A Celebration of Earth Month: What’s your favorite tree?

At FRN, at the start of almost any meeting we have, we start our time together with a check-in question to ground us all into the space together. In honor of Earth Month, at a recent FRN meeting, our check in question was, “What is your favorite tree?”

As an admirer of my natural surroundings, as an avid hiker, tree planter and tree lover, I’d never reflected on that question before. And, many in this particular FRN meeting hadn’t either and for the next 15 minutes, we all talked about trees: we shared stories about trees, we googled trees we hadn’t heard of, we oohed and ahhed about which tree was our favorite tree; and it was an FRN moment that I will cherish for a long, long time.

It’s hard to say what tree is my favorite tree. I love so many for so many reasons. I love peach trees because they grow in my region, and I love to eat peaches. One summer I drove down skyline drive into the Blue Ridge Parkway without GPS (and though it was basically one road with no turn offs, it felt like such an adventure to me as someone who can get lost in one room) to go to an edible nursery where I picked up two self-pollinating peach trees for my new house in NE DC. I love magnolia trees and crape myrtles because my husband loves them so much. I remember taking a walk with one of my best friends in Pittsburgh, tree identification book in hand, observing the different trees in her neighborhood, using the choose your own adventure style process to determine which trees we were seeing: if the shape of the leaves look like this, then go here—if the leaves cluster like this, then go here, if the leaves come off the tree directly versus from a stem, then go here...

I recalled to the team that my favorite memory of a tree was the two lilac trees in the backyard of my family home in Maine. And at that moment of relaying my lilac memory, I pondered outloud, “well, maybe they’re bushes and not trees? I actually don’t know.” Another illumination for me that occurred when thinking about trees! These particular lilac trees were both maybe eight feet tall, one flowered white and the other purple. Each tree had a small section taken over by what I now think to be the Eastern Tent Caterpillar, and I spent a lot of my childhood time carefully smelling the lilac flowers from other sections of the tree far away from the moths. I spent a lot of time simply looking at these moth nests fascinated by what they were doing. In relaying this memory of the trees, or maybe bushes, I was brought back to my home state, my old house, my backyard and my curiosity about what in the heck all of these hundreds of moths were doing, growing, transforming, reproducing, journeying, dying.

As a bonus, I also noted that Nina Simone, one of my favorite artists, sings a song I love called Lilac Win. I think a very strong cover of that song was done by Jeff Buckley, and that’s a nice lilac connection that makes me happy when I think of lilacs.

We conclude Earth Month, another April full of growth, transformation, reproducing, journeying, dying. And May presents itself with offerings of the same magnificence and hardships. I wanted to ask all of you to take a moment of reflection with us and let us know, what is your favorite tree, and why?

My Data-Driven Wish Come True

Four years ago when I began my position as the inaugural Chief Operating Officer (COO) at FRN, I was delighted. I came to the organization shortly after I completed my Results Count fellowship with The Annie E. Casey Foundation.  My fellowship experience equipped me to use data to bring a cohesive vision across the programmatic, communications, and operational function areas I oversee. To learn how this work started, evolved, and how it influences our daily operations and future planning, please watch our mapping webinar, How FRN’s Data is Driving Impact. 

Through combining and analyzing six different data sets, here is what I learned about FRN’s work and how we can increase our impact:

• Community colleges are the key to our growth. It is more often community colleges, rather than four-year institutions, that are geographically located in the areas with both the most surplus food as well as the most people experiencing hunger. To help expand into community colleges, we have launched a new grant program to bring our food recovery model to neighborhoods across the U.S. Click here to learn more and apply.

• FRN must implement our programs in the areas of the most need. We believe each state presents an opportunity to reduce food waste, feed people, and fight climate change. By mobilizing 200+ college student-led chapters to recover perishable food that would otherwise go to waste from their campuses and communities and donating it to local nonprofits who feed people experiencing hunger, we have created one of the largest college student-led networks fighting food waste and hunger in the U.S. With our ability to quickly replicate in any area where a four-year higher institution is present, we created a list of all 50 states and the specific area we would start a chapter, within each state, in order to feed more people of the most need, faster. 

The areas listed below were prioritized using a variety of factors including, but not limited to: number of higher education institutions in a given area who generate surplus food (NCES, EPA), greatest need as defined by the difference between the median wage (U.S. Census) and living wage (MIT), number of people experiencing food insecurity (Feeding America), SNAP, food insecurity, and poverty rates (U.S. Census), presence of higher education institutions (NCES), and areas where the population is predominantly people of color (U.S. Census).

States listed below are in alphabetical order.

If you are interested in hosting a Lunch and Learn for your organization to see your individual area, please contact programs@foodrecoverynetwork.org.

Recap of Food Recovery Network's March Roundtable Talk

Gratitude to everyone who attended and listened to the March 2024 Roundtable Talk. We appreciate your time. And for those of you who’ve yet to hear directly from us about the halfway point of our 2024 program year, can I encourage you to find some time to listen to the recording of our biannual Roundtable Talk?

The conversation refamiliarized everyone with FRN’s longstanding vision to recover surplus food to feed everyone who is hungry in the U.S., and reiterated the scope of our work to achieve that vision. This biannual conversation celebrates the accomplishments of Food Recovery Network’s efforts at the halfway point of our program year, of which there were many. Importantly though, our conversation highlighted the difficulty of that work within a system designed to make access to food and economic security difficult. To feed everyone who is hungry, we cannot look away at what makes us uncomfortable, and we cannot assume there is nothing that can be done. Food Recovery Network is making tremendous progress every day, and we need you to stick with us and bring others along.

Can I encourage all of you to share this blog post and recording link with others who might be encouraged to know that a small and mighty national nonprofit has recovered more than 1.7 million pounds of food for those in need, in turn ensuring 2,112 metric tons of CO2 wasn’t emitted into our atmosphere only since July 2023?

Below are further reflections from the March conversation and ways for you to be involved.

KEY TAKEAWAYS FROM March:

• Comprehensive solutions are needed for communities to thrive. Food Recovery Network understands that within any community that is suffering from food and economic insecurity, many interventions must be developed and tried, and the communities will need parts of some interventions and sections of others to generate continued solutions to thrive.

• Developing new programmatic offerings of how to engage students beyond chapters is critical to making a meaningful impact on a community-based level. To our student leaders, thank you for your continued commitment over the last 13 years. The national office will continue to send invitations for further involvement.

• Our metrics need to reflect these learnings — we will continue to track impact beyond pounds of food recovered. We know adding our impact numbers to the collective conversation of food recovery is important to show movement. At FRN, we also want to remain fixed to the belief that all of these metrics represent our fellow humans and there is more to talk about and to know that goes beyond pounds of food recovered. We will not lose focus on the point that every meal we recover goes to a person in need, in your community, on a specific day. We will not lose focus on the point that our students go to classes, and then they convene at their campus dining kitchens, scoop and pour food into trays and bins, take the temperature and weigh that food, and then drive that precious cargo to their partner agency where they directly hand it to people they care about who will then further distribute that food to their neighbors, and then our students get back in their cars or vans and go home.
  

We have the ability to correct something that is terribly wrong in the U.S. Together, we can create consistent access to food in the ways most welcomed by communities. We can dwindle the number of neighbors experiencing food insecurity to zero. We can. Here are ways you can be involved:

• Who do you know who’s not heard of Food Recovery Network? Send them this post with a message of love, “I thought you should know about Food Recovery Network.” To change the process from food waste to food recovery we need more chapters to start and more businesses to design food recovery plans.

• Join us in April for virtual Power Hours to directly support thousands of pounds of food being recovered! It’s 60 minutes well lived, I promise!

• Your financial contributions directly support our efforts to feed more people, faster. We are grateful for any sized contribution.

I would like to take a moment of reflection for the 7 World Central Kitchen aid workers who lost their precious lives in April trying to provide food to those in need within a desperate conflict zone. They lost their precious lives trying to help, and they will be forever connected to their humanity. To date, WCK provided more than 1,700 trucks of assistance in the conflict zone.

Spotlight on Food Recovery Network in Las Vegas

February was busy for our team at Food Recovery Network! We recovered nearly two tons of food from the Bullseye Event Group Player’s Tailgate in Las Vegas with Hellmann's and our student volunteers. That is the equivalent of 3,328 meals that were donated to The Just One Project in Las Vegas, a nonprofit organization dedicated to fighting food insecurity in southern Nevada.

Our recovery and partnership with Hellmann’s was featured in several news stories:

• Food Recovery Network Teams Up with Local Students to Recover Surplus Food During Super Bowl LVIII

• What happens to leftover Super Bowl food? Here’s where some of it goes

• Food Recovery Network Rescues 4,000 Pounds of Super Bowl Food

You can also read our Executive Director Regina Anderson’s perspective on what made this year’s recovery so special in her op-ed in the Las Vegas Sun.

This was our first time in Las Vegas. We were excited to be joined by two students from the University of Las Vegas, Nevada, for the recovery. While we don’t currently have a chapter in Nevada, these students are determined to bring food recovery to their campus, which sits right in the middle of one of the most decadent cities in the world.

“Food Recovery Network played an integral role in my college experience. It taught me the importance of creating strong community connections. As a member of the Syracuse University / SUNY ESF chapter, we were able to maintain meaningful relationships with local agencies in Central New York. Therefore, this unique opportunity to expand my involvement with FRN across the country as an alumni was such an exciting experience. Packaging, transporting, weighing, and recovering approximately 4,000 pounds of food with both new and old FRNds was so fun!
”

— Bridget Maloney, FRN Alumni, Syracuse University/SUNY ESF

Want to be part of the solution? You can be a part of helping us to create positive change in the food landscape in southern Nevada—far beyond the Super Bowl!

Help us bring a chapter to Las Vegas and support FRN’s mission to fight waste and feed people in every community all year long.

Scoring Big With Hellmann’s at The Big Game Tailgate Food Recovery

This year, two of the best football teams in the country faced off in an epic game to bring home coveted championship rings. At Food Recovery Network (FRN), we were vying to bring home something else: thousands of pounds of delicious, salvageable food from the annual Bullseye Event Group Players Tailgate, catered by celebrity chefs Bobby Flay and Aaron May. 

On Sunday, February 11, 2024, six volunteers, including FRN alumni and local students from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, joined FRN staff at the Players Tailgate just across the street from Allegiant Stadium to recover surplus food—both raw, fresh foods and prepared meals—and transport it for donation to The Just One Project, a nonprofit organization dedicated to fighting food insecurity in southern Nevada. 

Our efforts resulted in an incredible 3,994 pounds of surplus food delivered safely to our nonprofit partner, where it’ll go to produce thousands of quality meals to feed people experiencing hunger. 

The food we recovered included prepared foods, uncooked proteins, dairy, fresh produce, condiments, spices, grains, and more—ingredients that food banks and pantries don’t often receive in donations. The real kicker? This year’s tailgate recovery brought in half a ton more food than the 2023 recovery in Glendale, Arizona. We can’t thank our volunteers enough for the time and energy they contributed to make this event a success.

But the event was special in more ways than one. This year’s recovery was also our first in partnership with Hellmann’s, who contributed $100,000 to our cause of ending food waste and food insecurity across the U.S. Our Big Game celebrations continued on Monday, February 12, with the first annual celebration of “Sick Of Food Waste Day,” a new holiday declared by Hellmann’s. 

““We all have the power to ensure perfectly good food doesn’t go to waste.” ”

— Regina Anderson, Executive Director, FRN

As we expand our network of partners, we’re excited to watch our impact grow, both on college campuses and at huge events like these. The amazing thing about this work is that we can all contribute on whatever level we’re able to. Whether you’re organizing a food recovery event in your community or just reusing leftovers for another meal, we can all be a part of the fight against food waste. No matter which team you root for, we can all agree: No person in our country should go hungry.

We hope you’ll join us to help fight waste and feed people year-round.