LONG BEACH, Calif. — According to LA County Sanitation, 4,000 tons of food waste is generated in the county every single day. That comes from dinner scraps and spoiled fruit and vegetables from grocery stores and restaurants.

During the week, he’s one half of the duo at a food company called Smilin’ Knives, but during the weekend, chef Evan Lucey volunteers his time for Long Beach Food Fairs, an organization that recaptures and repurposes food that would otherwise end up in a landfill.

“We come to the local urban farms here in Long Beach and we look at the produce that is donated to them,” Lucey said. “All these farms get donations where they take this food and distribute it back out to the community.”

Long Beach Food Fairs collects donation of unused or unsold produce from urban farms, grocery stores and food kitchens. Lucey then creates a recipe using that produce, which he’ll demonstrate to the community later in the week at a free farmers market.

“We’re trying to teach people to basically reuse the food before it goes bad and be more creative in finding ways to make the food last longer so it doesn’t end up in the trash,” Lucey explained.

And not ending up in the trash is part of the ethos of Long Beach Food Fairs.

Kiersten Kelly is the distribution manager for Grow2Zero Urban Farm, a partner of Long Beach Food Fairs, and she said since the start of the year, the organization has collected and repurposed 25,650 pounds of food that would otherwise go into the landfill.

For Lucey, creating recipes for Long Beach Food Fairs is a worthwhile way to spend his weekends.

“Personally, I come from working in restaurants and when you work in restaurants, you see all of the food waste that goes on. To be able to be on the other side of that now and to be in a position where I’m part of the solution instead of part of the problem, there’s a lot of fulfillment that comes from it,” he said.