The Food Recovery Network is a national network of student groups at colleges campuses dedicated to addressing food injustice by recovering surplus perishable food that would otherwise be wasted and donating it to people in need. We provide fresh, healthier food options for disenfranchised individuals without access to regular, nutritious meals while bolstering campus sustainability by reducing the amount of food waste sent to landfills. In doing so, we foster mutually beneficial relationships between institutions of higher learning and their local communities. Additionally, FRN educates and advocates around issues of food waste, hunger, and nutrition. Our campus movement is rooted in a firm belief in the power of food to bring people together.

FRN is a nonprofit in Maryland and is on its way to becoming a 501(c)(3) in pursuit of a vision of jumpstarting new chapters at campuses across America. We have four chapters and are growing fast. Our UMD chapter alone donates about 30,000 meals per year.

Problema

Food is America's second largest waste stream. In 2009, we wasted 68 billion pounds of food, or approximately 40% of our gross domestic crop yield. In the same year, 43.6 million Americans (one in seven) struggled with hunger. With the economic downturn, many homeless shelters are seeing an increase in need amid a simultaneous slash in funding from the government and donors. Of the 68 billion pounds of food waste generated in 2009, only three percent of it was recovered. When sent to landfills, food generates huge amounts of methane gas, which the EPA estimates to be 21 times more harmful towards global climate change than carbon dioxide. Over 75% of America's ~3,000 college campuses have no food recovery program. At 10,000 meals a year per school, that's about 22 million meals going to waste on college campuses every year that could be donated to those in need.

Solución

Food recovery is not a new phenomenon and has been taking place for decades. However, of the 68 billion pounds of food that went to waste in 2009 only 3% of it was either donated or composted. This is shocking, especially since instituting a food recovery program benefits the local community and the environment, generates positive press, and can save donors money through enhanced tax deductions. And while there is tremendous amount of misplaced fear in the food service industry and a perception of liability issues, the Bill Emerson Good Samaritan Act of 1996 clears anyone donating food in good faith from any criminal or civil liability. So why is so much good food wasted on college campuses? Beyond fear and an institutional resistance to change on the part of campus dining services, many college students either don’t realize just how much food is going to waste or assume programs like these are already in place. But the Food Recovery Network is on a crusade to educate dining administrators and inspire students to start their own FRN chapters. FRN just began in Fall 2010 at UMD and already has four chapters nationwide. Students at 13 other schools are in the process of establishing new chapters. We are a nonprofit in Maryland and in the process of applying for our 501(c)(3) status and hope to jumpstart dozens of new chapters in the next few years.

Ejemplo

The Food Recovery Network empowers student-run food recovery programs on college campuses. For example, FRN at the University of Maryland, College Park is literally a network of 11 student groups that each volunteer by taking different nights of the week at different dining halls around campus. Groups send 4-6 volunteers to recover food from dining halls, working with the chefs to transfer the food into aluminum food trays. Groups then drive it immediately to one of FRN's three partner shelters in Washington, D.C. In addition to our nightly (Mon-Fri) operation at two campus dining halls, we also recover the leftover concessions food from all the home football and basketball games, as well as from catered events at the student union. Every week, FRN at UMD has about 60 different volunteers donating around 1,400 meals to So Others Might Eat, Gospel Rescue Ministries, and Community for Creative Non-Violence.

Mercado

While food recovery is not new and there are a lot of organizations such as Share Our Strength, Food Rescue and DC Central Kitchen doing food recovery in major cities, there is only one other nationally-focused organization doing food recovery on college campuses: Campus Kitchens. However, the Campus Kitchens and Food Recovery Network models are very different from one another. Campus Kitchens involves hiring a full-time paid staff member, teaching students culinary skills, and then opening up the campus dining hall to feed local homeless. By contrast, the FRN model is much leaner in that we simply deliver the food to the homeless shelters and let them handle all of the meal planning. We recently met with the founder and coordinator of Campus Kitchens. We both agree there are a lot of benefits of having two different models of campus food recovery. FRN sees starting new CK chapters as just as much of a victory as starting new FRN chapters, and we hope to collaborate with CK moving forward to spread the movement. Again, the vast majority of schools still don't have any food recovery program at all, so there is an enormous untapped market and room for both of us to expand.