THE FRIDGE ON THE CORNER: WHO IS FEEDING THE NEIGHBORHOOD?
It is seven o'clock on a Thursday evening, and Linda Moreno is standing beside a white fridge on a busy street corner, a box of vegetables in her arms. Moreno is a retired nurse who worked in a city hospital for almost forty years. Now she collects surplus* food from a local bakery and a nearby supermarket and brings it here, a job she has done twice a week for two years. Before leaving, she checks that the shelves are spotless. Moreno rarely meets the people who take the food, but her deliveries, together with those of hundreds of others, have helped to feed many families in the neighborhood.(lines 1–7)
Moreno belongs to a movement known as "community fridges." The idea is simple: a fridge is placed in a public spot, and anyone at all, not only people in need, may put food into it or take food out of it. Nobody is asked for a reason. The movement took shape in Germany in the early 2010s, when groups of young people grew angry about the huge amounts of food that shops and restaurants were throwing away. They knew they could never collect all of this food by themselves, let alone deliver it to every family in need. They therefore invited neighbors to share whatever they could not use, in fridges set up outside homes and shops. Within a few years, tons of food were saved each month.(lines 8–15)
Since then, community fridges have spread to hundreds of cities, mainly thanks to smartphones. "The phone has become the fridge's front door," says social researcher Tom Hadley. "When a volunteer fills a fridge, she can post a photo on a shared app within seconds, and everyone nearby knows what is available. Families no longer have to walk there and hope for the best; they can check what is inside before they leave home. And because almost every shop owner has a phone, a bakery can announce leftover bread at closing time, and a volunteer can collect it before it is wasted."(lines 16–22)
According to Hadley, the fridges are also changing the way local businesses see their neighbors. "Until recently, most shops simply threw their unsold food into a bin at the end of the day," he explains. "Today many of them are partners in the project. They ask how much of their food is actually eaten, and some even help to decide where the next fridge should stand. This means that organizers need new skills, such as explaining food safety rules in a way that busy shop workers will actually remember. Most new organizers pick up these skills from people who have run fridges for many years and know from experience which rules are most often forgotten. Without such people, many fridges would soon close."(lines 23–30)
Looking after a fridge can also change the volunteers themselves. Many say they now waste far less food at home and organize their shopping more carefully. Some go even further: they might, for example, ask their local council to place a fridge outside the town library, and offer to keep it clean themselves. Researchers have also asked why some volunteers stay with a fridge for years while others drop out within a month. The answer, it appears, is personal contact: volunteers who regularly hear from the families they help stay considerably longer. "Once volunteers realize that someone is waiting for that box of vegetables," explains Hadley, "they rarely give up on the project."(lines 31–38)