Free fruit trees are fantastic!

At the first official LTG event last year - Waste Not, Want Not: Food, the Earth and You! - we screened the documentary film Dive!: Living off America's Waste at the Los Angeles Eco-Village, following up the screening with a discussion. One of the key points made was that there need to be more edible gardens planted in schools and communities in Los Angeles from which people can eat. Harvesting food immediately before using it would prevent incredible amounts of waste; food wouldn't rot on store shelves, wouldn't reach an expiry date, and wouldn't go bad in people's refrigerators.

Since that discussion, I have been working on starting a small veggie patch (which will soon be a BIG veggie patch) at a school in Pasadena. This past weekend, I attended a free fruit tree giveaway in Inglewood at Morningside High School. The giveaway was organized by the Social Justice Learning Institute and by Tree People. There were workshops on how to plant and prune your tree, and Waste Management hosted a workshop on composting, which not only is a great, cheap (free!) and natural plant fertilizer, but also keeps a lot of waste out of landfills. I received an apple tree, which I will be planting with my students today. :)

Check the video below for a peek at the event and my beautiful baby apple tree. Also, click here to connect to the LTG strategy paper from the Waste Not Want Not event. Thanks!

- Nisha Namorando Vida
LTG Director/Founder

Images by Nisha Namorando Vida