Why we do what we do

Water Stream at the Great Smoky Mountains National Park

This year's World Water Week conference was heavily focused on the connection between food and water waste.

Trays of food recovered by FRN volunteers

The annual conference, which takes place in Stockholm, serves as a get together of various influential organizations, leaders and experts to discuss the management of our globe's water resources.

During the week long event, the Stockholm International Water Institute (SIWI) revealed the findings of their new report. The statistics from the report are shocking. They demonstrate that 40% of purchased food in the USA is simply thrown away.

This information is disappointing, especially since we already use 70% of our scarce freshwater resources to irrigate crops and grow food. This food is also the biggest source of use and misuse of our water supply.

With the estimation that before 2050 our world will have to accompany 2 billion new inhabitants, who will also need food and water for survival, the inefficiency of how these vital resources are being used becomes very apparent.

This is why the mission of the Food Recovery Network (FRN) is to recover nutritional meals, and provide them to those who do not have access to food. Of course, thrown away food can be used as compost and even generate energy, but those are only secondary uses.

Since the beginning of time, it was always known that food's main purpose was to provide nutrition and  calories to its consumer. What is important to remember is that in today's world there is no shortage of food, in fact, we are experiencing a surplus of food on our markets.

What is missing, though, from this food equation is its effective distribution. This is why, the role of FRN is to fill this void and ensure that the produced food achieves its main intention of providing nutrition to the consumer.

FRN volunteers deliver food to a nearby food bank

With hard work, amazing volunteers and hours spent on creating a process for recovering dining hall food and donating it to local food banks, the FRN has been able to redistribute over 50,000 meals in one year. With the plans of expanding our network to other campuses, in addition to the existing chapters at UM, Brown, UC Berkley and Pomona College, we aim to bring this number up to 500,000 meals a year.

While this number is surely shy of providing good nutritional food for millions of Americans who go hungry in the USA, it is definitely a start and a step in the right direction.

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