This week, Street is taking a step back from restaurant reviews and recipes to look at another aspect of the food industry: community based food initiatives, ones which feed the hungry and make food more eco-friendly. ShareUrMeal, a food blog aimed at helping the Philadelphia hungry and Green Acorn, PEG'S initiative to make restaurants more green, both add flavor to the food world in socially conscious ways.
FEEDING PHILLY, ONE PICTURE AT A TIME
Devon Segel, the founder of ShareUrMeal, launched her ambitious website, shareurmeal.com this past October. She and her team created a website dedicated to alleviating hunger in Philadelphia one picture at a time. ShareUrMeal, "a sustainable monetized micro blog," relies on hungry eaters to post pictures of their meals; each post corresponds to a donation to end hunger in Philadelphia."
After years of Pennsylvania schooling (with Muhlenberg, Drexel and Wharton under her belt) this South Jersey native calls Philly her home. When family moved across the country, she found herself calling them with her “mouth full, wishing they were [with her]” to share meals. But as technology progressed, so did her sharing techniques. What started as picture messages via her cell phone to family members soon became the seed of an idea that combined her love for food and community service. A former Red Cross employee, Devon has always been particularly aware of human devastation, but the economic downturn has focused her attention on the needs of her local community as people are “losing their kitchen tables.”
How the Site Works: Diners photograph their meal before taking the first bite. For every picture posted, a sponsor (corporations, foundations, foodies, etc) donates $1 directly to the United Way LIVE UNITED Food for Thought Initiative. The United Way then donates the funds to local charities targeted at alleviating hunger in Philadelphia.
Mission: Devon and her team hope to receive $2 million in donations alongside 2 million posts. Only 6 months in, they have raised $14,000, but the picture-snapping, hunger-ending trend seems to be catching on ...
How to Share Ur Meal: Email pictures of your food to post@shareurmeal.com with the name of the food in the subject line. Alternatively, if you have an iPhone, you can download the Share Ur Meal app.
ENVIRONMENTALLY FRIENDLY FOOD ESTABLISHMENTS IN WEST PHILLY
As campus-wide interest in sustainability grows, students are increasingly seeking to spend their money in environmentally responsible ways. Penn Environmental Group (PEG) is making it even easier for students to do so through its Green Acorn Business Certification Program. The program certifies local businesses, including eateries, as environmentally friendly based on their use of sustainable business practices, including proper waste disposal, pollution prevention, resource conservation and promotion of environmental awareness.
Restaurants and food carts looking to become certified must ensure their establishments prepare, serve and dispose of food in environmentally friendly ways. For example, food businesses must decrease waste by foregoing the use of Styrofoam containers and plastic bags, minimize single-use containers and utensils for in-house dining, minimize individually packaged items such as condiment packets, and increase recycling and composting. They must also conserve water and electricity by, for example, only running dishwashers when full, using low-flow nozzles for pre-rinsing dishes and keeping the refrigerator between 38 and 41 degrees Fahrenheit.
While these requirements may seem difficult to meet, Director of Green Acorn and PEG Executive Board Member Doug Miller said the checklist is not overly demanding. When PEG developed the program last semester, Miller devised a list of standards that he describes as “simple and realistic to implement.” “We want to get as many businesses as involved in becoming sustainable as we can and therefore keep the requirements simple and cost-free [or] low cost,” he said. Miller noted that all of the currently certified restaurants “go above and beyond [the] requirements, so they each have pursued various aims at making sustainable food purchases.”
