CropMobster is the solution to food waste every community should try.
Is it a football stadium or one giant trash dump?
Image by Bobak Ha'Eri/Wikimedia Commons.
OK, OK — obviously it's a stadium. But consider this:
The United States wastes enough food to fill up a 90,000-seat football stadium every single day. That's ... a lot.
And what's even harder to digest is how many people go to bed hungry every night in America, even when so much food is going uneaten across the country.
Image via iStock.
Californian Nick Papadopoulos decided to do an experiment on it.
One Sunday evening in 2013, Nick stood at his family farm, staring down all the food they didn't sell at the farmers market earlier that day. He knew the perfectly edible produce would now never make a profit for his family or even end up on a dinner table of someone who truly needed it. Instead, it was going straight to the compost pile like unsold produce usually did.
\n\nWhat a waste.
\n\nHe got on his farm's Facebook page and posted a status announcing a food experiment: a call for anyone to come by his farm to pick up the produce at a very discounted price.
Almost immediately, a local resident responded, organized some other community members and showed up at his door the next day to take the food off his hands and put a little money in his pocket.
\n\nWell, that was easy.
\n\nNick continued with the alerts for a few weeks before realizing that this was the start of a very impactful idea: crowdsourcing homes for food at risk of going to waste. It could be done on a much larger scale.
Image by CropMobster/Facebook.
Nick launched CropMobster, a free service that alerts people of food donations, deals, freebies, events, etc., in their area.
It works like this: Anyone with food excess and surplus in the area can quickly publish an alert. The alert gets shared via email, Facebook, and other social networking sites. When it's a good fit for someone, then victory! Discounted or free food gets in the hands of individuals, small businesses, or hunger relief groups that need it.
\n\nWhat a great way to quickly spread the word about any food excess and surplus from local suppliers, get healthy food to those in need, and help local businesses recover costs. Not to mention, it helps prevent food waste and connect the community.
Graphic via CropMobster, used with permission.
One instant alert at a time, the CropMobster community has saved approximately 2,000,000 pounds of food from going to waste, added $2,000,000 in income for hunger relievers and family businesses, and is closing in on nearly 1 million servings for individuals and hunger relief groups. And now they are growing with the launch of new communities like CropMobster Sacramento with Valley Vision.
\n\n2,000,000 pounds of food going into the right hands — and not into the dump — is significant. And considering that's the impact made in just one little pocket of the United States, imagine what would happen if more areas used a program like this.
Image by CropMobster/Facebook.
Image by CropMobster/Facebook.
Image by CropMobster/Facebook.
We're throwing away more than one-third of all the food that's produced in the United States every year. CropMobster shows how easy it is to fix that.
With how connected social media allows us to be in our communities these days, it's a no-brainer to chip away at hunger and food waste one post at a time, one day at a time. Find out how your area can get started now.
A Generation Jones teenager poses in her room.Image via Wikmedia Commons
An office kitchen.via 
An angry man eating spaghetti.via 
An Irish woman went to the doctor for a routine eye exam. She left with bright neon green eyes.
It's not easy seeing green.
Did she get superpowers?
Going to the eye doctor can be a hassle and a pain. It's not just the routine issues and inconveniences that come along when making a doctor appointment, but sometimes the various devices being used to check your eyes' health feel invasive and uncomfortable. But at least at the end of the appointment, most of us don't look like we're turning into The Incredible Hulk. That wasn't the case for one Irish woman.
Photographer Margerita B. Wargola was just going in for a routine eye exam at the hospital but ended up leaving with her eyes a shocking, bright neon green.
At the doctor's office, the nurse practitioner was prepping Wargola for a test with a machine that Wargola had experienced before. Before the test started, Wargola presumed the nurse had dropped some saline into her eyes, as they were feeling dry. After she blinked, everything went yellow.
Wargola and the nurse initially panicked. Neither knew what was going on as Wargola suddenly had yellow vision and radioactive-looking green eyes. After the initial shock, both realized the issue: the nurse forgot to ask Wargola to remove her contact lenses before putting contrast drops in her eyes for the exam. Wargola and the nurse quickly removed the lenses from her eyes and washed them thoroughly with saline. Fortunately, Wargola's eyes were unharmed. Unfortunately, her contacts were permanently stained and she didn't bring a spare pair.
- YouTube youtube.com
Since she has poor vision, Wargola was forced to drive herself home after the eye exam wearing the neon-green contact lenses that make her look like a member of the Green Lantern Corps. She couldn't help but laugh at her predicament and recorded a video explaining it all on social media. Since then, her video has sparked a couple Reddit threads and collected a bunch of comments on Instagram:
“But the REAL question is: do you now have X-Ray vision?”
“You can just say you're a superhero.”
“I would make a few stops on the way home just to freak some people out!”
“I would have lived it up! Grab a coffee, do grocery shopping, walk around a shopping center.”
“This one would pair well with that girl who ate something with turmeric with her invisalign on and walked around Paris smiling at people with seemingly BRIGHT YELLOW TEETH.”
“I would save those for fancy special occasions! WOW!”
“Every time I'd stop I'd turn slowly and stare at the person in the car next to me.”
“Keep them. Tell people what to do. They’ll do your bidding.”
In a follow-up Instagram video, Wargola showed her followers that she was safe at home with normal eyes, showing that the damaged contact lenses were so stained that they turned the saline solution in her contacts case into a bright Gatorade yellow. She wasn't mad at the nurse and, in fact, plans on keeping the lenses to wear on St. Patrick's Day or some other special occasion.
While no harm was done and a good laugh was had, it's still best for doctors, nurses, and patients alike to double-check and ask or tell if contact lenses are being worn before each eye test. If not, there might be more than ultra-green eyes to worry about.