Founded | University of Maryland, College Park, 2011 |
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Headquarters | Washington, D.C. |
Website | https://www.foodrecoverynetwork.org/ |
Food Recovery Network (FRN) is a national nonprofit that mobilizes 6,000 college students, food providers, and local businesses in the fight against climate change and hunger by recovering perishable food across the supply chain that would otherwise go to waste and donating it to organizations that feed people experiencing hunger. As one of the largest student-driven movements against food waste and hunger, FRN’s programs are on nearly 200 college campuses and 100 food businesses in 46 states and D.C., and they have recovered more than 16.5 million pounds of food to date – the equivalent of 13.8 million meals donated to feed individuals experiencing hunger and 9,300 metric tons of CO2 emissions prevented from entering our atmosphere.
In 2011, a group of students [1] at the University of Maryland, College Park decided there was something they could do to fight the food waste on their campus. They reached out to the dining manager, Coleen Wright-Riva, who agreed to donate the surplus, edible food that would have otherwise been thrown away. They also contacted a local church that provided a meal service to community members free of charge. A few times a week, students safely packaged surplus food from their dining hall and transported it a few miles away to their community partner agency, who in turn passed it along to community members in need.
In the next year, this simple but effective model of student-powered food recovery spread to additional schools in Rhode Island, California, Michigan, Texas, and beyond. By 2013, with recovery programs starting all over the country, the founding members had established FRN as a 501c3 nonprofit organization [2] with full-time staff dedicated to expanding and cultivating the growing network. A decade after the first recovery, FRN has recovered more than 5 million pounds of food!
FRN’s mission is built on the foundation of thousands of students across the country, who come from diverse backgrounds and academic fields, finding common cause in their belief that good food should not go to waste. The work of student leaders is bolstered by the Bill Emerson Good Samaritan Act of 1996 [3] . This law provides federal liability protection to businesses that donate food in good faith, meaning they do so without gross negligence of food safety.
Regina Harmon has been the Executive Director of Food Recovery Network since 2015 and has been a pivotal voice in raising awareness and harnessing action to reduce food waste, end hunger, and positively impact the environment. She has been invited to share her insights with media outlets such as CNN and Al Jazeera and was named one of the most influential leaders in the food industry by SELF magazine. In addition to her role at Food Recovery Network, Regina serves on the board of directors for Food Tank and Earth Island Institute and is a valued member of ReFED’s Advisory Council.
Gleaning is the act of collecting leftover crops from farmers' fields after they have been commercially harvested or on fields where it is not economically profitable to harvest. It is a practice described in the Hebrew Bible that became a legally enforced entitlement of the poor in a number of Christian kingdoms. Modern day "dumpster diving", when done for food or culinary ingredients, is seen as a similar form of food recovery. Gleaning is also still used to provide nutritious harvested foods for those in need. In the United States, it is used due to the need for a national network to aid food recovery organizations. This is called the National Gleaning Project, which was started by the Center for Agriculture and Food Systems at Vermont Law and Graduate School to aid those less fortunate much like the old Christian Kingdoms.
A food bank is a non-profit, charitable organization that distributes food to those who have difficulty purchasing enough to avoid hunger, usually through intermediaries like food pantries and soup kitchens. Some food banks distribute food directly with their food pantries.
The North Texas Food Bank (NTFB) is a social benefit organization located in Plano, Texas. The organization distributes donated, purchased and prepared foods through a network of nearly 1,000 feeding programs and 400 Partner Agencies in 13 North Texas counties. The NTFB supports the nutritional needs of children, seniors, and families through education, advocacy and strategic partnerships.
A Campus Kitchen is an on-campus student service program that is a member of the nonprofit organization, The Campus Kitchens Project. At a Campus Kitchen, students use on-campus kitchen space and donated food from their cafeterias to prepare and deliver nourishing meals to their communities.
Food rescue, also called food recovery, food salvage or surplus food redistribution, is the practice of gleaning edible food that would otherwise go to waste from places such as farms, produce markets, grocery stores, restaurants, or dining facilities and distributing it to local emergency food programs.
FareShare is a charity network established in 1994, which aims at relieving food poverty and reducing food waste in the United Kingdom. It does this by obtaining good quality surplus food from the food industry that would otherwise have gone to waste and sending it to frontline charities and community groups across the UK.
FareShare is an Australian not-for-profit food rescue organisation that operates Australia's largest charity kitchens located in Melbourne and Brisbane. Its mission is to mobilise volunteers to cook delicious, free meals from rescued, donated and homegrown ingredients to improve the lives of Australians in hardship.
The Greater Chicago Food Depository (GCFD) is a nonprofit organization that fights hunger throughout Cook County, Illinois. The GCFD distributes donated and purchased food through a network of 700 food pantries, soup kitchens, shelters and community programs, serving more than 800,000 adults and children every year. In fiscal year 2016, the GCFD distributed more than 70 million pounds of nonperishable food, produce, dairy products, and meat - the equivalent of more than 160,000 meals every day. Of the $96,883,955 spent in 2016, over 90% went to direct food distribution programs.
Leket Israel, The National Food Bank, a registered nonprofit Israel-based charity, is the leading food rescue organization in Israel, serving 175,000+ needy people weekly. Leket Israel rescues surplus agricultural produce and collects excess cooked meals for redistribution to the needy throughout Israel via its network of 200+ nonprofit organization (NPO) partners.
SIRUM (Supporting Initiatives to Redistribute Unused Medicine) is a non-profit social enterprise started by Stanford University students to decrease the amount of medicine going to waste in the U.S. by redistributing unused, unexpired drugs to safety-net clinics. Using an innovative technology platform, SIRUM saves lives, time, and money by allowing health facilities, manufacturers, wholesalers, and pharmacies to easily donate unused medicine rather than destroy it.
Philabundance is a non-profit food bank that serves the Philadelphia and Delaware Valley regions of Pennsylvania, United States. It is the largest such organization in the region. The organization stated goal is to end hunger in its communities.
Food Donation Connection (FDC), LLC headquartered in Knoxville, Tennessee, is a privately owned American company facilitating the donation process between restaurants/food service companies with surplus food and local social service agencies that distribute food to those in need. FDC's primary goal is to redirect prepared food that would otherwise be discarded towards feeding individuals facing hunger.
Second Harvest North Florida (SHNF) is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization located in Jacksonville, Florida, that performs food rescue and redistribution to partner agencies in one quarter of Florida's 67 counties. The charitable organization has been active for over 30 years.
Forgotten Harvest is a non-profit food rescue organization that collects food that would otherwise go to waste and delivers it free of charge to organizations feeding the hungry in Metro Detroit. In 2015, the nonprofit distributed more than 40 million pounds of food to more than 260 emergency food providers.
La Soupe is a Cincinnati, Ohio, nonprofit organization that uses discarded food to produce meals and delivers them to other nonprofit agencies for distribution to people experiencing food insecurity.
City Harvest London is a charitable organisation focused on alleviating food insecurity and food waste across London. City Harvest feeds over 12,000 Londoners a day with quality, nutritious, surplus food from a myriad of food producers. City Harvest delivers food to over 350 organisations and projects in London that serve almost every vulnerable group in the capital including but not limited to; children, refugees, families, women facing domestic violence, the homeless. Food often acts as a tool that breaks down barriers between organisations and their users and becomes a gateway to services which address other societal issues.
St. Mary's Food Bank Alliance is a nonprofit, nonsectarian organization located in Phoenix, Arizona. Founded in 1967 by John van Hengel, St. Mary's was the first modern organization to operate using the food bank model, which spread throughout U.S. and the rest of the world. Today, St. Mary's is recognized as the world's first food bank.
Rethink Food NYC Inc, commonly called Rethink Food or just Rethink, is a non-profit organization based in New York City. The organization was founded to address hunger in the United States by contributing to a sustainable and equitable food system. Rethink collects excess food from restaurants, grocery stores, and corporate kitchens to provide nutritious meals for people living without food security at low or no-cost. The organization expanded its operations in March 2020 to meet growing food demands amid the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States.
The Farmlink Project is a United States-based non-profit organization that combats food waste by collecting excess produce from farms and other food donors across America and delivering it to organizations that serve food insecure communities. Since its founding in 2020, the organization has rescued over 130 million pounds of food, distributed to over 400 communities, and grown to a network of over 600 volunteers nationwide.