A Letter from the Founders: Why We Started 360 Eats

During my travels through Australia in 2015, I found myself face-to-face for the first time with a shocking reality. Behind a local grocery store on the outskirts of Melbourne was a dumpster overflowing with untouched wholesome food awaiting its demise at a local landfill. At that moment two questions I never thought I'd ask popped into my head; Why is all of this perfectly edible food being thrown away? And how on earth are we going to haul all of it home?

I had stumbled on a community of "dumpster divers" who fed themselves almost solely on the good food grocery stores had discarded. Day after day, the community of 27 ate a surplus of quality foods at virtually no cost. This experience inspired me and, as I continued my travels around the globe, I challenged myself to source a majority of my food from dumpsters.

 

What I believed would be a difficult journey soon proved to be surprisingly easy. I began to witness the extent of food waste globally and quickly realized that it is not just an isolated issue. This experience completely reshaped the way I thought about food and is what has led to my pursuit of a just and sustainable food system.

 

In 2019, I partnered with my mother, Ellen, a professional chef, and fellow food waste activist, to create a Youtube cooking show and food waste awareness project called 'Cooking With Trash". The project quickly gained traction after only a month of production and was soon picked up by networks such as NBC's Today Show, HuffPost's "This New World", 60 Second Docs, Garden Culture Magazine, and Feeding Tampa Bay.

 

Although it is crucial to bring these issues to light, it is equally important to provide solutions. Where ‘Cooking With Trash’ succeeded in raising awareness it lacked in providing a viable solution. 360 Eats is the next step in the quest to end food waste and food insecurity and it provides a simple yet effective model to help transition to a sustainable and just food system.

 

It is our mission at 360 Eats to help reshape our food system to benefit humankind as well as our environment. We hope in by doing so we can all work together to create a bright and healthy future for all.