(melancholy music)
- The produce industry does not have the right
to dump nutritious product
that can go to families who are in need.
Borderlands Food Bank rescues between
30 to 40 million pounds of produce annually,
and we've been doing it for 21 years.
(hopeful music)
My name is Yolanda Soto,
and I am the CEO-President of Borderlands Food Bank.
(upbeat music)
We are an organization that rescues fresh produce.
We get it to families all over the state of Arizona
and 19 other states within the nation.
We saw there was a tremendous amount of fresh produce
coming across at our port of entry here
from Mexico, and a lot of it could not be sold.
It could be because it had some scarring,
it could be because it had some rain stain.
And so they were actually dumping it in the landfill.
We saw that the product was extremely good
for human consumption,
so we began educating the produce industry.
(cheerful music)
We've gone to each individual distributor.
We've offered them our services and said,
"Do not dump.
"Allow us to rescue it and get it to families
"so that they can eat nutritiously."
The driver comes back to the warehouse,
he's got a trailer-load of product,
and he begins to get unloaded.
We take up the produce to the sites,
and we set it up like a farmer's market,
all done by volunteers from the host site.
For a $10 contribution,
the supporter can select 60 pounds of produce.
Pretty good, $0.17 a pound.
(cheerful music)
It's important to us to get it to
as many families as possible before it perishes,
because I think that people
have the right to eat nutritiously,
it's the most basic of needs.
Thank you, have a great day.
We have the responsibility
to stop waste,
and we have the responsibility
to help the people in our own backyard.