In this winter of our discontent, with upwards of 12 percent unemployed throughout Southern California, businesses are keeping an optimistic front for the brave new world of 2010.
Holiday parties are still taking place, albeit on a modest scale. And out-of-towners are preparing for their flights to Los Angeles International, Bob Hope and the other airports. Southern California will be welcome relief for the thousands of visitors to the Rose Bowl game between Ohio State and Oregon, the iconic Rose Parade and all the other tourist destinations.
During this time, chances are that the 88 percent of us who are still working will attend one or more get-togethers at an L.A. restaurant with our friends, family or some of those out-of-towners from all over the United States.
While driving on the streets to that restaurant, you may see someone who lives within the confines of a bus shelter. There are at least three who have permanently staked out locations near the Beverly Boulevard entrance to the Grove in the Fairfax district. Yet every section of Los Angeles has these street denizens who become all too familiar to us as we motor along on our regular routes.
With Los Angeles now the homeless capital of the United States with 85,000 living on our streets, and with an unprecedented increase of 43 percent in demand for food at the Los Angeles Regional Food Bank, the Westside Food Bank and the Orange County Food Bank, there is something so simple, and so magical, that each one of us can do as we dine out at the hundreds of great restaurants throughout Southern California.
At the end of the meal, diners have become quite familiar with the following exchange: “Are you done with your plate?” If you say, “Yes,” then the uneaten portions are tossed away. Discarding of residential, restaurant and catering food is the biggest single source of waste in our landfills as nearly 6 million tons of food are thrown away annually in our state, according to a 2004 study by the California Environmental Protection Agency.
Or, you may say to the waitress, “No, just wrap it up in a doggy bag.”
Delightful detour
In that case, there is a delightful detour to consider in lieu of taking that food back to your refrigerator.
On your way home, you’ll probably see that fellow Angeleno huddling under some tarp or home-staking within a cardboard box. Deliver your own curbside kindness by handing that doggy bag of warm cuisine to that person who has lost all hope in mankind. You’ll be surprised by the lift it will give him or her, and simultaneously, what it will do to you. They may turn you down, which is perfectly fine. But this small gift can work wonders toward rekindling their spirits and yours.
Now multiply that simple act by 100,000, and you’ve got a movement toward reducing the pressures on our stressed non-profit agencies that are struggling to address food insecurity throughout Southern California.
Strategically addressing this disconnect in discarding, a most common-sense piece of legislation was introduced in December 2008. State Sen. Jenny Oropeza, D-Long Beach, introduced SB 35, which would create a statewide Food Donation Database for restaurants and caterers, and the non-profits willing to accept consumable food instead of discarding it.
“There is simply too much perfectly good food being wasted in California,” she stated.
Currently, SB 35 is in the Senate suspense file, which is where pending legislation lands when the cost of its enactment will exceed $150,000.
In the meantime, each of us has the public power now to deliver a do-gooder doggy bag from our holiday restaurant dinner to help fill a stomach of someone in desperate need while filling our heart.
John T. Boal is a co-author of “Chicken Soup for the Volunteer’s Soul,” and the author of “Be a Global Force of One! … In Your Hometown.” He lives in Burbank.
