Empowering FRNds on Capitol HIll at the First Ever Food Waste Lobby Day

FRNds on Capitol Hill for FRN's first-ever Lobby Day in April 2016.

On April 4th, 100 Food Recovery Network student leaders, co-founders, and staff members participated in FRN’s first ever food waste Lobby Day. This was an exciting foray into the advocacy world for FRN, and it happened during an important period for food waste legislation and activism. During Lobby Day, FRN students met with over 30 staffers from congressional offices to advocate for Rep. Chellie Pingree’s (D-ME) Food Recovery Act and Rep. Jerry McNerney’s (D-CA) Food Waste Accountability Act, while also sharing their experiences to raise awareness for food recovery as a practical solution to food waste and hunger.

FRN believes in the power of young people to make change. As FRN Co-founder and Director of Innovation Cam Pascual described in her recent TedTalk, many students can feel overwhelmed when confronted with seemingly insurmountable social and environmental challenges. FRN provides a feasible solution to problems and supports students as they create change. With these ideals and culture in mind, FRN jumped at the opportunity for students to participate in the legislative process and engage with their elected officials. Lobby Day was the perfect action-oriented event to end our first National Food Recovery Dialogue (NFRD). Mallory, a leader of the University of Minnesota's FRN chapter, described her final action of the weekend as unforgettable:

“Any time I'm able to talk about my passions is a good experience, but sharing my strong feelings about food waste with staff members of Congress was surreal. It was amazing to see the shock and interest on government workers' faces as we told them about what we do, and also about what they can do to help. The thought that we as humble students possibly influenced our lawmakers to make positive change is a memory I'll keep forever.” 

We’re proud that FRN students could share their stories and knowledge with policymakers, and that they did so in such poised and thoughtful ways. 

One of the major successes of FRN’s 2016 Lobby Day was a congressional meeting that encouraged Rep. Chaka Fattah from Pennsylvania to co-sponsor the Food Recovery Act. This brings the total number of co-sponsors for the bill to 16. Johanna Hripto from the Lycoming College FRN chapter reflected on this success after the event:

“Overall I think it [Lobby Day] was a huge success- Representative Fattah, whose staffer we talked to, agreed to co-sponsor the bill! I can't help but feel that myself and the other members of my Pennsylvania group helped play a role in his decision. It was intimidating at first but afterwards I felt so much more confident in the work we are doing as an individual chapter and as an organization. I also gained a deeper understanding of how politics plays a role in not only food recovery but in many social issues.” 

Looking ahead, FRN hopes to inspire policymakers to propose and pass more legislation related to food recovery through our continued support to chapters that excel in fighting waste and by organizing future Lobby Day events. Our national lobbying efforts have also inspired chapter leaders to engage in advocacy at the state and local level, and FRN hopes to support these efforts. Rylie Wolff, a leader of the Portland Community College FRN chapter, described the inspiration she drew from Lobby Day:

“Lobby Day was an empowering experience. Not only was I surrounded by like-minded change-makers, but being able to speak to people who had the power to put those bills into law was incredible. Even if the State Reps or their staffers didn't seem inspired, I felt doubly so. Knowing that I was practicing and in the back of my head collecting resources to ‘do better next time.’ In my own chapter, we want to lobby at our own State capitol now. Lobby day planted the that seed and gave us the tools to bring that idea into fruition.”

 
The FRN team would like to extend a Special Lobby Day thanks to:

- Co-Founder Lauren Begham and staff member Karen Mawdsley, our fearless U-Haul drivers

- Ben Simon and Nick Murphy, FRN Co-Founders who helped their teams rock congressional meetings

- Representatives Chellie Pingree and Jerry McNerney, the legislators behind the Food Recovery Act and the Food Waste Accountability Act
 

For more food recovery activism and news, check out the Ad Council’s recently released campaign against food waste, and stay tuned for more thought regarding food recovery policy on our blog. 

Food Recovery at the Farmers Market

Did you know? The number of farmers markets in the United States has been steadily increasing over the past 20 years, from 1,755 in 1994 to 8,284 in 2014. No matter where you live in the country, there’s probably a farmers market near you. And the farmers who attend these markets often have a huge quantity of produce left at the end of the day that they don’t have the capacity to donate or preserve until the next market. That’s where FRN and other food recovery programs come in. 

According to a 2006 farmers market survey, only about 24 percent of farmers markets were involved in a gleaning program. Gleaning is the act of collecting excess fresh foods from farms, gardens, farmers markets, grocers, restaurants and other food-based institutions and businesses for distribution to those in need. These programs benefit everyone involved; the farmers are often happy to see the food that they put so much effort into growing going to feed people who need it; the gleaners develop new relationships and connections; and people at the food banks, pantries and other hunger-fighting agencies are excited to receive fresh, healthy produce for their clients. 

A few of our chapters have started recovering from farmers markets and have been hugely successful. University of Southern California's FRN chapter recovers from the Hollywood Farmers Market through Food Forward and regularly gleans well over 1,000 pounds of produce per recovery! Working with Food Forward has allowed USC to build strong relationships with many of the vendors at the market and to donate to more organizations than they could if they were working on their own.

FRNds at USC rest in the shade after recovering leftover produce from the Hollywood Farmers Market.

“Students love gleaning from the market — it's fun, they get to eat and shop at the market, and the results are immediate and shocking,” Janice, the USC chapter leader said. “One of the agencies is located right on the corner of the farmers market, and we deliver the boxes of produce ourselves. The residents are very appreciative, and they line up and eagerly select the produce for themselves.”

While working through a larger organization like Food Forward can simplify the recovery process and increase the amount of produce gleaned, other FRN chapters successfully run farmers market gleaning programs on their own. FRN at the University of Houston recently began recoveries from the Urban Harvest Farmers Market and gleans roughly 200 pounds of produce each weekend. Since getting the gleaning program off the ground, it’s been so successful that Second Servings of Houston, a Houston-based prepared food recovery organization, is going to maintain it over the summer! 

FRN at the University of Houston poses with recovered produce during a recovery at the Harvest Farmers Market.

The Susquehanna Community Food Action Team, Susquehanna University's FRN chapter, also established its own recovery program at a local farmers market and found it to be much easier than expected. One member of the team arrives at the end of the market and asks if any of the vendors would like to donate leftover food. Michelle, one of Susquehanna's chapter leaders, says that as long as the chapter representative describes where the food will be donated and expresses gratitude for their donations, “Most farmers have a solid sense of community and are more than happy to help those around them.”

These chapters are proof that starting a farmers market gleaning program can benefit everyone involved. Through partnerships with farmers markets, chapters can strengthen their community relationships, motivate their volunteers and, most importantly, provide high quality, nutritious food to the clients served by their partner agencies.

Interested in starting your own farmers market gleaning program? 

Take a look at our FRN Guide to Gleaning and the USDA’s Let's Glean Toolkit, and find a local farmers market through the USDA's Farmers Market Directory. 

Not ready to start your own program? Check out these organizations that have gleaning programs in place:

Society of St. Andrew (National)
AmpleHarvest.org (National)
Glean SLO in California (San Luis Obispo, CA)
Food Forward (Southern California)
Bread for the City: Glean for the City (Washington, D.C.)
Fresh Farm Markets (Washington, D.C., Maryland and Virginia)
After the Harvest (Kansas, Missouri)
Glean Indiana (Indiana)
Glean Milwaukee (Milwaukee, WI)

A Co-Founder's Reflection: Why Being Irrelevant is a Good Thing

FRN's co-founders get together for a selfie with the attendees of the 2016 NFRD.

Nearly five years ago, in September 2011, Food Recovery Network was just beginning to take off at the University of Maryland. After spending a summer planning for the new academic year, we turned our campus FRN-green: recovering five nights a week, recruiting volunteers from 11 different student groups, coordinating our first football game recovery, and, of course, making FRN’s first clip art logo. During the day, Ben, Cam and I — along with the dedicated FRN leadership team at UMD — spent our time in between (and during) classes texting volunteers details of the upcoming recoveries, calling our dining managers, and communicating with our partner agencies about drop-off times. In the evenings, we’d meet as a leadership team at the McKeldin Library to celebrate our rapid growth and work through any challenges. Pretty quickly, we were donating thousands of pounds of food monthly to hunger-fighting agencies in Prince George's County, Maryland, and Washington, D.C.

Does this story sound familiar? That’s because if you replace the names and locations, you would have the story of the founders, presidents, and leaders of FRN’s 186 chapters across the country.

If you were in room 1101 of the University of Maryland's BioScience Research Building on April 2, 2016 at 9 a.m. — just a minute's walk from the very library where FRN had its first meetings — you would have seen an auditorium filled with more than 400 people, many of whom were FRN student founders and leaders, for the 2016 National Food Recovery Dialogue. I felt humbled to be standing before hundreds of people who have dedicated their time to fighting food waste and hunger with my fellow co-founders: Ben, Cam, Becca, Lauren, and Nick. After we shared the story of our respective chapters, and what it was like to work together to spread FRN to colleges and universities across America, I had the opportunity to reflect with Becca. “You know what’s really cool?” she said. “Our co-founder story is irrelevant.”

"Irrelevant?" I thought, almost in a panic. This is my life’s work, our lives’ work. But as she continued to explain, it really sunk in. Our story isn’t unique anymore. We have hundreds of FRNds who can relate to the struggles we faced as students: worry constantly about not having enough volunteers, learning how to coordinate logistics with supplies, and even skipping class to go on last-minute recoveries. There are nearly 200 chapters we can celebrate successes with. Our students ask the questions of, “What university did you go to?” and, “Does it have an FRN chapter?” just as often as we do, and as seen in this Huffington Post article, they are the voice of the movement now. 

I’m proud to say that my story has become irrelevant.

To find out more about what happened at the NFRD, check out the 2016 NFRD event page and recent recap blog post.

FRN at the 2016 Smart and Sustainable Campuses Conference

Even after the National Food Recovery Dialogue, we still had energy for one more conference! The day after the NFRD wrapped up, we traveled to Baltimore for the 2016 Smart and Sustainable Campuses Conference. The SSCC is a conference that gathers people working on sustainability issues at the university level for two days of workshops, presentations and conversation. The conference was started in 2005 by the Environmental Protection Agency, which hoped to better understand the roles colleges play in reducing our environmental impact. Since then, the SSCC evolved to be lead by the universities that have a stake in issues of sustainability — such as the University of Maryland — and now covers much wider territory.

FRN was offered the opportunity to present on our work and how we exemplify a sustainable sustainability community in higher education. Speaking to other people who care about food recovery and its impact on the environment and who are working to improve their campuses' impact was a great experience. They offered us a lot of great ideas for how we can continue to build our relationships with campuses, dining service operations and our hunger-fighting partner agencies. These are ideas we're excited to bring back to our whole team and think about as we move into the summer season.

Throughout the SSCC, we connected with many people who had an FRN chapter on their campus and were excited to hear more about our national movement. Many had worked peripherally with our students or staff and had only positive things to say. Others had heard of us and wanted to know more so that they could encourage students at their school to start a chapter. Seeing so many people who were excited about our mission in one room inspired us to keep up the post-NFRD energy and excitement.

Two conferences later, we're more excited than ever to keep fighting food waste and hunger in college and university communities nationwide. Our biggest takeaway from the SSCC? There are FRNds everywhere who are just as passionate about sustainable communities as we are. We can't wait to keep connecting with them.

BioCycle Features Food Recovery Network

This story originally appeared in March/April 2016 issue of BioCycle and online at biocycle.net. We'd like to thank Marsha Johnston, editor of Earth Steward Associates and a Contributing Editor to BioCycle, for this wonderful piece on Food Recovery Network.

The Food Recovery Network (FRN) still gets phone calls from people mistaking it for the Food Network, but if the pace of its growth over the last five years continues, FRN brand recognition may one day rival that of the culinary TV channel. “They are on fire,” notes Shondra Jenkins, director of community relations for Sodexo and executive director of the Sodexo Stop Hunger Foundation.

In the summer of 2013, FRN received a $150,000 grant from the Sodexo Stop Hunger Foundation and became a 501(c)3 nonprofit. Over the next two years, FRN exploded from 11 schools to 100. It is now at 171 schools (chapters) in 40 states that, in total, have donated 1.1 million pounds of food. “Over the past year, FRN’s volunteers have recovered more food than in all of the previous years combined,” adds Camila Pascual, one of FRN’s seven cofounders.

FRN launched in September 2011, when Ben Simon, Mia Zavalij, Pascual and four other students at the University of Maryland (UMD), College Park noticed still edible dining hall food ending up in the trash. Operating out of the main university library, FRN at UMD had recovered 30,000 meals for DC-area partner agencies by the end of the school year.

In Spring 2012, a second FRN chapter was founded at Brown University, and the two schools joined forces with two other campus food recovery programs — the University of California at Berkeley and Pomona College. By June, Simon, who had become Executive Director, was recognized as a regional honoree and received a $1,000 grant from Sodexo’s Stephen J. Brady STOP Hunger Scholarship. Simon maintained his relationship with the foundation, which eventually culminated in the $150,000 Sodexo Foundation grant.

Today, FRN operates with a $500,000 annual budget. The majority of its funding comes from dining services companies and their foundations, including the Sodexo Stop Hunger Foundation, Chartwells Higher Education, and General Mills. Its work sustains an estimated 250 organizations, thanks to the thousands of volunteers every semester.

The food FRN recovers, explains Pascual, runs the gamut from surplus prepared food like chicken parmesan to fresh produce and baked goods (see box). All FRN chapters are trained in food safety and supplied with funding to purchase food safety supplies like gloves, hairnets and thermometers to monitor the food being donated. “Through Sodexo’s expertise, we have been able to coach [FRN] with food safety and food handling procedures,” notes Jenkins. “Our employees are contributing skills and time to develop the organization.”

She adds that funding FRN since 2013 has enabled it to positively impact one of the foundation’s primary objectives: engaging youth to fight hunger. “Although it is young, FRN, as an organization, is doing amazing things with the funds we’ve invested, developing youth leaders and engaging the community. They are getting this generation actively involved in ending hunger in their generation.” There are 50 FRN chapters on campuses where Sodexo operates dining services.

Corps Of Volunteers

Volunteers are at the heart of FRN. Its 2014-2015 annual report states: “Our students are putting higher education on track to be the first sector of the economy without food waste. They’re pioneering. They’re self-publishing books on the homeless in their local communities. They’re transporting recovered food in bike carts. They’re organizing sleep-outs and food justice panels and skill-sharing sessions to learn how to use food scraps in recipes. They’re working with app developers and starting their own food recovery nonprofits to fight food waste off campus. These students are an emerging generation of leaders fighting food waste, fighting hunger, and changing the way we think about food…letting the country know that enough is enough: wasting 40 percent of the food we produce while one in six Americans don’t know where their next meal is coming from just won’t stand. Together we can continue making food recovery the norm, not the exception. Let’s fight waste and feed people!”

On the day of BioCycle’s visit, the FRN office near the UMD campus was buzzing with at least a dozen staff and volunteers on the phones. (FRN now has 14 full-time staff of predominantly recent grads, including 8 fellows). On one wall, a couple dozen colored post-it notes covered a large grid laying out FRN’s multistep approval process. Each note denotes a new applicant.

Applicants must meet the following requirements to start a new chapter:

1. Be a current student or faculty member at a college or university in the United States or a U.S. territory that is not listed on the “Chapters” page of the FRN website.

2. Be “serious” about starting a recovery program at their school and commit to being responsive to email and phone.

3. Have between 2 and 4 hours per week for a given semester to dedicate to starting a program and sustaining it.

The applicants have a wide range of preparedness. “It ranges from ‘I just saw this and want to apply but I know nothing about food waste’ to ‘I’ve already talked to our dining services manager and we have $1 million in our program budget!’,” explains Pascual. After submitting an online application to establish an FRN chapter, the applicant must complete a bimonthly phone training with a FRN office staffer that teaches them how to: build a leadership team; find a partner NGO (nongovernmental organization) agency for the donations; engage with the university’s dining service; transport food safely; and secure materials for recoveries. “It’s totally student-driven; they are in complete control,” she adds. “As long as the group they want to donate to is an NGO that can follow all of the food safety regulations and has the equipment, they get to pick.”

Depending on the school, the leadership teams are comprised differently, but are often drawn from sustainability clubs or service organizations, notes cofounder Mia Zavalij.

The phone training allows FRN to provide new members with best practices and answers gleaned from its ongoing relationships with the country’s major dining hall service companies, including Sodexo, Aramark, Chartwells Higher Education, and Bon Appetit Management Company. “The information is all based on their experience working with FRN at the schools they serve,” says Pascual.

After selecting their NGO partners, the new applicants finalize a member agreement with FRN and a partnership agreement with the nonprofit to receive the food. Some university dining service organizations ask the FRN chapter to comply with their company’s policies, e.g., wearing nonslip covers on their shoes during recoveries, but typically there is no official signed agreement, explains Sara Gassman, FRN director of member support and communication. “We are trying to keep this as nonbureaucratic as possible,” notes Pascual.

While Sodexo provides FRN its expertise, FRN is helping it come up with a turnkey solution to campus food recovery. “One of the challenges to developing food recovery is the transportation piece, so their enthusiastic students provide that piece,” explains Jenkins. “They show up at the dining hall at whatever date, the students and Sodexo staff load it into the students’ cars, and they deliver to shelters and food banks in the community.”

A number of FRN chapters have reported source and food cost reductions based on the food recovery data provided by FRN to the dining services. For example, the South Campus Dining Hall at UMD adjusted its production accordingly after seeing the data on the amount of food recovered every week and no longer has a regular FRN pickup. And Texas A&M’s Sbisa Dining Hall reported a 7 percent decrease in Gross Product Cost, from 38 to 31 percent, due to its work with FRN.

“Some people ask me if we’re working ourselves out of a job,” notes Pascual. “While I wish that were true, at most places there will always be food surplus, and given how few food businesses currently recover their food, there’s a lot more work to do to start up programs.”