For the most part, Miami is a wasteful place. What goes into the garbage bins of South Beach restaurants in one night could probably feed the city’s entire homeless population for a week. This problem hasn’t gone unnoticed, however, and Rescuing Leftover Cuisine is setting up shop in the Magic City to help reduce, reuse and recycle.
The New York-based organization is launching its Miami arm with volunteer Matilde Suescun at the helm. With the direction of the company’s CEO, Robert Lee, Suescun and other volunteers will help coordinate the donation of food from restaurants and stores with dropoffs at local homeless shelters.
“The concept is really beautiful. It helps everyone,” says Suescun. “On one hand we have all this wasted food that’s a problem—you need to transport it, it occupies a lot of space and it doesn’t serve anyone, it’s bad for the environment. And on other hand you have a lot of people that are hungry. It’s a very basic concept — it’s just uniting those two ends.”