over 1MILLION pounds of food recovered since 2011
The Food Recovery Network is a national organization with chapters on a multitude of college and univeristy campuses. It's also the largest student movement against food waste and hunger in America.
In 2011, Ben Simon, Mia Zavalij and Cam Pascual, students at the University of Maryland, College Park noticed good dining hall food ending up in the trash at the end of the night. By the end of the school year, FRN at UMD had recovered 30,000 meals to DC-area partner agencies.
During the Spring 2012 semester, the second FRN chapter was founded at Brown University, and the two schools joined forces with two other campus food recovery programs at University of California, Berkeley and Pomona College.
In May 2013, the Sodexo Foundation provided FRN with founding funding to hire a full-time staff and transition into a professional nonprofit! Since then, FRN has swept the nation and made higher education the first sector where food recovery is the norm and not the exception.
The Food Recovery Network
The Hard Truth
The Food Recovery Heroes is the University of Pittsburgh's chapter of the The Food Recovery Network.
Food Recovery Heroes recover food from 4 different locations on campus and 1 non-university affiliated location. Currently FRH recovers from The Oakland Bakery, Eienstiens bagels from the locations in both Benedeum and in Posvar, and the Market Kosher section. FRH also recovers the left over bread from another University Group who recovers the bread from Panera. Lastly FRH recovers from Brueggers Bagels on Forbes Ave.
Currently the Food Recovery Heroes are partnered with Jubilee Soup Kitchen, School2Career, FOCUS, Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank, CHS and Pitt Pantry working with and donating recovered food to these organizations.