IOWA CITY, Iowa (AP) - While living in a residence hall last year at the University of Iowa, John Sheeley was shocked by the amount of food students were throwing away in the cafeteria.
“It’s a huge problem,” said Sheeley, a sophomore in pre-business.
This spring, Sheeley learned about the Food Recovery Network, a nationwide program that helps students collect surplus food on their campus and donate it to organizations that feed the hungry in their area. Founded in 2011, FRN has chapters at 46 colleges and universities in 21 states where student volunteers have recovered more than 235,000 pounds of food.
For Sheeley, starting a FRN chapter at UI was a “no-brainer.”
“Our goal is to work through the university and take advantage of all the major venues they have and make sure they aren’t wasting food,” he told the Iowa City Press-Citizen (https://icp-c.com/1njMynS).
So far, Sheeley has assembled a team of six students who are helping to organize the chapter. They have contacted Table to Table, a similar nonprofit organization in Johnson County, whose volunteers have agreed to help the fledgling student group with training and access to their vans.
Bob Andrlik, director of Table to Table, admires the students’ effort but wants to make sure they understand logistics and how to collect and disseminate food safely.
“They are going to send some of their volunteers through our program to get some hands-on experience,” he said. “I think there is a lot of promise.”
Sheeley said he is waiting to meet with UI dining services to discuss how his group can begin collecting surplus food. In the meantime, the group is focusing on pre-packed and canned foods from students and student organizations, which are easier to transport because there are fewer issues with storage and time.
“As we get more comfortable with canned foods and doing collections, we’re looking to move into more prepared foods,” he said. “I’m hoping by next semester, we will be able to start picking up from dining halls.”
Reducing waste is nothing new for some UI resident’s halls and the University of Iowa Hospital and Clinics, where innovative programs have cut food waste by thousands of pounds.
Laurie Kroyman, senior associate director in food and nutrition services at UIHC, said the hospital made it an overall goal to reduce the amount of food being wasted. First, they tweaked their program for forecasting how many meals they need to prepare each day. Plus, they reduced the selection of menu items by 5 percent.
One of the biggest changes, however, came in April 2012 when the hospital switched to biodegradable dishes, flatware, straws and napkins. The change allowed kitchen workers to pulp the biodegradable items with the leftover food, creating a mix that is sent directly to the Iowa City compost site. In 2013, the hospital recycled 77 tons of food and paper into compost, Kroyman said.
Finally, the hospital is making a more concerted effort to recover useable food and donate it to needy organizations. In a 12-month period that ended in November 2013, the hospital donated more than 2,300 to Table to Table, Kroyman said.
“None of our food is sent to the landfill,” she said. “It is either donated or composted.”
Some UI residence hall are making efforts to reduce food waste, too. For example, Fred Kurt, manager of Hillcrest Market Place, instituted a trayless program that saved about $100,000 in food orders the first year.
Dylan Bondly, a sophomore at Grinnell College, launched a Food Recovery Network chapter at his school after complaining to his mom about the amount of food being wasted in the dining halls at Grinnell. She had just seen a story on television about the FRN chapter at the University of Maryland and told him to start his own.
The students started by collecting prepacked foods and fruit that students didn’t eat, such as chips and apples. Before long, they were collecting 40 pounds a week. So far this semester, Bondly has recovered more than 2,000 pounds of food from the school of 1,600 students.
“We want to encourage people to only take the food they are going to eat,” he said.
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Information from: Iowa City Press-Citizen, https://www.press-citizen.com/
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