ENGLISH 2210

Analytical Report

“Saving
Restaurant Food
from Landfills
to Feed the Hungry”

Paul Douglas Irwin

Spring 2022

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 Table of Contents:

Introduction 3-5

Methodology 5-7

Results 8-19

Discussion 19-23

Conclusion 23

Appendices/Works Cited/References 24-29

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Introduction
The topic of this analytical report is the amount of good food wasted by Albuquerque

restaurants and the impacts it has on the economy, the environment and on humanity. The

country’s food resources have been diminished since the COVID outbreak in 2020 which

caused a world-wide pandemic. The Food Depot’s website (which is Northern New Mexico’s

Food Bank), mentions how the pandemic has affected the hungry in New Mexico: “1 in 3

children is at risk of hunger during the pandemic, pre-pandemic 1 in 4; and that 1 in 5 people

overall are at risk of hunger during the pandemic, pre-pandemic 1 in 6.” These statistics are

rather frightening considering the pandemic isn’t over yet. Food resources in New Mexico, and

Albuquerque in particular, have become scarce as shipping has slowed down as COVID

continues to spike.

When food becomes a necessity and people go without food, it seems paramount to help

those who need assistance when hungry. Restaurants have a history of throwing perfectly good

and edible food away in the garbage instead of giving it or selling it to their employees,

donating it to charities (such as shelters, food banks, and the homeless population), or recycling

it through companies to reduce the amount of methane, greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) being

released into our air. Chris Vogliano and Katie Brown in their article, “The State of America’s

Wasted Food and Opportunities to Make a Difference,” state that, “Greenhouse gases are at

least 25 times more potent than the carbon that is released from vehicles that are driven daily

around the world” (1201). Restaurants need to become aware of the problems generated by

throwing good food into the garbage. In a world where the environment is constantly in

endangered, it becomes prudent to try and halt any unnecessary pollution from occurring.

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Fig. 1. Other beneficial options for good and edible food being thrown away daily by

restaurants at the end of the business day/evening; including environmental, economical, and

social impacts.

(Managing Food Waste in NM Restaurants; https://www.nmrestaurants.org/food-waste-

management-restaurant/. Accessed Mar. 2022)

There is a gross amount of food waste being generated by restaurants in Albuquerque.

According to the New Mexico Recycling Coalition’s (NMRC) website “almost 40% of food in

restaurants is wasted and throw away into the garbage in the United States each year at an

annual cost of $100 billion dollars” (Managing Food Waste in NM Restaurants). Restaurants

need to become aware of the money and food being wasted by them. They need to understand

how it affects everyone and everything around them.

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 There has to be a better solution to this problem than continuing down the path this city

is taking. New Mexico leads the nation with adults and children that go hungry every day.

There is a good percent of the food insecure population within New Mexico whom are

homeless and have less options to find food because they are homeless. NMRC’s article,

“Managing Food waste in NM Restaurants,” states “close to 40,000 New Mexicans seek food

assistance on a weekly basis and more than 8% of those seeking help are homeless.” I would

like to find better ways to address this food waste situation by making restaurant owners see

there are other ways to solve their problems rather than taking the easy and simple way out by

throwing it away in the garbage (See figure 1, previous page).

My hypothesis is to find a way for the edible food being throw into the garbage and

given to those who go hungry. Can edible food be saved from the dumpster to help those in

need of food? I intend to find a way for this to happen. My mission is to save food, save our

precious environment, and save people from going hungry when the resources are right here to

help them out.

Methodology
Step 1: Develop Evaluation Criteria

I plan on researching the impact of good food going into landfills by restaurants when

so many go hungry in the state of New Mexico. I will research the following areas that become

impacted from this gross negligence of edible food going to rot instead of feeding those in need,

such as the large homeless population, not only in Albuquerque, but all over the state of New

Mexico:

 The Economic Impact of Food Waste

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  The Environmental Impact of Food Waste

 The Humanitarian/Social Impact of Food Waste

Each of these areas alone should warrant general concern by the public who cares for their

fellow human beings who go hungry on a daily basis.

Step 2: Gather Information

I will search UNM’s Zimmerman Library base for scholarly or peer-reviewed articles

about restaurant waste and the homeless and hungry population within Albuquerque’s city

limits. I will examine Google Scholar for any useful articles that may not be in the Zimmerman

Database. I will explore the vast web of Google and specifically look for city and state

publications about restaurant waste and the homeless population in need of food; and

specifically investigate any newspaper or news station reports that help with showing the dire

need of the food that is wasted by restaurants on a weekly basis. I will also search the public

library databases for anything that can help with this analytical report and make it so that it

raises the attention needed to finally do something about it.

Step 3: Study the Food Needs of the Hungry in Albuquerque

I will study and look up information relating to how much food is thrown away—by

restaurants in Albuquerque—on a daily, weekly, and yearly basis. I will find out how many

homeless—adults and children—go hungry and need assistance with food.

Step 4: Interview Restaurant Cooks/Managers/Owners

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 I will set up interviews with friends who are cooks and kitchen managers, three who

said they would agree to meet for an interview about restaurant food waste (See figure 2, next

page). I plan to talk to an owner, as well as a friend who is a restaurant general manager. I also

plan to set up interviews with them. I will design a list of important and informative questions

to ask during the interview.

Step 5: Conduct Survey of Homeless People Who Go Hungry

I will explore the busy streets of Albuquerque and talk to the homeless population to get

a better understanding of the problems of hunger they face on a daily basis. I plan on creating a

list of non-offensive questions that can be asked during the survey.

Fig. 2. Amount of food wasted in the United States per year by restaurants.

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(Managing Food Waste in NM Restaurants; https://www.nmrestaurants.org/food-waste-

management-restaurant/. Accessed Mar. 2022.)

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Results
I spent a great deal of time searching for the information I needed and wasn’t surprised

by the fact that there wasn’t much to be found. New Mexico’s poor economy doesn’t warrant

for much information that isn’t commonly known by those who should care about the amounts

of food wasted on a yearly basis.

Step 1: Criteria Evaluated

The economic impact of good food thrown away has a variety of consequences because

of restaurant food waste. Over the last 45 years of my life, I have observed how inflation works

and tends to rise when the demand for the product becomes greater. The amount of food a

region needs causes the prices of that food to go up or down depending on the need. Having so

much good food thrown away most likely causes the prices of food to inflate when the need

becomes great.

The rising cost of transportation and disposal causes those prices to go up, as well as the

extra resources it takes to keep that amount of food available for consumption, but in this case,

the lack of consuming it for hunger’s sake. Food security in Albuquerque suffers but could be

helped if restaurants were more aware of how their actions of throwing good food away impacts

everyone on a scale that is horrifying to try and understand.

The environmental impact of good food thrown away is that it takes up land to grow the

food or needed for livestock. Good food thrown into dumpsters by restaurant owners requires

even more land for the purpose of landfills. Rotting food also causes an increase in methane

gases that add to the greenhouse gases hurrying climate change at an alarming rate. Vogliano

and Brown, from the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics Foundation, concluded a research

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study and state “currently food in landfills contributes to 23% of all methane emissions in the

United States” (“The State of America’s Wasted Food and Opportunities to Make a Difference”

1201), (See figure 3, below). Wasted food in landfills also means that more land and water

resources are needed in order to keep the supply and demand up in order to supplement the

entire populations of areas with the food they need to sustain themselves on.

Fig. 3. Environmental impacts of food wasted in the United States each year.

(Preventing Wasted Food at Home; https://www.epa.gov/recycle/preventing-wasted-food-

home. Accessed Mar. 2022)

The social impact of food thrown away is becoming the divide between those who have

homes and those that do not. Restaurants callously throwing away their leftover food instead of

giving it to homeless people impacts everyone on so many levels. The National Resources

Defense Council (NRDC) released their second edition of their original 2021 report in August

of 2017. In the article, “Wasted: How America is Losing Up to 40 Percent pf its Food from

Farm to Fork to Landfill,” Dana Gunders and Jonathan Bloom state “4 to 10 percent of food

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purchased by restaurants becomes kitchen loss, both edible and inedible, before reaching the

consumer” (11). That’s is a huge loss of food wasted from the start.

The restaurant owner continues to pay higher prices for the food that brings them

profits. The people who dine in the restaurants pay increasingly higher prices for the items on

that restaurant’s menu. Truckers need to charge more for transporting goods across the country

to make up for labor and fuel costs. Farmers and livestock owners pay more for their land and

feed to keep up with the high supply and demand for needing more food to be consumed. It all

comes to a trinkling down affect from a business owner dealing with food but on very

unhumanitarian levels of consciousness.

Step 2: Information Gathered

Research for this analytical report was tedious and time consuming. The University

databases had no scholarly articles about restaurant food waste and the amount of hungry

people residing in Albuquerque, and New Mexico in general. I did manage to find an article in

the Zimmerman database on food waste and composting. States News Service’s article, “From

Fork to Farm Cafe’s Food-Waste Composting Program Keeps Leftovers Out of the Landfill,” is

about a composting company named Solutions states “It takes a year to a year and a half for

food waste to break down completely into organic compost and that food composting is

pollution prevention as well” (2).

There doesn’t seem to be an academic concern for the analysis of food waste and the

amount of hungry people going without food on a regular basis. Google scholar also had no

results for this report. The main sources of information I found for my analytical report was

through city and state agencies concerned with people going hungry. I found some scattered

news articles that were also useful on Goggle. Its dismaying to me that more information is not

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readily available to people interested in this problem that may have the solution needed to stop

restaurant food waste and help those going hungry at the same time.

Step 3: Food Needs of the Hungry in Albuquerque Studied

New Mexico has one of the poorest economies in the nation and also is a leader in

people going hungry or without the proper resources needed to eat healthy and regularly.

According to the Feeding America Website, “In New Mexico, more than 298,000 people face

hunger, and over 100,000 are children, which means 1 in 7 people go hungry and 1 in 5

children face hunger,” (See figure 4, below). The amount of people with food insecurity in

Albuquerque is frightening. It’s not only the homeless who go hungry at times, but also poor

income families and the Native population living in substandard living conditions on

reservations who are food insecure most of the times.

Fig 4. Pandemic food insecurity in New Mexico, 2020.

(New Mexico Voices for Children. Ending Childhood Food Insecurity in New Mexico;

https://www.nmvoices.org/archives/15258. Accessed Mar. 2022.)

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 Albuquerque has a huge proportion of homeless people who go hungry daily, and not

only the homeless but the general population as well. UNM’s Sustainability Studies Program’s

ABQ Stew New Mexico’s Food for Thought website’s Blog post reported “the state’s

population faces the highest rate of food insecurity in the nation” (“Lacking Food Waste

Legislation in New Mexico” 1). With so many people going hungry, it’s frightening that

something else can’t be done with the good food wasted by restaurants and provided to the less

fortunate that live in Albuquerque.

Step 4: Restaurant Cooks/Managers Interviewed

My own experience working in restaurants in California spans over three decades. I

have worked all the various positions offered in that trade industry. I have first-hand experience

with the types of waste produced in the restaurant environment. Even though there was a ten-

year gap in between my experience with working restaurants, there hasn’t been much of a

change except perhaps there is more food being wasted presently than when I last worked in the

food industry in California in the mid-2000s.

When I first started my studies, at UNM, I worked at three different restaurants spread

out from the northeast side to the northwest side. I was shocked at the procedures these

restaurants used when dealing with left-over food at the end of the night. Each restaurant threw

away edible food every single night instead of donating it or giving it to their employees. I had

the chance to meet some friends working at these restaurants who were life-long cooks and/or

kitchen managers. The restaurants that I worked for were both of Dickey’s Barbeque, and Rio

Bravo Brewing Co.

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 I choose three friends who have worked at a variety of restaurants, in Albuquerque, and

who have the experience and knowledge of the insides of the kitchens they have worked in. All

three of these cooks have the credentials I needed in order to better understand this food waste

situation considering the amount of hungry people living in Albuquerque. Each of these people

represent a wide range of the different types of setting establishments that Albuquerque has to

offer the people that live in this great city. The names of these individuals I interviewed are—

David Truman, Jake Plummer, and Tim Sanchez.

For each of my interviews that I conducted, the questions I asked were mainly about

what is done with the food after their business closes for the day/evening. The full list of

questions that I asked my interviewees can be found in Appendix B, on pages 24–25.

The first interviewee, David, has worked for over 15 years in some of Albuquerque’s

finest restaurants. He has also managed four different restaurants over his career. He has also

worked a few years for restaurants in Flagstaff, Arizona. David’s quotes explain his personal

experience with food waste, “Most of the restaurants That I’ve worked in throw away large

amounts of edible food each and every night of the week; and at times, entire storage units of

food is thrown into the garbage because a new menu comes out. Most kitchens don’t offer it to

employees because it’s a general assumption that if you give employees free benefits, then they

are more likely to steal from you. It’s a shameful act when there are so many hungry mouths in

Albuquerque.”

The second interviewee, Tim, has lived in Albuquerque his whole life and has been

cooking, for the past two decades, since he was a teenager. His family knows many prominent

other owners of local restaurants here in Albuquerque. Tim quotes explain what he has

witnessed, “I remember the very first restaurant I worked in where they threw away good food

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at the end of the night. When I found out this was the easiest way to dispose of the food. I

became saddened and outraged at the same time, considering that there are so many starving

people on the streets begging for food to live. I have risked my job countless times by giving

homeless people a bite to eat, but my conscious won’t allow me to turn them away.”

The third interviewee, Jake, has worked in multiple states including New Mexico,

Arizona, Texas, Colorado, Montana, Oregon, and West Virginia. He has been a cook, chef, and

kitchen manager in his 25+ years of experience working in the restaurant industry. Jake

describes his experience with kitchen food waste “Restaurants these days have become

heartless. In the old days not too long ago, restaurant owners fed their staff for free and helped

out the unfortunate when asking for food. I honestly don’t recall those same restaurants having

such ridiculous amounts of food like what is happening currently. I remember one kitchen

manager that threw away an entire walk-in of perfectly good food away because of the way it

was organized. Nowadays, restaurants simply take the cheapest and most convenient way out

when dealing with excess amounts of food.”

What I have gathered from my interviews is that restaurants tend to do the wrong things

with good food due to convenience, or lack of staff and resources willingly to provide the food

at the end of the night to people who are in need. Some owners refuse to help the homeless with

food handouts at the closing of the shift because they view them as less than human. Some

owners worry about their image to their paying customers and some worry about catching a

random disease from them. There are plenty of alternatives out there, such as donating it to

places where the hungry can get it or recycling it to companies that can turn it into energy or

composted for nutrient-rich soil for growing agriculturally.

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 My conclusion to these interviews is that restaurant owners need to be made aware of

just what throwing their food is doing, environmentally, economically and socially. There has

to be better solutions to this crisis, especially with Albuquerque’s, and New Mexico’s, large

population of people who don’t eat regularly or adequately enough. New legislative state laws

need to be implemented in order to help change things. Restaurant owners need to change their

tact when dealing with the homeless population and remember that we are all brothers and

sisters on this planet that need to rely on one another in order to survive the tough times we all

find ourselves in sometimes.

Step 5: Survey Taken and Questions Asked:

I conducted this survey on the streets of Albuquerque while bussing around town to do

errands. The majority of the people I asked were at the main bus depot downtown, along the

bus stops around UNM campus, the bus stops along Central/San Mateo, Central/Louisiana,

Central/Wyoming, Central/Eubank, Lomas/San Mateo, Lomas/Louisiana, Lomas/Wyoming,

Lomas/ Eubank, as well as a few other locations too.

The places I choose to conduct my surveys were places that had high concentrations of

homeless people panhandling for money or food. I asked 200 people who appeared to be

homeless, hungry and asking for money for food or food itself. I recorded no one’s real names

and the ones used here are for fictional purposes only and for the purpose of this analytical

report. Every person agreed to partake in the survey because of the severity of the issue

surrounding hunger and the homelessness in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

The purpose of this survey was to find out those who go hungry, typically the homeless

in this study, and if they approach restaurants at the end of the day/evening for food that has

been prepared and hasn’t been sold. I wanted to gauge how many restaurants refuse to give the

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food away because of the image behind being homeless. I wanted to see what the range of

excuses were and if any restaurants actually gave their food away to those who needed it

instead of taking the easy way out by throwing it in the garbage.

I asked four questions in order to make it quick and not to be offensive to anyone whom

I had partake in this survey on their own freewill. The questions I designed for this questioner

centered around restaurants wasting good and edible food and those who go hungry on a daily

basis. I wanted to know what the general reaction was to asking restaurants for food that would

otherwise be thrown into the garbage. I needed to find out if there were any restaurants that

were merciful towards the homeless population.

This becomes a question of humanity and caring for our fellow human beings. Homeless

people are people who truly don’t desire to be in the situation they find themselves in. Once

people lose their homes due to an eviction, then it becomes nearly impossible for them to get

back on their feet. People with “homes” need to remember that important fact about the

homeless and that losing everything can happen to anyone at any time. This sense of being

humanitarian to others is the basis of why I chose to ask the questions that I asked in this

survey. The main kind of questions I asked were if restaurants helped the homeless with food

when they closed. The full list of the questions can be found in Appendix A, on page 24.

The answers I received were the following:

 181 out of 200 people will ask restaurants for food when there is nowhere else to turn to

(see Appendix C, fig. 7, page 25). Only 19 said they were sick of being treated like

garbage by asking for food and would rather find some other way to feed themselves.

 One who refuses to ask restaurants for help, Tammy states, “After being told to get a life

by some 18-year-old kid for asking for something to eat, I’d rather dumpster dive than

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 feel degraded like trash!”

 148 out of 200 people ask restaurants at the end of the night for anything that is left over

(see Appendix C, fig. 8, page 26). 52 out of 200 would rather figure out some other way

to get their food. Out of the 148 who ask, only a mere 23 said that restaurants helped

them with something to eat. Among the excuses given for declining them food were:

“The owners don’t allow it,” “It’s against management policy,” “We can’t risk the

transmission of diseases,” “There’s too much drama involved trying to help you

people,” “You homeless are nothing but druggies, alcoholics, and criminals,” “You

are all filthy animals that don’t deserve help,” “All you animals do is leave garbage

everywhere you leave so get off my property before I call the police,” and “If I help

you then you may break in and rob me,” to name just a few of the reasons homeless

people say restaurants don’t help them out.

 Rick says, “It sucks, man, it just sucks. We are treated worse than animals, yet we are

still humans.”

 Jane quotes, “The only kindness I’ve received in a long, long time was from forty-

something-year-old looking woman, a waitress, who seemed to recognize that I was

starving, and snuck out a plate of food, even though she was risking her job doing so.

She was a saint to me that cold and dreary night. Makes me believe that Angels do

exist!”

 163 out of 200 people salvage food from dumpsters that they can find that aren’t locked

up; surprisingly it appears more dumpsters are locked up than unlocked to prevent

homeless people from dumpster-diving (see Appendix C, fig. 10, page 27).

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  Timothy said, “Some restaurants even go out of their way to mix the food they throw

away with their garbage, or grease/fryer oil, just so we don’t come around to get it from

their garbage bins after they close.”

 Keri says, “Once, I did find a nicely wrapped bag amidst the garbage, that had meat and

vegies individually wrapped by someone with care, considering most of the food was

intentionally mixed with rotten food and garbage. Someone made my night.”

 197 out of the 200 people feel that most restaurants are unhumanitarian when it comes

to the homeless population in Albuquerque. Most feel that the spread of Hepatitis is a

ridiculous excuse. Some agree that certain drama has ruined it for the majority but think

throwing food away is a waste (see Appendix C, fig. 11, page 27).

 Cindy quotes, “It’s a god damn shame that food goes to waste. I don’t know how many

times I’ve asked for food and only to be turned away. It saddens me and angers me that

the homeless are viewed as less than human by those that are in control and have

plenty.”

 Jerry says, “I am a human being too! I’m just down on my luck and going hungry

because of my current misfortunes. If I could wish for one thing, that would be not to

remain homeless and try to survive in a city that no longer cares for us.”

My analysis of this survey is that homelessness people in Albuquerque are treated

unfairly as if they had a choice to be on the streets in the first place. The matter of public image

remains a matter of pride among restaurant owners as they would rather throw away their food

than do the right and humanitarian deed by giving it away to the homeless. The excuses of the

restaurant’s image and risk of catching hepatitis, or some other disease, is a rather callous

viewpoint and can be easily resolved.

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 Considering that we have lived in a pandemic state of being for the last two years and

have taken precautions to avoid being in contact with COVID, the solution to wasted food

thrown away is readily available to be implemented with the owners and managers of

restaurants all over Albuquerque. Masks and gloves can be used when giving out the food to

prevent catching anything when handling the food and giving it to the homeless. The people in

charge during the closing shifts at restaurants can give the food away after they are closed, so it

doesn’t affect their image to their paying customers.

There needs to be more done with this edible food than simply taking the least profitable

way out. By turning it into garbage and creating excessive unwanted and unneeded methane gas

released into our precious atmosphere and environment, we are only polluting mother earth and

speeding up the greenhouse gases that are slowly poisoning the planet and all living creatures

upon it.

Discussion
The local issue in Albuquerque is with the vast majority of restaurants operating in

Albuquerque that waste good food and throw it away into the garbage. A pandemic still rages

across the states and food has become scarcer, as companies still wait to hire employees lost to

the economic shutdown. The rising inflation has caused the price of food to go up and has

caused more people to go hungry during this COVID crisis.

Albuquerque, and New Mexico, has one the greatest rates of hungry people in the nation

and feeding those who go hungry should be of paramount concern to those who are more

fortunate. In the New Mexico Recycling Coalitions states “Only 2% of food waste is diverted

for a beneficial use”. The blatant and negligent waste of food by restaurants doesn’t make sense

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when there are other things to do with that food being disposed of (“Managing Food Waste in

NM Restaurants”), (See figure 5, below).

Fig. 5. Food waste in the U.S. and what can be done about it.

(Managing Food Waste in NM Restaurants; https://www.nmrestaurants.org/food-waste-

management-restaurant/. Accessed Mar. 2022.)

My research indicates that there are better uses of this food than simply taking up space

in landfills. There are better uses than that food turning into toxic gases that pollute the

atmosphere, and all the life on this planet. There are so many beneficial options available; other

than the food spoiling and speeding up mother earth’s climate change. Vogliano and Brown

stated “Dan Glickman, a former Secretary of State at the USDA (United States Department of
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Agriculture), is quoted as saying, ‘I can’t tell you how shocking it is that there are 31 million

food insecure people in the richest, most abundant nation on earth, a nation that throws out over

a quarter of its food” (1204). The numbers are shocking and horrifying at the same time.

The country that supposedly leads the world in advancement actually leads in the gross

amount of food wasted. The other options that I found have very helpful ways that are

economically, environmentally, and socially beneficial to the restaurants themselves; to the

hungry people in Albuquerque; and to those who have compassion for those in need.

Restaurants have other options to do with their food at the end of the evening. There are other

places for that food to go besides it being thrown away into the dumpster. Restaurants can

become consciously aware of these other options through the generation of knowledge that is

readily made available to them. The sources that are perfect to make people become aware of

this problem can include: newspapers, television news broadcasts, brochures through the mail

and email sites, and social media engines.

The other options that I found through researching include—donating the food to

shelters and food banks; finding ways to give it to the homeless; donate it to farmers for feed

for their livestock; donate it to farmers to be composted and reconditioned into the earth to

create healthier soil for future agricultural projects; as well as donating it to companies that can

make fuel from it. The Adelante website stated “Desert Harvest rescues approximately 1.5

million meals a year, getting it to people in need to help reduce food waste and feed hungry

families in New Mexico” (“Desert Harvest Food Rescue Program”). There are so many useful

ways to do with leftover food that it seems shameful for restaurants to take at least one of the

options and help out others than just themselves.

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 The social benefits for restaurants choosing to do something else with their food include

—helping feed the hungry and less fortunate fellow human beings; a less amount of overall

food produced and then wasted; and a sense of pride in helping with food diversion programs

and making sure their access leftover food isn’t simply thrown away.

The environmental benefits include: less food being sent to landfills, attempting to

reduce any food waste at its source of problem; less harmful methane and other gases being

released into the air; a better sense of land and water conservation for future uses; as well as

creating healthy composited soils for future agricultural projects.

The economic benefits include: the possibility of food prices not inflating as high as

they do; the lowered costs of disposing of the food; the positive environmental image and

commitment that conserving food waste brings; as well as tax deductions given for donating the

food.

Restaurants can benefit from food waste by being alert to the operations of the business

itself. The solutions that I offer are just a few of the possibilities that restaurants can take

advantage of to deduce their food waste. They can watch their waste by adjusting their purchase

orders to fit the pattern of need by the customers themselves. They can manage their prepared

foods better, reuse foods in the kitchen, and cut back on the amount of food scraps created wile

prepping the food. They can develop food safety and storage procedures to prevent excess

waste and donate regularly to food banks and shelters. They can also offer it for free, or at a

discounted price, to their employees who struggle to make ends meet in an unstable economy.

CONCLUSION/
RECOMMENDATIONS

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 After my analysis, I have come to the conclusion that there is always a choice.

Restaurant owners have choices and must take on a greater responsibility to help out

themselves, others and out precious environment. The choices aren’t always clear and should be

more readily available to restaurant owners to help implement a much-needed change. Some of

the beneficial choices include—donating the food to places in need, composting it for future

agricultural need, and turning it into fuel. I would like to suggest another option that would

benefit the homeless and food-insecure in Albuquerque.

I would like to recommend a food-taxi service called “Wheels to Save Meals for the

Hungry,” that picks up the food from restaurants when they close down for the evening. The

food will then be taken safely to a commercial kitchen to be repackaged into meals. The meals

will then be transported to shelters, foodbanks, reservations, and anywhere else it can be used to

help the unfortunate and those who lack the proper resources to eat healthy, regularly, and

consistently. I would also develop the routes taken and pass out plates of food, ready to eat, to

anyone in need along those paths to other places where the food will feed the needy. This would

become a non-profit organization called, All Food is Good Food to Feed Those in Need.

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 APPENDICES
APPENDIX A: SURVEY QUESTIONS:

1. How often do you ask restaurants for food when hungry and nowhere else to

turn to?

2. Do you ask restaurants for food when they are closing up, and if so, what are

their general responses when asked?

3. When restaurant owners/managers deny you food, do you attempt to salvage

food that they throw away instead of giving to the needy?

4. What do you think about restaurants throwing away the food into their

dumpsters because they feel that giving it to the homeless may cause

unnecessary drama around their business or they are afraid of catching

hepatitis or something else that they may have?

APPENDIX B: INTERVIEW QUESTIONS:

1. What does your restaurant do with good food left over at the end of the day?

2. Does the owner /management give any food to the hungry homeless after the

last shift and the restaurant closes for the night?

3. How much food is thrown away weekly at your restaurant?

4. Does your restaurant give access food to employees or offer them the chance

to buy it at a discount?

5. What do you think about good food thrown into the garbage and into landfills

when there are other alternatives than creating unneeded methane gas harming

the atmosphere?
25
APPENDIX C: SURVEY FIGURES (CHART AND PIE

CHARTS):

Albuquerque & New Mexico

Risk of Hunger
90%
60%
30%
0%
ic ic ic ic
em em em em
a nd a nd a nd a nd
-P P P P
e g e- g
Pr rin Pr ur
in
re
n Du ul
ts
s D
i ld n d t
h re A ul
C
hi ld Ad
C

At Risk Not at Risk

Fig. 6. Amount of Albuquerque and New Mexico people facing food insecurities before and

after the COVID pandemic. Made by Paul Irwin, Mar. 2022.

Number of Homless People

that Ask Restaurants for Food
Do Ask
10% Do Not Ask

91%

Fig. 7. Humber of homeless people who ask restaurants for food when business closes. Made by

Paul Douglas Irwin, Mar. 2022.

26
 Albuquerque Homeless who ask
Restaurants for Food when they Close

Homeless who Receive Food

Homeless that ask

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100%

Fig. 8. Albuquerque homeless people who ask restaurants for help with food insecurity. Made

by Paul Douglas Irwin, Mar. 2022.

Homeless People who Received Food

(Blue) from Restaurants at the end of
the Night

16%

84%

Fig. 9. Amount of homeless people who receive food from restaurants when they close. Made

by Paul Douglas Irwin, Mar. 2022.

27
 Homeless People that Salvage or
"Dumpsterdive" for Food
19%

82%

People that do People that don't

Fig. 10. Amount of homeless people who salvage food from restaurant dumpsters when they

throw it away when closing at the end of the business day. Made by Paul Douglas Irwin, Mar.

2022.

Homeless People who think

Restaurants are Unhumanitarian to
Them

2% Do Think So
Don’t Think So

99%

Fig. 11. Amount of homeless people who think restaurants treat them inhumanly. Made by Paul

Douglas Irwin, Mar. 2022.

28
 WORKS CITED/REFERENCED
“Food Rescue.” Adelante Desert Harvest Food Rescue Program, https://goadelante.org/

community-resources/hunger-initiatives/desert-harvest-home/. Accessed 24 Mar. 2022.

“From Fork to Farm Café’s Food-Waste Composting Program Keeps Leftovers Out of the

Landfill.” States News Service, 21 Apr. 2011. Gale Academic OneFile,

link.gale.com/apps/doc/A256840187/AONE?u=albu78484&sid=ebsco&xid=9bf66e9b.

Accessed 15 Mar. 2022.

Gunders, Dana, et al. Wasted: How America Is Losing Up to 40 Percent of Its Food from Farm

to Fork to Landfill. NRDC Issue Paper, 2nd ed., 2017.

“Hunger in New Mexico.” Feeding America,

https://www.feedingamerica.org/hunger-in-america/new-mexico, 2022. Accessed 24

Mar. 2022.

“Hunger in New Mexico.” The Food Depot, Northern New Mexico’s Food Bank, 2022,

https://thefooddepot.org/hunger-in-new-mexico/. Accessed 24 Mar 2022.

“Lacking Food Waste Legislation in New Mexico.” ABQ Stew New Mexico’s Food for

Thought,

UNM Sustainability Studies Program, Apr. 2022,

https://abqstew.com/2021/04/15/lacking-food-waste-legislation-in-new-mexico/.

Accessed 24 Mar. 2022.

“Managing Food Waste in NM Restaurants.” New Mexico Restaurant Association, November

2104, https://www.nmrestaurants.org/food-waste-management-restaurant/. Accessed 24

29
 Mar. 2022.

Plummer, Jake. Personal Interview. 10 Mar 2022.

Sanchez, Tim. Personal Interview. 12 Mar 2022.

Truman, David. Personal Interview. 13 Mar 2022.

Vogliano, Chris, and Katie Brown. “The State of America’s Wasted Food and Opportunities to

Make a Difference.” Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, Elsevier, July

2016.

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