Food Cycle Collective
Food Cycle Collective is a collaborative initiative rooted in Pomona that centers composting, bikes, food, and community-building. We come together as a collective to care for the earth and the people on it. We move in ways that value relationships, support empowerment, promote positive transformation, and increase health for individuals, communities, and environments.
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We are helpful, creative, caring, courageous, compassionate, consistent & dependable, responsive, patient, and willing to work for meaningful change. We recognize and acknowledge our interdependence and that many issues affecting us are integrated. We strive to grow our capacity and engage our creativity to meet the needs around us with constructive sustained action rather than ignoring, denying, or lashing out at people or problems.
Our Vision
The vision of Food Cycle Collective is to be part of a community that lives for sustainability, that embodies care, and meets the needs of self, each other, and the earth. We want to help decentralize the food and waste systems and bring them back to the community level. We want a world where power is not connected to structural position or systemic privilege, but rather a world where we recognize the power inherent in all people. We want a world where people are motivated to help one another for the purposes of being in community with each other, and not because of financial incentives or to improve their image. We want to keep food, water, transportation, safety and security accessible to everyone by working to grow and sustain our community through nonviolence. We envision a future with healthy soil, healthy food, health people, healthy communities, and a healthy world.
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Community Food Scrap Collection & Food Rescue
Beginning in 2020, Food Cycle Collective has engaged local small business and nonprofit partners through weekly food scrap collections, diverting over 1,500,000 lbs (as of May 2025) of food scraps to local gardens and farms for composting. Since 2023, we have also rescued over 96,000 lbs of edible food and redistributed to community members either as ready to eat meals to people living in the streets or as ingredients to neighborhood households.
Street Outreach
Beginning in 2020, the Food Cycle Collective team has been riding the neighborhoods of Pomona every Sunday engaging people currently living in the streets through offering hot meals, drinks, snacks, harm reduction & hygiene items, clothing, pet food, and listening. We typically serve between 50-80 people each week with over 15,000 meals served to date. Our approach to people living in the streets is guided by a recognition of the immense trauma that many people have faced and continue to face, paired with action to respond with practical attention and genuine care for the immediate needs people currently have. We also engage our political system to advocate for improvements to the collective strategies we employ as a city towards people who find themselves without formal shelter or sufficient support to change the circumstances of their lives.