Restaurant Owner Installs Outdoor Fridge To Feed The Hungry

One restaurant owner in India has taken a unique approach to helping to fight food waste.

Mine Pauline decided to install a fully functional refrigerator outside the second location of her restaurant, Pappadavada, after several firsthand experiences of seeing hungry people taking food out of the trash, reports Upworthy. Pauline says, "So many people are wasting so much food and someone is taking that food from the same trash."

The fridge, which Pauline has nicknamed 'nanma maram' or 'tree of goodness,' is open 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and is always unlocked, according to The Huffington Post. "Money is yours but resources belong to society," she told the Huffington Post. "That's the message I want to send out. If you're wasting your money, it's your money, but you're wasting the society's resources. Don't waste the resource, don't waste the food."

Pauline's fridge has been well-received by the local community, and it's stocked with somewhere between 200 and 300 portions of food per day, which is typically gone by the same evening. "The only thing I want to discourage is that people are actually buying food and putting it in the refrigerator, and that's really generous. But I'd rather people put their excess food they already bought but aren't going to eat in the refrigerator instead of the trash bin," she said.