Rube Goldberg

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rube_Goldberg 

 

Rube Goldberg
c. 1916
Born	Reuben Garrett Lucius Goldberg July 4, 1883 San Francisco, California
Died	December 7, 1970 (aged 87) New York City
Resting place	Mount Pleasant Cemetery in Hawthorne, New York
Alma mater	UC Berkeley
Occupation	Engineer, sculptor, news reporter, cartoonist
Known for	Rube Goldberg machines
Website	rubegoldberg.com

Play media

Something for Nothing (1940)

Reuben Garrett Lucius Goldberg (July 4, 1883 – December 7, 1970), known best as Rube Goldberg, was an American cartoonist, sculptor, author, engineer, and inventor.

Goldberg is best known for his popular cartoons depicting complicated gadgets performing simple tasks in indirect, convoluted ways. The cartoons led to the expression "Rube Goldberg machines" to describe similar gadgets and processes. Goldberg received many honors in his lifetime, including a Pulitzer Prize for political cartooning in 1948, the National Cartoonists Society's Gold T-Square Award in 1955, and the Banshees' Silver Lady Award in 1959. He was a founding member and first president of the National Cartoonists Society and the namesake of the Reuben Award, which the organization awards to its Cartoonist of the Year. He is the inspiration for international competitions known as Rube Goldberg Machine Contests which challenge participants to create a complicated machine to perform a simple task.

Personal life

Goldberg was born in San Francisco, California, to Jewish parents Max and Hannah (Cohen) Goldberg. He was the third of seven children, three of whom died as children; older brother Garrett, younger brother Walter, and younger sister Lillian also survived. Goldberg began tracing illustrations when he was four years old, and first took professional drawing lessons when he was 11.

Goldberg married Irma Seeman on October 17, 1916. They lived at 98 Central Park West in New York City and had sons Thomas and George. During World War II, Goldberg insisted that his sons change their surname because of the amount of hatred towards him stemming from the political nature of his cartoons. Thomas chose the surname of George, in order to honor his brother; George, wanting to keep a sense of family cohesiveness, adopted the same surname.

Career

Rube Goldberg with family, 1929

Goldberg's father was a San Francisco police and fire commissioner, who encouraged the young Reuben to pursue a career in engineering. Rube graduated from the University of California, Berkeley in 1904 with a degree in Engineering and was hired by the city of San Francisco as an engineer for the Water and Sewers Department. After six months he resigned his position with the city to join the San Francisco Chronicle where he became a sports cartoonist. The following year, he took a job with the San Francisco Bulletin, where he remained until he moved to New York City in 1907, finding employment as a cartoonist with the New York Evening Mail.

The New York Evening Mail was syndicated to the first newspaper syndicate, the McClure Newspaper Syndicate, giving Goldberg's cartoons a wider distribution, and by 1915 he was earning $25,000 per year and being billed by the paper as America's most popular cartoonist. Arthur Brisbane had offered Goldberg $2,600 per year in 1911 in an unsuccessful attempt to get him to move to William Randolph Hearst's newspaper chain, and in 1915 raised the offer to $50,000 per year. Rather than lose Goldberg to Hearst, the New York Evening Mail matched the salary offer and formed the Evening Mail Syndicate to syndicate Goldberg's cartoons nationally.

In 1916, Goldberg created a series of seven short animated films, finding humorous aspects to details of everyday life in the form of an animated newsreel. The seven films were released on these dates in 1916: May 8, The Boob Weekly; May 22, Leap Year; June 5, The Fatal Pie; Jun 19, From Kitchen Mechanic to Movie Star; July 3, Nutty News; July 17, Home Sweet Home; July 31, Losing Weight.

Goldberg was syndicated by the McNaught Syndicate from 1922 until 1934.

A prolific artist, Goldberg produced several cartoon series simultaneously, including Mike and Ike (They Look Alike), Boob McNutt, Foolish Questions, What Are You Kicking About, Telephonies, Lala Palooza, The Weekly Meeting of the Tuesday Women's Club, and the uncharacteristically serious soap-opera strip, Doc Wright, which ran for 10 months beginning January 29, 1933.

The strip that brought him lasting fame was The Inventions of Professor Lucifer Gorganzola Butts, A.K., which ran in Collier's Weekly from January 26, 1929 to December 26, 1931. In that series, Goldberg drew labeled schematics of the comically intricate "inventions" that would later bear his name. The idea for Professor Butts came from a couple of college professors he studied with (and found boring) while earning his degree from the College of Mining and Engineering at the University of California from 1901 to 1903, Samuel B Christie and Frederick Slate.

From 1938 to 1941, Goldberg drew two weekly strips for the Register and Tribune Syndicate: Brad and Dad (1939–1941) and Side Show (1938–1941).

Starting in 1938, Goldberg worked as the editorial cartoonist for the New York Sun. He won the 1948 Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartooning for a cartoon entitled "Peace Today". He moved to the New York Journal-American in 1949 and worked there until his retirement in 1963.

Cultural legacy

The popularity of Goldberg's cartoons was such that the term "Goldbergian" was in use in print by 1915, and "Rube Goldberg" by 1928. "Rube Goldberg" appeared in the Random House Dictionary of the English Language in 1966 meaning "having a fantastically complicated improvised appearance", or "deviously complex and impractical." The 1915 usage of "Goldbergian" was in reference to Goldberg's early comic strip Foolish Questions which he drew from 1909 to 1934, while later use of the terms "Goldbergian", "Rube Goldberg" and "Rube Goldberg machine" refer to the crazy inventions for which he is now best known from his strip The Inventions of Professor Lucifer Gorgonzola Butts, drawn from 1914 to 1964.

The corresponding term in the UK was, and still is, "Heath Robinson", after the English illustrator with an equal devotion to odd machinery, also portraying sequential or chain reaction elements. The Danish equivalent was the painter, author and cartoonist Robert Storm Petersen, better known under his pen name Storm P. To this day, an overly complicated and/or useless object is known as a Storm P.-machine in Denmark. 

Professor Butts and the Self-Operating Napkin (1931)

 

Goldberg's work was commemorated posthumously in 1995 with the inclusion of Rube Goldberg's Inventions, depicting his 1931 "Self-Operating Napkin" in the Comic Strip Classics series of U.S. postage stamps.

Film and television

Advertisement (1916)

 

Advertisement (1916)

 

Rube Goldberg wrote a feature film featuring his machines and sculptures called Soup to Nuts, which was released in 1930 and starred Ted Healy and the pre-Curly Howard version of The Three Stooges.

In the 1962 John Wayne movie Hatari!, an invention to catch monkeys by character Pockets, played by Red Buttons, is described as a "Rube Goldberg." 

In the late 1960s and early 70s, educational shows like Sesame Street, Vision On and The Electric Company routinely showed bits that involved Rube Goldberg devices, including the Rube Goldberg Alphabet Contraption, and the What Happens Next Machine.

Various other films and cartoons have included highly complicated machines that perform simple tasks. Among these are Flåklypa Grand Prix, Looney Tunes, Tom and Jerry, Wallace and Gromit, Pee-wee's Big Adventure, The Way Things Go, Edward Scissorhands, Back to the Future, Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, The Goonies, Gremlins, the Saw film series, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, The Cat from Outer Space, Malcolm, Hotel For Dogs, the Home Alone film series, Family Guy, American Dad!, and Waiting...

 

Also in the Final Destination film series the characters often die in Rube Goldberg-esque ways. In the film The Great Mouse Detective, the villain Ratigan attempts to kill the film's heroes, Basil of Baker Street and David Q. Dawson, with a Rube Goldberg style device. The classic video in this genre was done by the artist duo Peter Fischli & David Weiss in 1987 with their 30-minute video Der Lauf der Dinge or The Way Things Go.

Honda produced a video in 2003 called "The Cog" using many of the same principles that Fischli and Weiss had done in 1987.

In 2005, the American alternative rock/indie band The Bravery released a video for their debut single, "An Honest Mistake," which features the band performing the song in the middle of a Rube Goldberg machine. 

In 1999, an episode of The X-Files was titled "The Goldberg Variation". The episode intertwined characters FBI agents Mulder and Scully, a simple apartment super, Henry Weems (Willie Garson) and an ailing young boy, Ritchie Lupone (Shia LaBeouf) in a real-life Goldberg device.

The 2010 music video "This Too Shall Pass – RGM Version" by the rock band OK Go features a machine that, after four minutes of kinetic activity, shoots the band members in the face with paint. "RGM" presumably stands for Rube Goldberg Machine.

2012 The CBS show Elementary features a machine in its opening sequence.

2014 The Web Series, Deadbeat, on Hulu features an episode titled, "The Ghost in the Machine," which features the protagonist, Kevin, helping the ghost of Rube Goldberg complete a contraption that will bring his grandchildren together after making a collection of random items into a machine that ends up systematically injuring two of his grandchildren so they end up in the same hospital and finally meet.

Games

Both board games and video games have been inspired by Goldberg's creations, such as the 60's board game Mouse Trap, the 1990s series of The Incredible Machine games, and Crazy Machines. The Humongous Entertainment game Freddi Fish 2: The Case of the Haunted Schoolhouse involves searching for the missing pieces to a Rube Goldberg machine to complete the game. 

In 1909 Goldberg invented the "Foolish Questions" game based on his successful cartoon by the same name. The game was published in many versions from 1909 to 1934.

Rube Works: The Official Rube Goldberg Invention Game, the first game authorized by The Heirs of Rube Goldberg, was published by Unity Games (the publishing arm of Unity Technologies) in November 2013.

Upcycling

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Upcycling 

 

Upcycling, also known as creative reuse, is the process of transforming by-products, waste materials, useless, or unwanted products into new materials or products perceived to be of greater quality, such as artistic value or environmental value.

Employee at Sure We Can redemption center - Bushwick, Brooklyn - holds a piece of upcycled plastic film

Description

Upcycling is the opposite of downcycling, which is the other face of the recycling process. 

Downcycling involves converting materials and products into new materials of lesser quality. Most recycling involves converting or extracting useful materials from a product and creating a different product or material.

The terms upcycling and downcycling were first used in print in an article in SalvoNEWS by Thornton Kay quoting Reiner Pilz and published in 1994.

We talked about the impending EU Demolition Waste Streams directive. "Recycling," he said, "I call it downcycling. They smash bricks, they smash everything. What we need is upcycling, where old products are given more value, not less." He despairs of the German situation and recalls the supply of a large quantity of reclaimed woodblock from an English supplier for a contract in Nuremberg, while just down the road a load of similar block was scrapped. In the road outside his premises was the result of the Germans' demolition "waste" recycling. It was a pinky looking aggregate with pieces of handmade brick, old tiles, and discernible parts of useful old items mixed with crushed concrete. Is this the future for Europe?

Upsizing was the title of the German edition of a book about upcycling first published in English in 1998 by Gunter Pauli and given the revised title of Upcycling in 1999. The German edition was adapted to the German language and culture by Johannes F. Hartkemeyer, then Director of the Volkshochschule in Osnabrück. The concept was later incorporated by William McDonough and Michael Braungart in their 2002 book Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things. They state that the goal of upcycling is to prevent wasting potentially useful materials by making use of existing ones. This reduces the consumption of new raw materials when creating new products. Reducing the use of new raw materials can result in a reduction of energy usage, air pollution, water pollution and even greenhouse gas emissions.

This is a significant step towards regenerative design culture where the end products are cleaner, healthier, and usually have a better value than the material inputs.

For example, during the recycling process of plastics other than those used to create bottles, many different types of plastics are mixed, resulting in a hybrid. This hybrid is used in the manufacturing of plastic lumber applications. However, unlike the engineered polymer ABS which hold properties of several plastics well, recycled plastics suffer phase-separation that causes structural weakness in the final product.

In 2009, Belinda Smith from Reuters wrote that upcycling had increased in the rich countries but observed that upcycling was a necessity in poorer ones:

Supporters of the environmentally friendly practice of upcycling say people in developing countries have effectively been upcycling for years, using old packaging and clothing in new ways, although more out of need than for the environment. But upcycling is now taking off in other countries, reflecting an increased interest in eco-friendly products, particularly ones that are priced at an affordable level and proving profitable for the manufacturers. "If upcycling is going to become mainstream, then the corporate world needs to see that it can be profitable," said Albe Zakes, spokesman of U.S. company TerraCycle which specializes in finding new uses for discarded packaging. A growing number of companies are focusing on upcycling although the trend is still in its infancy with industry-wide figures yet to be produced.

Upcycling has shown significant growth across the United States and the World. For example, the number of products on Etsy, Pinterest or Upcycle Studio tagged with the word "upcycled" increased from about 7,900 in January 2010 to nearly 30,000 a year later—an increase of 275%. As of April 2013, that number stood at 263,685, an additional increase of 879%.

Material downcycling occurs when it is not economic to restore materials to their original quality, for example, when wrought aluminium alloys are melted to produce lower-grade casting alloys.  Material upcycling, in the thermodynamic sense, is only possible if even more energy is added to upgrade the material quality. Two guiding questions to ask when assessing recovering for waste materials or products are: How much energy is required to restore the recovered material back to the desired material or product?, and, How does this quantity compare with obtaining the desired material or product from virgin or primary sources? In some cases, little energy is required to reuse a discarded product, for example, secondhand clothing. In other cases, the energy required to recover the materials is more than the energy required to process virgin material.

Applications

Art

Johann Dieter Wassmann (Jeff Wassmann), Vorwarts! (Go Forward!) [sic], 1897

 

A toy from Southern Mount Hebron, on loan to Israel Museum from a private collection

The tradition of reusing found objects (objet trouvé) in mainstream art came of age sporadically through the 20th century, although it has long been a means of production in folk art. The Amish quilt, for example, came about through reapplication of salvaged fabric. Simon Rodia's Watts Towers (1921–1954) in Los Angeles exemplifies upcycling of scrap metal, pottery and broken glass on a grand scale; it consists of 17 structures, the tallest reaching over 30 meters into the Watts skyline.

Intellectually, upcycling bears some resemblance to the ready-made art of Marcel Duchamp and the Dadaists. Duchamp's "Bicycle Wheel" (1913), a front wheel and fork attached to a common stool, is among the earliest of these works, while "Fountain" (1917), a common urinal purchased at a hardware store, is arguably his best-known work. Pablo Picasso's "Bull's Head" (1942), a sculpture made from a discarded bicycle saddle and handlebars, is the Spanish painter's sly nod to the Dadaists.

Throughout the mid-century, the artist Joseph Cornell fabricated collages and boxed assemblage works from old books, found objects and ephemera. Robert Rauschenberg collected trash and disused objects, first in Morocco and later on the streets of New York, to incorporate into his art works.

The idea of consciously raising the inherent value of recycled objects as a political statement, however, rather than presenting recycled objects as a reflection or outcome from the means of production, is largely a late 20th-century concept. Romuald Hazoumé, an artist from the West African Bénin, was heralded in 2007 for his use of discarded plastic gasoline and fuel canisters to resemble traditional African masks at Documenta 12 in Kassel, Germany. Hazoumé has said of these works, "I send back to the West that which belongs to them, that is to say, the refuse of consumer society that invades us every day."

Jeff Wassmann, an American artist who has lived in Australia for the past 25 years, uses items found on beaches and junk stores in his travels to create the early Modern works of a fictional German relative, Johann Dieter Wassmann (1841–1898). In Vorwarts (Go Forward) (pictured), Wassmann uses four simple objects to depict a vision of modern man on the precarious eave of the 20th century: an early optometry chart as background, a clock spring as eye, a 19th-century Chinese bone opium spoon from the Australian gold fields as nose and an upper set of dentures found on an Australian beach as mouth. Wassmann is unusual among artists in that he does not sell his work, rather they are presented as gifts; by not allowing these works to re-enter the consumer cycle, he averts the commodification of his end product.

Max Zorn is a Dutch tape artist who creates artwork from ordinary brown packaging tape and hangs pieces on street lamps as a new form of street art at night. By adding and subtracting layers of tape on acrylic glass with a surgical scalpel, the artwork can only be visible when light is placed behind it, mimicking the effects similar to stained glass window methods. His technique with pioneering upcycling with street art has been featured at Frei-Cycle 2013, the first design fair for recycling and upcycling in Freiburg, Germany.

Music

A prominent example is the Recycled Orchestra of Cateura in Paraguay. The instruments of the orchestra are made from materials taken from the landfill of Asunción, whose name comes from the Cateura lagoon in the area. A limited part of its real history is narrated in the film Landfill Harmonic.

Industry

Many industrial processes, like plastic and electronic fabrication, rely on the consumption of finite resources. Furthermore, the waste may have an environmental impact and can affect human health. Within this context, upcycling describes the use of available and future technologies to reduce waste and resource consumption by creating a product with a higher value from waste or byproduct streams.

In consumer electronics, the process of re-manufacturing or refurbishment of second-hand products can be seen as upcycling because of the reduced energy and material consumption in contrast to new manufacturing. The re-manufactured product has a higher value than disposing or downcycling it.

The use of Brewer's spent grain, a waste product of brewing processes, as a substrate in biogas processes eliminates the need for disposal and can generate significant profit to the overall brewing process. Depending on the substrate's price, a profit of approximately 20% of the operational costs is possible. In this process, the biogas plant acts as an "upcycler".

Libraries

Roses made from upcycled library books.

 

ScrapDC led upcycling classes at the District of Columbia Public Library, more specifically their Southeast Neighborhood Library. One of their more popular projects was turning old books into boxes.

The Jerry Falwell Library at Liberty University holds an annual Creative Upcycling Contest for their students. The first contest had 44 submissions of “Art Made from Books”. These submissions were three-dimensional upcycles.

Clothes

Designers have begun to use both industrial textile waste and existing clothing as the base material for creating new fashions. Upcycling has been known to use either pre-consumer or post-consumer waste or possibly a combination of the two. Pre-consumer waste is made while in the factory, such as fabric remnants left over from cutting out patterns. Post-consumer waste refers to the finished product when it’s no longer useful to the owner, such as donated clothes.

Often, people practice linear economy where they are content to buy, use, then throw away. This system contributes to millions of kilos of textile waste being thrown away and makes fashion is the second-most polluting industry after oil. While most textiles produced are recyclable, around 85% end-up in landfills in the USA alone.

To live a sustainable life, clothing options opposite to the "throw away" attitude encouraged by fast fashion are needed. Upcycling can help with this, as it puts into practice a more circular economy model. A Circular Economy is where resources are used for as long as possible, getting the most value out of them while in use, then restored and repurposed when their use is over. Popularized by McDonough and Braungart, this has also been known as the cradle-to-cradle principle. This principle states a product should be designed either to have multiple life cycles or be biodegradable.

Food

Billions of pounds of food are wasted every year around the world, but there are ways that people reuse food and find a way to upcycle. One common method is to feed it to animals because many animals, such as pigs, will eat all the scraps given. Food waste can be donated and restaurants can save all the food customers don't eat. Donations can also be made by contacting local agricultural extension offices to find out where to donate food waste and how often and how much one can donate.

Another form of upcycling food would be to break it down and use it as energy. Engineers have found a way to break the food down into a reusable bio-fuel by pressure cooking it and then they are able to make methane out of the remains which can be used to produce electricity and heat.

When the food isn't used in those ways, another way is to just break it down and use it in compost, which will improve the soil. Many types of food waste, such as fruits, vegetables, egg shells, nuts, and nut shells, can be used in compost to enrich soil.

Design processes

Tonnes of wastes are produced every day in our cities, and some educators are attempting to raise citizens' awareness, especially the youth. To redefine the concept of recycling previously confined to trash categorization, groups of young designers have attempted to transform "trash" into potentially marketable products such as backpacks made of waste plastic bags and area rugs created by reusing hides. One relevant book published by Community Museum Project in Hong Kong in 2010, was the first experiment on upcycling systems design. Spanning across material collecting, upcycling design, local production and public dissemination, it provides proposals towards a sustainable system that will cast impact on our strategies of waste handling and energy saving.

Hong Kong local inventor Gary Chan is actively involved in designing and making 'upcycling' bikes by making use of waste materials as parts for his bikes. He invented at least 8 bikes using wastes as a majority of the materials. Gary and his partners at Wheel Thing Makers regularly collect useful wastes such as leather skin from sofas, hardwood plates of wardrobes, or rubber tires from vehicle repair stores in the waste collection station on streets.

Potential technologies

The worldwide plastic production was 280 million tons in 2011 and production levels are growing every year. Its haphazard disposal causes severe environmental damage such as the creation of the Great Pacific garbage patch.^[14] In order to solve this problem, the employment of modern technologies and processes to reuse the waste plastic as a cheap substrate is under research. The goal is to bring this material from the waste stream back into the mainstream by developing processes which will create an economic demand for them.

One approach in the field involves the conversion of waste plastics (like LDPE, PET, and HDPE) into paramagnetic, conducting microspheres or into carbon nanomaterials by applying high temperatures and chemical vapor deposition.

On a molecular level, the treatment of polymers like polypropylene or thermoplastics with electron beams (doses around 150 kGy) can increase material properties like bending strength and elasticity and provides an eco-friendly and sustainable way to upcycle them.

Active research is being carried out for the biotransformation upcycling of plastic waste (e.g., polyethylene terephthalate and polyurethane) into PHA bioplastic using bacteria.

PET could be converted into the biodegradable PHA by using a combination of temperature and microbial treatment. First it gets pyrolized at 450 °C and the resulting terephthalic acid is used as a substrate for microorganisms, which convert it finally into PHA. Similar to the aforementioned approach is the combination of nanomaterials like carbon nanotubes with powdered orange peel as a composite material. This might be used to remove synthetic dyes from wastewater.

Biotechnology companies have recently shifted focus towards the conversion of agricultural waste, or biomass, to different chemicals or commodities. One company in particular, BioTork, has signed an agreement with the State of Hawaii and the USDA to convert the unmarketable papayas in Hawaii into fish feed. As part of this Zero Waste Initiative put forth by the State of Hawaii, BioTork will upcycle the otherwise wasted biomass into a high quality, omega-rich fish feed.

Feeding America

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feeding_America 

Feeding America

Formation	1979
Founder	John van Hengel
Type	Nonprofit
Headquarters	35 East Wacker, Chicago, Illinois
Coordinates	41°53′11″N 87°37′36″W
Region served	United States
Membership	200 food banks
CEO	Claire Babineaux-Fontenot
Main organ	Board of directors
Website	www.feedingamerica.org

Feeding America is a United States–based nonprofit organization that is a nationwide network of more than 200 food banks that feed more than 46 million people through food pantries, soup kitchens, shelters, and other community-based agencies. Forbes ranks it as the second largest U.S. charity by revenue. Feeding America was known as America's Second Harvest until August 31, 2008.

History

In the late 1960s, when John van Hengel, a retired businessman in Phoenix, Arizona, began volunteering at a local soup kitchen, he began soliciting food donations for the kitchen. He ended up with far more food than the kitchen could use in its operations. Around this time, he spoke with one of the clients, who told him that she regularly fed her family with discarded items from the grocery store's garbage bins. She told him that the food quality was fine, but that there should be a place where unwanted food could be stored and later accessed by people who needed it, similar to how banks store money.

Van Hengel began to actively solicit this unwanted food from grocery stores, local gardens, and nearby produce farms. His effort led to the creation of St. Mary's Food Bank in Phoenix, the nation's first food bank.

In 1975, St. Mary's was given a federal grant to assist in developing food banks across the nation. This effort was formally incorporated into a separate non-profit organization in 1976.

In 2001, America's Second Harvest merged with Foodchain, which was the nation's largest food-rescue organization at that time.

In 2005, Feeding America began using an internal market with an artificial currency called "shares" to more rationally allocate food. Currency is allocated based on the need, and then individual banks bid on which foods they want the most, based on local knowledge and ability to transport and store the food offered. Negative prices are possible, so banks could earn shares by picking up undesirable food. The previous centrally planned system had penalized banks for refusing any food offered, even if it was the wrong type to meet their needs, and this resulted in misallocations ("sending potatoes to Idaho"), food rotted away in places that didn't need it, and the wrong types of food being delivered (e.g. not matching hot dogs with hot dog buns).

In May 2007, it was featured on American Idol, named as a charity in the Idol Gives Back charity program.

In September 2008, the organization name was changed to Feeding America.

In August 2009, Columbia Records announced that all U.S. royalties from Bob Dylan's album Christmas in the Heart would be donated to Feeding America, in perpetuity.

There has been a rise in the numbers suffering from hunger since the financial crisis of 2007–2008. In 2013, the USDA reported that about 49 million U.S. Americans were facing the condition, about one in six of the population. In September, they launched Hunger Action Month, with events planned all over the nation, to raise awareness and get more U.S. Americans involved in helping out.

In 2015, Feeding America saved more than 2 billion pounds (~907 metric tons) of food that would have been thrown away otherwise, but could instead be distributed to hungry families.

In 2018, the USDA announced that food insecurity had been steadily declining since the 2009 recession ended. In 2020, Feeding America said that there are about 11 million children suffering from hunger in the United States. Children, along with families and seniors having trouble making ends meet, are suffering the most.

Leadership

Bob Aiken was its first CEO. Matt Knott was its interim-CEO in 2015. On October 1, 2015, Diana Aviv became its second CEO. On October 1, 2018, Claire Babineaux-Fontenot became its third CEO.

Network programs

Feeding America works to educate the general public and keep them informed about hunger in America. The national office produces educational and research papers that spotlight aspects of hunger and provides information on hunger, poverty and the programs that serve vulnerable Americans. Feeding America's public policy staff works with legislators, conducting research, testifying at hearings and advocating for changes in public attitudes and laws that support Feeding America's network and those the organization serves.

In 2017, Feeding America announced a plan to increase the nutritional value of food from food banks. By 2023, the group plans to offer more fruits and vegetables, and provide training so they can distribute more produce, whole grains and lean proteins.

There are more than 200 Feeding America food banks, each of which is "notable" for the work it does in its own area. A complete and current, list is available at the Feeding America web site. These are just a few of the banks in the network:

• Alameda County Community Food Bank in Oakland, California
• Arkansas Foodbank Network in Little Rock, Arkansas
• Atlanta Community Food Bank in metro Atlanta and north Georgia
• Banco de Alimentos de Puerto Rico in Bayamón, Puerto Rico
• Care and Share Food Bank for Southern Colorado
• Capital Area Food Bank in Washington, D.C.
• Community Action Services and Food Bank in Provo, Utah
• Community Food Bank of Central Alabama in Birmingham, Alabama
• Community Food Bank of Southern Arizona in Tucson, Arizona
• Connecticut Food Bank in East Haven, Connecticut
• Feeding America San Diego in San Diego, California
• Feeding South Florida in Pembroke Park, Florida
• Feeding Tampa Bay in Tampa, Florida
• Feeding the Gulf Coast, Theodore, Alabama serving the central Gulf Coast
• Feeding America West Michigan in Grand Rapids, Michigan
• Food Bank for Larimer County in Fort Collins, Colorado
• Foodlink in Rochester, New York
• Food Bank For New York City in New York City
• Food Bank of Alaska, Inc. in Anchorage, Alaska
• Food Bank of Delaware in Delaware
• Food Lifeline in Seattle, Washington
• Forgotten Harvest in Metro Detroit
• Freestore Foodbank in Cincinnati, Ohio
• Gleaners Community Food Bank in Southeastern Michigan
• Good Shepherd Food Bank in Maine
• Greater Boston Food Bank in Boston, Massachusetts
• Greater Chicago Food Depository in Chicago, Illinois
• Harvest Hope in Columbia, South Carolina
• Hawaii Foodbank, Inc. in Honolulu, Hawaii
• Houston Food Bank in Houston, Texas
• North Texas Food Bank in Dallas, Texas
• Inter-Faith Food Shuttle in Raleigh, NC
• Philabundance in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
• Redwood Empire Food Bank in northern California
• Roadrunner Food Bank in Albuquerque, New Mexico
• Sacramento Food Bank and Family Services in Sacramento, California
• Second Harvest Food Bank of Santa Clara and San Mateo County in Silicon Valley, California
• Second Harvest Food Bank in Irvine, California
• Second Harvest Food Bank in southern Louisiana
• Second Harvest Food Bank of North Central Ohio in Lorain, Ohio
• Second Harvest Food Bank of Northeast Tennessee in Kingsport, Tennessee
• Second Harvest Inland Northwest in Spokane, Washington
• Second Harvest North Florida in Jacksonville, Florida
• St. Mary's Food Bank in Phoenix, Arizona
• Vermont Foodbank in Barre, Vermont
• Virginia Peninsula Food Bank in Hampton Roads, Virginia

Food rescue

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_rescue 

 

Food rescued from being thrown away

 

Food rescue, also called food recovery or food salvage, is the practice of gleaning edible food that would otherwise go to waste from places such as restaurants, grocery stores, produce markets, or dining facilities and distributing it to local emergency food programs.

The recovered food is edible, but often not sellable. Products that are at or past their "sell by" dates or are imperfect in any way such as a bruised apple or day-old bread are donated by grocery stores, food vendors, restaurants, and farmers markets. Other times, the food is unblemished, but restaurants may have made or ordered too much or may have good pieces of food (such as scraps of fish or meat) that are byproducts of the process of preparing foods to cook and serve. Also, food manufacturers may donate products that marginally fail quality control, or that have become short-dated.

Organizations that encourage food recovery, food rescue, sharing, gleaning and similar waste-avoidance schemes come under the umbrella of food banks, food pantries or soup kitchens.

Details

In most cases, the rescued food is being saved from being thrown into a dumpster and, ultimately, landfills or other garbage disposals. Food recovered on farms is kept from being plowed under. On farms, the donations often must be harvested, or gleaned, by volunteers. Also, to help rescue food that would otherwise be wasted, the USDA has expanded their Farm Storage Facility Loan Program. The Farm Storage Facility Loan Program helps farmers obtain low-cost loans for more farm storage so they can protect more food from becoming waste.

In the United States, businesses that source food rescue programs have received tax benefits for their donations and have been protected from liability lawsuits by the federal Emerson Good Samaritan Food Donation Act since 1996.

The benefit of many food rescue programs is they offer healthy food to those in need but who may not meet the application requirements of state food-assistance programs. Many programs also provide immediate emergency assistance, without having to wait through an application process. Food rescue organizations are less restricted by cost and availability of food, as so much edible food is thrown out and free for the taking, so eligibility requirements are generally unnecessary. This organizational model often allows food rescues to provide nutritional assistance more quickly, with more flexibility and accessibility than other types of hunger relief programs.

At the individual level, food recovery is practiced by both freegans and by dumpster divers.

Food reuse strategies

There are various ways how people and organizations can rescue food that would otherwise go to a landfill. For example, United States Environmental Protection Agency recommends the following actions 

Source reduction

Reduce the amount of food that is generated and potentially wasted. Individuals can for example make shopping lists so they don't buy more food than they really need. 

Human consumption

Organizations can donate both non-perishable and unspoiled perishable food at the end of its shelf life, e. g. to food banks, food pantries, food rescue programs, homeless shelters, and other organizations. 

Food with no expiration dates but just past the 'best by' date by a couple months rescued from going to landfill and distributed to people who needed and wanted it

Feeding animals

Many animals can eat food scraps. Some farmers, solid waste collectors and recycling centers collect discarded food. 

Chickens eating food that would otherwise end up in the garbage

Industrial uses

Anaerobic Digestion is a conversion process that converts food waste into renewable energy. Food is separated from any packaging and broken down into a more digestible state and then it is mixed with bacteria in special oxygen free holding tanks. The bacteria work to break down the food waste converting it into methane biogas which can be used to generate electricity. 

Hydrothermal Liquefaction is the process of heating food waste under high pressure, converting the food waste into an oil that can then be refined into fuel. Once the initial liquefaction is complete, the watery waste left over then goes through anaerobic digestion where the microbes break down the waste into methane and carbon dioxide biogas. This biogas can be used for heat and electricity.

It is also possible to use fats, oils, grease, and meat products for rendering and biodiesel production. 

Composting

Add remaining food waste to an existing compost. Composting has many benefits over general waste landfills, including reduced methane gas production and improving the quality of the soil. 

Countries

Australia

In Australia, OzHarvest was launched in November 2004.

Canada

Canada's Second Harvest Toronto, in operation since 1985. BC's Squamish Helping Hands Society

Israel

Food rescue charities outside of the United States include Israel's Leket Israel-The National Food Bank

New Zealand

New Zealand's first food rescue organization is Kaibosh. Operating in Wellington, it was founded in August 2008. FoodShare, provides food rescue for the city of Dunedin in the South Island of New Zealand commenced operations in March 2012. Fair Food [http://www.fairfood.org.nz) Auckland's first food rescue organisation founded in 2011, and KiwiHarvest operate in Auckland, and other organizations work in Hamilton, Tauranga, Palmerston North, and Christchurch.

Norway

A 2015 study listed 53 charitable organisations that are actively running food rescue programs in Norway. The largest donors are supermarkets (59%), followed by bakeries and other food producers. The distributors are mainly charitable organizations, mostly with a religious connection, like the Salvation Army and the Church City Mission. Most of the work is done by volunteers, without any salary. The receivers are mainly narcotic and alcohol addicts, but also include homeless, immigrants and victims of domestic violence. Most of the food is given away as prepared meals. More than one million meals are provided per year in the cities covered by the study. Other food is given away as bags of groceries.

Distribution of free food is often used as a method for charitable organizations to enter into contact with people who need help with drug abuse, psychological problems or similar. Volunteers often emphasize the importance of having spaces where users can pick up food with dignity and discretion, plus sometimes have a cup of coffee or a shower. Often, volunteers provide emotional support or help people with things unrelated to food acquisition, such as sharing work tips or helping immigrants with administrative tasks requiring knowledge of the Norwegian language.

The charities sometimes cooperate with each other by having a common food bank. This makes it easier to maintain steady supplies of diversified food to users.

Some users report that receiving free food may lead to stigmatization and thereby feelings of inferiority or social exclusion. To counter this, charities sometimes charge a low, symbolic price for the food, or offer food in exchange for participating in the work of preparing it.

Singapore

In Singapore the Foodbank Singapore is running their own Food rescue project, by collecting food excess in various places around the Islandstate.

United Kingdom

Some organizations, such as Fareshare in England, work directly with food manufacturers to minimize food wastage. In 2005 2,000 tonnes of food was saved from being wasted, This food was then redistributed to a community food network of 300 organizations. This food contributed to over 3.3 million meals to 12,000 disadvantaged people each day in 34 cities and towns across the UK.

USA

In America, numerous food rescue organizations pick up and deliver food in refrigerated trucks. Most are members of Feeding America, formerly America's Second Harvest. Recipient agencies serve people of low and no income. The EPA estimated that in 2015, the USA produced over 39 million tons of food waste.

The Society of St. Andrew is a volunteer-based gleaning nonprofit.

Some organizations, like Waste No Food, use technology to notify charities where and when excess food is available to aid in their food recovery efforts. 

Other nationally recognized food rescue organizations include City Harvest, La Soupe and Philabundance. 

A directory of food rescue organizations is maintained by Sustainable America.