Take a minute to think about your dining hall experience. What comes to mind first? The menu? Eating with your friends? Maybe the women who scan your ID during checkout? What you probably don’t acknowledge, however, is the amount of food you consume–and what’s left over, well where does that go?
Did you know that about 25% of all U.S. waste is food waste? That’s a lot of discarded food that could go to people who need it. Did you also know that not all of this food waste is just left overs? Farmers produce a large portion of wasted food because they are unable to harvest some of their crops for various reasons. These facts are just the backbone behind the Food Recovery Networks’s efforts to reduce this waste by putting it to better use.
With a passion for food justice, this university’s chapter recently launched a new initiative, the Recovered Food CSA. The program, which buys excess crops from local farmers and distributes them to students, is starting to make a transcending impact in the metropolitan area. They’ve set up shop all over campus in popular spots like the Stamp Student Union, North Campus Diner and South Campus Commons. When you make a purchase from them, you get not only a five pound bag of food for five dollars, but also the satisfaction of helping another–for every bag sold, an equivalent bag is donated to a D.C. family in need.
Tackling food waste elimination, feeding families and aiding in the growth of local farming business are no easy tasks, though. To continue to perform these deeds and to expand to a larger domain, the organization needs new volunteers who share the same passion for food recovery. Volunteers who are eager to see food become something that everyone can share and enjoy can visit http://www.foodrecoverynetwork.org/other/csa/ and sign up to be a part of something that is making a huge “foodprint” on the community.