Formula 1 Miami Grand Prix leftovers not going to waste
MIAMI GARDENS - The Formula 1 Miami Grand Prix brought tens of thousands of people to Hard Rock Stadium, and with all those people, a lot of food to feed them, but not all of it, was eaten.
"We started preparing right after the Miami Open, and it'll probably to get a week to get everything out," Jonathan Cowan Executive Chef said.
Planners like Cowan did their best to estimate how much food should be ordered.
"We want to make sure we want to have enough food for everybody to eat, well fed, well drank, enough beverage," he said.
But it's hard to estimate, last year 90,000 pounds of food were left over, and this year with some experience, it's been fine tuned.
"We went through a lot of food here at the stadium I want to say we'll donate we'll donate about 20 to 30,000 pounds this year," he told CBS News Miami.
Food Rescue South Florida is organizing the effort to recover and repurpose the food, starting with vegetables, fruits and protein.
"We don't need to be making more food we just need to be saving it and repurposing it and feeding people who need it," Ellen Bowen, Food Rescue Florida Site Dir. said.
Together with over 100 volunteers from Autonation, crews went around seven different kitchen areas to collect the food that was stored in coolers.
The extras were then carefully packaged, and then loaded onto a truck for transport.
Donations help charities save sometimes up to a few thousand dollars, this event will be helping two shelters, one in Miami-Dade and Broward.
"And by keeping the food out of the landfill we're actually helping the environment because decomposing food methane gas which is actually more harmful than CO2 to the environment," Bowen added.