For the past year and a half, an initiative to begin a food donation system at Lafayette has been pushed to the foreground by Environmental Studies student Haley Mauriello.  Mauriello has worked closely with dining services and the new Office of Sustainability to successfully introduce a weekly donation system in the Spring of 2017.  While this accomplishment represents progress towards food waste reduction, it is only the beginning of the possibilities embedded in food donation.

Existing:

The current food recovery system is in its infancy, with several volunteers collecting food from Lower Farinon once a week and donating said food to Safe Harbor, a homeless shelter adjacent to the school (H. Mauriello, personal communication, March 28, 2017).  The food donated comes from Lower Farinon’s grab-and-go station, which Dining Services Manager Sarah Fried identifies as the “biggest culprit of waste” on campus (S. Fried, personal communication, March 10, 2017).  This food is collected by dining services staff and transferred to the Landis vans owned by the Center for Community engagement, which maintain regularly scheduled trips to Safe Harbor and other local shelters as part of the MOSAIC programs (H. Mauriello, personal communication, March 28, 2017).  Safe Harbor was chosen as the first destination for donated food due to its close proximity and well-established relationship with Lafayette.  Before executing the first donation, Bonnie Winfield, Director of Community Partnerships in the Center for Community Engagement, and Marie Fechick-Kirk, visited the shelter to discuss the needs of residents and logistics of donation (B. Winfield, personal communication, March 9, 2017).

Future:

The next steps in this organization must be to become an official organization on campus in order to access campus funds.  This may be achieved either through Student Government or through the Center for Community Engagement’s MOSAIC program.  Additional resources could be gleaned through hosting benefit lunches through dining services, with St. Joseph’s food recovery program and the Food Recovery Network as sources of guidance in planning such an event.  With these additional resources, the program could open to more shelters and collect more food from different locations on campus.  Maintaining relationships with these shelters beyond the weekly drop off period should also be considered by members of Lafayette’s food recovery program in addition to education and reflection events for volunteers.

Future work can also be informed by current food recovery efforts in Easton. The documentary Networking Hunger (Schmidt, 2016), features various programs in Easton that work to combat food insecurity through redistribution of food surplus, improved food access, and introduce nutrition education: