A FRIDGE FOR EVERYONE
Walk past a supermarket after closing time, and you may see bags of food waiting for the garbage truck. Much of it is perfectly fine: yesterday's bread, slightly marked apples, unsold1 salads. Sam Ortiz, a cook in a small neighborhood restaurant, saw this every night, and it hurt him. To him, throwing away good food was wasteful2. In 2016, he managed to turn those leftovers into free meals for his neighbors.(lines 1–5)
His idea came from books. On his way to work, Ortiz walked past little wooden boxes where people left books for others to take. There was one outside the local library and a few more in front of schools. Why not do the same with food? Ortiz put an old fridge on the sidewalk by his restaurant and painted "Always Open" on its door. The name was a promise: anyone could come at any hour, day or night. At first, most of the food inside was cooked in his own kitchen, and only people in the neighborhood knew about it.(lines 6–11)
In 2018, the city copied him and set up ten fridges in parks and community centers. Back then, they collected about 300 kilos of food a week. Now there are over 40 fridges, and people fill them with more than two tons of food every week. Bread and fresh vegetables arrive more often than anything else. "Everyone knows these foods go bad3 in a day or two," says food researcher Anna Kowalski, "and nobody likes throwing good food away, so they bring it here."(lines 12–16)
Kowalski has noticed that young and old users treat the fridges differently. "Older people think of a fridge as something you give to," she says. "They bring soup or a cake, but rarely take anything. For many younger people, giving and taking are both normal, and they feel no embarrassment4 about it. Students are a good example. When the month begins, they often drop off5 food they will not finish. Then, when rent and books have eaten up all their money, the same students may open the fridge in search of a free dinner."(lines 17–23)
However, a shared fridge can also be dangerous. Food that is left inside for too long can cause serious illness, especially in young children and elderly people. Inspectors in one city opened 25 fridges and discovered old milk or meat in nearly half of them. That is why many fridges now have a volunteer who comes by each evening to throw out anything that has expired6 or looks unsafe.(lines 24–28)
To find a fridge, people can download FridgeMap, a free city app. The map changes every hour, Kowalski explains. "It shows you where there is food right now, which helps if you are hungry. And if you have cooked too much, it can send you to a fridge nearby with empty space."(lines 29–32)