If, to paraphrase Scripture, to save a life is to save the world, the Berkeley Food Pantry tries to live that lesson literally.
Here they measure success not only in the number of people they feed but also by how much food they keep from entering into the waste stream to decompose into greenhouse gases.
Operating out of two rooms at the Berkeley Friends Church, Berkeley Food Pantry, at Sacramento and Cedar streets, feeds some 2,000 people a month, or about 700 to 800 households, said director Sara Webber. Also important, added manager Amy St. George, is that over the past year, “we saved close to 500,000 pounds of food that would have gone to waste at the store.”
On a recent Wednesday, a cornucopia spread out on a table included brussels sprouts, broccoli, tuscan kale, swiss chard and other, mostly organic, greens; potatoes, sweet potatoes, eggplants, turnips, avocados, radishes, cucumbers, peppers, tomatoes; pineapples, bananas, oranges, apples and a few boxes of raspberries and strawberries.