founder of Feedback and author of ‘Waste: Uncovering the Global Food Scandal’ (2009). He held the first Feeding the 5000 in London’s Trafalgar Square in 2009 and hasn’t looked back since, campaigning across the world for action on food waste. He is Champion of the UN’s global goal on food waste, and featured in a National Geographic front cover story in 2016. Before coming to LA, Tristram will be joining Anthony Bourdain and the Rockefeller Foundation for the premier of ‘Wasted!’ a major documentary on food waste, at the Tribeca Festival on April 21st.

Robert Egger (available May 1/2nd) – Robert is the Founder and President of L.A. Kitchen, which recovers locally sourced, cosmetically imperfect fruits and vegetables to fuel a culinary arts job training program for men and women coming out of foster care and older men and women returning from incarceration. Robert pioneered this model during his 24-year tenure as the president of the DC Central Kitchen, the country’s first “community kitchen,” where food donated by hospitality businesses and farms is used to fuel its nationally recognized culinary arts job training program. Since opening in 1989, the kitchen (which is an $12-million-a- year, self-sustaining social enterprise) has produced over 35 million meals and helped 1,500 men and women gain full-time employment. Q&A

Why is food waste a problem?

Around 40% of food is wasted in the US, at an annual cost of $218 billion a year spent growing, processing, transporting, and disposing food that is never eaten (ReFED). That equates to 52 million tons of food sent to landfills annually, plus another 10 million tons that are discarded or left unharvested on farms. Food waste has grave environmental consequences: globally producing and disposing of food that is never eaten generates 3.3 billion tonnes of greenhouse gases – if it were a country, food waste would be the largest emitter after China and the USA. Waste occurs for many reasons, on farms, supply chains, in stores and in homes: a strategy to tackle food waste needs to tackle it at every level. In 2015, the US announced a national goal to reduce food waste by half by 2030, in line with the UN global goals. What’s the link between food waste and water?

It may have been a wet year in California, but that doesn’t mean we can forget about the value of water. Hidden water waste occurs by the lake-ful every day when we throw away food, due to the water used in growing it. Across the US, food waste accounts for around a quarter of all fresh water used. In California that means food waste accounts for nearly 8000 million gallons of water down the drain per day – the equivalent of running the faucet every day for 9000 years! That means California wastes in one day just under half of the water use for the entire county of Los Angeles for an entire month. And not all foods are equal when it comes to water use: a banana is worth 158 litres of water, whereas a portion of beef is 3000 litres of water.

What is being done to tackle food waste?

From the local to the national, the US food waste movement is well underway. In LA, organisations like L.A. Kitchen, Food Forward and Food Finders repurpose food that would otherwise have gone to waste by redistributing it, or producing delicious meals for people in need. L.A. Kitchen and Alma Backyard Farms also help equip previously incarcerated people, or those recovering from addictions, with skills in urban farming, professional food preparation and horticulture. Los Angeles County recently committed to sustainable waste management through Zero Waste LA, a new public private partnership designed to address the 3-million tons of waste disposed annually by businesses, consumers and residents. But in a state like California where food is abundant, work is needed to tackle food waste at its source, by preventing food going to waste in the first place. Here businesses as well as households must step up to the plate to take food waste off the menu.

What more should be done?

We are calling on Californian businesses and households to:

1. Pledging to reduce how much food they waste to help the country meet its target to halve food waste by 2030.

2. Signing up to Zero Waste LA to help make LA a modern leader in sustainable waste collection nationwide.

Across the US, meeting the goal to halve food waste by 2030 will take concerted efforts on all sides. For businesses, this starts with transparency on how much they waste, including through their supply chain as much waste occurs before food ever leaves the farm, for example due to cosmetic specifications.

For more information on any of the events please contact:

Jessica Sinclair Taylor – [email protected] - +44 7787826709

Ciara Low - [email protected] - +1 401 601 5249 www.feedingthe5000usa.org