If you have watched any of our episodes at www.ampolo.com or read our “About Ampolo” section on that site, you know we are hungry for your ideas.
Hmm. Hungry. Perhaps it’s no coincidence that two of the episodes inspired by viewers have centered around food. The first, BYOF, was sent in by Jim, an attorney, who has an idea for a restaurant that provides everything except the food. You bring that yourself and pay the establishment a fee for the table, the plates and silverware, the service, and the ambiance.
Jim’s idea inspired Mike, a writer and assistant manager of an Apple store, to make and then send us his own video—this week’s Ampolo episode, BYOL.
Mike told us that, “Parody is the sincerest form of flattery.”
BYOL is indeed a parody. But is there also a morsel of meaning in it? On first glance, the idea for a restaurant where you bring your leftovers appears, well, unappetizing. In reality, however, there is a growing movement of anti-consumers who might find BYOL right up their alley. The movement is called Freeganism, and as a recent article in the New York Times explained:
"Freegans are scavengers of the developed world, living off consumer waste in an effort to minimize their support of corporations and their impact on the planet, and to distance themselves from what they see as out-of-control consumerism. They forage through supermarket trash and eat the slightly bruised produce or just-expired canned goods that are routinely thrown out, and negotiate gifts of surplus food from sympathetic stores and restaurants. They dress in castoff clothes and furnish their homes with items found on the street; at freecycle.com, where users post unwanted items; and at so-called freemeets, flea markets where no money is exchanged."
Food for thought--which is exactly what we want Ampolo to be.
What do you think? If you were in a grocery story and the manager offered you perfectly good, untouched food that was going to be thrown in the trash, would you accept it? What if that same food were put in a trash bag and left by a dumpster?
You can learn more about freeganism at www.freegan.info and read the full Times article at: http://select.nytimes.com/search/restricted/article?res=F00711FF3B5B0C728EDDAF0894DF404482.
The companion blog site to the videolog www.ampolo.com. Each site is devoted to the presentation and discussion of new ideas for products, services, businesses, books, movies, tv shows, and ways to make the world a better place.
1 comment:
Thanks for introducing me to a new lifestyle. I think one of the appealing things about limiting yourself to free stuff would be the drastic reduction in decision making. I think it's awesome that freegans are willing to be that extreme in their devotion to their cause. I do find it irritating, though, that all of these environmental or political commitments have to come with labels. On one hand, people are more willing to join a cause when it comes with a nice new label for them. But then it becomes so black and white. You might want to avoid buying one thing that you know is wasteful, like cans of soda or bottled water. It would make a really dramatic reduction in pollution, but since it doesn't have a label it isn't gaining a following. Plus, everone who still drinks coke is going to point out the fact that the tap-water-drinkers sometimes drink milk, which comes in a huge plastic container too.
The other thought I had about this recycling of food was a memory of working in a restaurant in college. It was common practice for the waitstaff to eat the expensive portions of leftovers off people's plates before handing them over to the dishwasher. Anyone with an extra jumbo shrimp felt like they struck gold.
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