Every year, we feed tens of thousands of free meals and save hundreds of thousands of pounds of trash from the landfill.

Not only do we scrap materials for construction projects and to use as fuel, we also receive donations of food that was otherwise destined for the trash and give it new life!

Much of the food we get is super primo, organic, unblemished, fresh, perfectly packaged--food right off the shelves! Stores are required to throw out a percentage of their food to make way for new shipments, and much of this food is still in its prime.

We also get a lot of damaged food. We utilize the bruised or squishy produce and open packages by making compost, feeding our animals, or making homemade wine or vinegar.

It is a travesty that so many go hungry when 40% of the food produced in America is simply thrown out. Every grocery store in the US throws out literally hundreds of pounds of food a day.

We do not support this system, so we live a solution. In the States, we have arrangements with several natural stores to accept their discarded food a few times a week, and we put it to use by feeding the homeless, firemen, single mothers, and members of our extended community.

While our ambassadors were traveling in Amsterdam for Steemfest, we were interested to compare the waste situation, so @everlove and @saramiller stopped by a grocery store near their couchsurfing host's home to inquire. Their findings:

The manager told us that waste food is returned to the distributor, where it is destroyed.

We explained who we are and what we do, and politely asked if he would consider donating food towards our cause of feeding more people than ever.

Perhaps he already knew that it reflects poor values to destroy perfectly fine food, as he graciously agreed to allow us to make use of the "trash". He is not allowed to sell or donate this food, so we traded for it. We will keep him anonymous anyway.

We are grateful he made this honorable choice as we have found that almost all corporations try to keep their management from doing this in order to encourage more purchasing. Mega corps AKA make-a-corpse would rather create massive waste and allow people to starve than to miss a potential sale. That's not good enough for us!

The next morning, we returned to the store. He showed us the 13 crates of discarded food in the back, gave us 4 bags to fill, and walked away while we selected fresh bread, cheese, yogurt, meats, spreads, chocolate, and produce from the crates.

This is significantly less waste than stores produce in the US, although this was also a smaller store. 

While we were pleased to know it is less waste than we see in the States, it is still too much. How many resources were consumed in producing, packaging, distributing, marketing, and stocking this food, only for it to go un utilized? Then on top of that the mass amount of resources used to ship it back, destroy it and then dispose of that waste yet again! It is a vortex of waste many times over. That is inefficient and unsustainable!

So we create a vortex of sustainable abundance, as an embodied alternative. 

We collected a haul and put it to use to feed and serve without supporting the system.

This is what just 2 people could carry away and divert from the waste cycle!

Did someone say cheese??

We are extremely grateful that this gentleman saw the truth of the Garden of Eden and supported our mission. There's more than enough of everything! This man had the opportunity to express generosity, and he chose to share the excess rather than comply with rules that do not support mankind. We are honored to witness such integrity!

At home, we would take the time to alchemizing these ingredients into dank feasts for sharing. Here, we are guests in someone else's home and do not wish to pass the cost of fuel on to them, nor did we have time for cooking, so we distributed packaged food as it is.

We haven't seen many homeless people in Amsterdam, but we passed some that were obviously downtrodden. As we walked through the streets we offered food, and many people graciously received. Additionally, we brought food to @saramiller's yoga class and invited participants to take as much with them as they wanted for their travels.

Sharing food is a heartfelt gift that connects people across space, time, and social class. When you feed someone with love, you nourish their soul as well as their body. This is the community we seek to create, and with loving devotion we succeed at building a better world for ALL.

www.intothegardenofeden.com