Mr Egger is the president of DC Central Kitchen, a food recycling and meals distribution organisation in Washington DC.
Mr Egger’s vision was a simple one — to collect waste food and give it to people who were hungry, and he quickly realised that food poverty was not limited to people sleeping rough on the streets.
Rather than start small Mr Egger began by redistributing the excess food from the inauguration presidential banquet of George Bush Senior in January 1989.
The organisation has expanded and now, as well as collecting unwanted food from restaurants, it provides free meals to shelters, trains people for careers in the food industry, provides an outreach service for homeless people and runs a Campus Kitchens programme.
Mr Egger said the opportunities for development in the United States are massive: “We have a once-in-a-millennium opportunity for social enterprise”.
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