As the Cornell Chapter of the Food Recovery Network, we couple two community problems into one innovative solution. We reduce dining food waste and at the same time tackle our community's hunger by donating surplus meals from Cornell's dining halls to local food pantries. Rather than ending up in the compost, Cornell's extra food now finds itself where it's most at home-- in the hands of the hungry.

On Cornell's campus, our team began recovering food from Becker House Dining Hall in Spring 2014. Surplus meals from the dining hall are donated to the Friendship Donation Network, where they are redistributed to pantries all over the county.

The national organization was founded in 2011 by Ben Simon, then a Maryland University student, who sought to fight waste and feed people by donating dining hall leftovers to his local food pantry. Since then, the organization has grown to more than 198 college campuses, and has donated over 1.76 million pounds of food.

We recover at four dining halls on campus five times per week: Becker House, Appel Dining, Bethe House, and Toni Morrison Dining. Two to five volunteers go into the dining hall as it is about to close and package the food. The food is then picked up by a driver, who delivers it to Friendship Donation Network in Downtown Ithaca.

In addition to dining halls, we also recover food from other events on Cornell's campus as well as local farms (called gleaning). We also host other events focused on food waste, food justice, and food insecurity on campus, such as documentary screenings and speaker events.

We could not do any of this without the help of our large general body as well as volunteers from other organizations at Cornell including Alpha Phi Omega (APO), Lambda Chi Alpha (Lambda), Phi Delta Epsilon (PhiDE), and the Pre-Professional Associaton Towards Careers in Health (PATCH). General body members are required to do one recovery per cycle and there are three cycles per semester. Any G-Body member who has been on at least one recovery can apply to be on the Officer Board. O-Board members lead two recoveries per cycle. We have G-Body and O-Board meetings each once a month and open E-Board meetings once a week.

If you are passionate about reducing food waste and fighting food insecurity in Tompkins County, join us!