More than 38 million tons of food are thrown away every year in this country, according to a 2014 EPA study. A group of Whittier students is tackling this problem while also addressing the
issue of hunger in the local community.
The Food Recovery Network (FRN), founded four years ago at Whittier, works with the campus dining service, Bon Appétit, to collect leftover food, which is then donated to the St. Matthias Church soup kitchen.
Whittier’s FRN was recently noted as a “model for other colleges” by Food Tank, a nonprofit organization dedicated to educating and helping the world with food issues. In its first three years, FRN collected 21,130 pounds of excess food from the Campus Inn.