Meet Monday: Henry Nelson
Genevieve Pilch | Staff Photographer
Henry Nelson practices freeganism, which focuses on reclaiming food and conserving waste. He learned about the practice by working with Fair Foods Inc. in Boston.
Henry Nelson was first exposed to the practice of freeganism when he worked as a full-time volunteer at Fair Foods Inc. in Boston.
Freeganism is a movement and practice centered on reclaiming food and conserving waste.
“It’s a way of advocating for the conservation of food, the proper distribution of food and advocating against food waste,” said Nelson, an undeclared freshman in the College of Arts and Sciences. “Society currently views food as a commodity, and we want to change the view of food to seeing it as a basic human right.”
During his time at Fair Foods Inc., Nelson was part of a network that moves more than 10,000 pounds of food — destined to be thrown away — to low-income areas in Boston on a daily basis. The program has existed since 1988 and has redistributed over 100 million pounds of wasted food. This is where Nelson witnessed the application of freeganism on a major scale.
Nelson now works with the Food Recovery Network — a Syracuse University and State University of New York Environmental Science and Forestry club that reclaims locally wasted food. Nelson said the club redistributed 2,000 pounds of food that was going to be wasted by the Syracuse University dining halls last semester.
As for the presence of freeganism in his daily life, Nelson has — on a few occasions — personally reclaimed food for himself and a few friends.
“The places that tend to throw out the most are supermarkets,” Nelson said. “If you get a bunch of bananas and one of the bananas is bruised you have to throw away the bunch. If you get a box of apples and two of the apples are rotten, you have to throw away the box.”
Nelson said these are the standards that consumers hold supermarkets to, even though the standards don’t make sense. The unnecessary waste a store produces in one day could feed a few families, he added.
“Institutionalizing the idea of saving food is important even though it might go against capitalistic ideas,” Nelson said. “It’s all in the name of a sustainable future.”
Published on January 26, 2015 at 12:35 am
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