College Food Recovery Network combats local food insecurity with Spa leftovers
Millions of Americans experience food insecurity, a lack of reliable access to adequate, nutritious foods.
The pandemic has intensified the difficulties that vulnerable communities face in acquiring food as staffing shortages have affected community centers, schools, and shelters. Reaching those in need has been a persistent hurdle during the pandemic. Organizations nationwide, as well as those in the greater Waterville area and Kennebec County, continue to face these challenges.
In the face of these challenges, traditional food assistance organizations, namely food banks and local shelters, have searched for unconventional sources of food. One of these has been colleges, which generate roughly 22 million pounds of food waste each year. The average individual college student contributes about 142 pounds to this number.
The Food Recovery Network (FRN) has led the charge on preventing this food from going to waste. It is a large student-led nonprofit organization that partners with on-campus college dining services to collect unserved, usable food to deliver to local food banks and hunger organizations.
Since its founding at the University of Maryland in 2011, the FRN has since expanded to nearly 190 campuses, in 45 states and the District of Columbia, collecting a cumulative 5.3 million pounds of food to date — the equivalent of more than 4.2 million meals to individuals and families in need.
Michael Jimenez `23 revived the College’s FRN chapter this semester. Under his leadership, FRN has partnered with the Joseph Family Spa to collect uneaten leftovers at the end of each week that would otherwise expire or be wasted.
“A big reason I have this passion [for combating food insecurity] is because my parents really taught me the importance of not wasting food because so many people in my own community are in need,” Jimenez said.
About one in four children experience food insecurity in Jimenez’s hometown of Houston. Maine, as a whole, ranks among the most food insecure states in the country. At fourteen percent, Kennebec County has a roughly similar proportion of residents who experience food insecurity to Houston.
Jimenez has sought to make Colby’s FRN chapter more involved in curtailing food insecurity and limiting on-campus waste. He set out to realize several goals for the newly revived group under his leadership.
Jimenez immediately concerned himself with membership as Colby’s chapter had only one active member last year. He has raised this number to 60 with the help of his co-leader, Matthew Weindling `23.
“Through the club fair, we were able to get to 60 members with around ten highly active members. We really focused on connecting with people through getting their friends involved and it just grew organically from there,” Weindling said.
Jimenez also explained his ongoing goals for members.
“We hope to expand the amount of active members through implementing some incentives to get current and potential members more involved in our operations, while making the wider campus more aware of us and our work,” Jimenez said.
Jimenez then explained his own reason for taking up the position at the College’s FRN chapter.
“It felt right to do something that is high-impact and so simple,” he said in reference to how the College Dining Service produces so much food waste each week.
He also highlighted the low-level commitment of FRN at Colby.
“We only ask for about 15 minutes of our member’s time on Fridays weekly to weigh and load food collected by the Spa onto trucks to be distributed locally,” he added. “All of us are busy — we are Colby students; but in our organization it doesn’t take too much time to have a high impact and we really hope this is something that becomes clear to students on campus.”
Jimenez aspires to expand the FRN’s role with his focus shifting to on-campus campaigns to reduce waste in all forms, both individually and as a community. In this, Jimenez emphasized the importance of members taking an active role.
“I’m a junior and I’m obviously not going to be here forever, so the main focus is getting passionate people to keep the organization going and getting people excited to work on this really important issue,” he explained, referring to the viability of his future initiatives.
“We have already met our target of processing 60 pounds of recoverable food [primarily grab and go consumables] in the Spa and hope to only go up from there if possible,” he said.
Jimenez also noted the personal growth he has experienced as a result of his involvement with the FRN.
“I have felt more personally able to monitor my own waste and become more vocal on issues I care about [like not wasting food] — which includes the work of the FRN,” Jimenez said.
Articulating concrete objectives for the future, Jimenez expressed he would like to expand FRN’s reach to the wider Waterville area through more direct community partnerships coupled with more concerted campus-wide waste reduction initiatives.
He noted his hope of partnering more directly with residence halls on campus and to pilot wider experimental programs aimed at saving a range of single-use plastic disposables.
Jimenez reflected on the trajectory he sees for the organization and what students can look forward to seeing from the FRN chapter at the Colby in the near future.
“At this point we are still in the younger phases [since reviving the FRN chapter], there is still a lot to do, a lot of growing and with that learning as we go along,” he said. “Our objective is to do as much as we can to reduce our waste and help those in need in the process — [Colby] [has] a big part in this and I hope that beyond my time [in FRN] more people will become aware of this, ” he concluded.
Despite the uncertainty that lies ahead in combating food insecurity beyond the pandemic, the FRN remains committed to tackling it, one meal at a time.
~ Aaron Mills ‘23
