The trick is to not get tricked into taking trash, yet it's a fine line and sometimes it's OK to err on the side of caution. The Village Building Convergence was a source this week. The board is always lighting up.
"Just in time" inventory means no, we don't want a truck load of Dave's Killer Bread (which we all like), but we'd love it if one of our cyclists (say Cedar) made it her mission to routinely share some excess already given to charity (not every NGO can use everything it gets and swapping around may sound like "socialism" but it's what Americans do at swap meets of all shapes and sizes). "Just bring it to the park" is what I posted to the archives.
I see FNB / Orlando is having trouble. I'd think all those NASA engineers working for the Mouse would be more like us here in Intel country. Optimization of excess food streams is a diabolically difficult problem, city-centric and endemic. To have the elemental solutions, with people willing to pony up and volunteer, is what any healthy city would encourage I'd think. We sure do in Portland. I'm glad Fallon is coming back to Portlandia (she did some of the videography regarding our ethnicity for a college project, before moving to Mexico).
What's somewhat amazing to me is PSU's systems science department doesn't do more with such ethnography. Maybe absorption into the Urban Studies department, School of Government, will bring more focus to the systems aspect of architecture. It's all about resource flows and optimization, time as well as energy.
