Food Recovery Network

Food Recovery Network

David Sparks Ph.D.
David Sparks Ph.D.
A few years ago, students at the University of Maryland – College Park noticed a problem that is common at colleges across the country: huge amounts of leftover food from campus dining halls and sports events were being thrown away. At the same time, 1 in 8 people in the D.C. area were struggling with hunger. In 2011, three students from different campus organizations came together to form the Food Recovery Network (FRN) at Maryland. They put together a team, got student groups to volunteer one night a week, and worked with Dining Services to start recovering leftover food. In the first weeks, students were recovering 150-200 pounds of food a day.  Every night of the week, a different student group on campus would spend an hour recovering food from the dining halls and donating it to shelters in the D.C. area.  By the time the 2011-2012 year was over, the group had donated 30,000 meals to D.C.-area shelters.

In January of 2012, students from four colleges came together to create the Food Recovery Network, with a mission of creating food recovery programs on every college campus in the country. First, students at Brown University formed the second chapter of FRN, which successfully recovered 6,000 pounds of food in its first semester.  As of May 2014, there are programs at more than 95 colleges in 26 states, Puerto Rico and Washington D.C. and have recovered over 400,000 pounds of food!

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