The Current Problem
The UW campus prides itself on being a leader in sustainability efforts, and our minimal waste ideology is a large part of said efforts. The Food Pantry supports minimal waste through the rescue and diversion of leftover food from compost or landfill and instead to students who would not otherwise be able to afford it. Diverting food from landfill to the hands of hungry students is important because it provides food for students, staff and teachers struggling with food insecurity issues and it reduces methane gas which is generated by landfill.
There are currently two challenges facing the Pantry. The first challenge is to acquire funding to extend the grant funded Gleaning coordinator position past the deadline. Currently, the part-time (15-17 hrs weekly) gleaning coordinator oversees gleaning, or the collection of unconsumed food, from multiple dining locations around campus. The coordinator also trains volunteers, acts as the main contact point for donating organizations and helps promote the organization through social media. Just this week the coordinator was able to step in and help the two remaining UW Farm staff with picking, washing and packing the produce to ensure that the Pantry would receive a share of the fresh produce. If the coordinator was not able to assist with the process, all the food on the farm not going to HFS would have been composted due to a lack of staff.
The second challenge is adequate refrigeration space for the current supply of donated food and additional space needed for the upcoming fresh produce season. Currently, we are able to store our gleaned food in our household refrigerator and we have been granted temporary access to a fridge at the By George Cafe for the duration of spring quarter due to COVID-19 closures. This extra bit of storage has proved extremely useful as we have been able to accept more gleaning donations as well as make less trips back and forth across campus and can simply restock from the By George fridge. This is a temporary fix and can help with the current volume but will not be enough to help during the extremely busy fresh produce farm season in summer and fall.
The Food Pantry has a strong partnership with the UW Farm, which delivers farm-fresh, organic produce on a weekly basis that we would not be able to purchase from the stores we order our bulk goods from. Refrigerating the produce helps prolong freshness and nutrient density, especially in the upcoming warm months of the year when produce will be at peak production. Due to the limited capacity of the current fridge, the Farm produce frequently ends up kept out at room temperature because of the prioritization of other items such as sandwiches with meat and dairy, ultimately ensuring that the produce will have a shorter shelf life. The refrigerator model we are hoping to purchase has a clear door which would allow for a visually pleasing display of the produce, making it more likely that Pantry visitors choose nutritious, fresh options over shelf-stable alternatives.
In addition to the storage of fresh produce, insufficient fridge storage means that the Pantry sometimes needs to decline donated food requiring refrigeration simply because we do not have the space to store the food. This leads to food that could have been offered to students needing to be thrown away or diverted elsewhere simply because of storage limits. Unfortunately our current fridge is a household refrigerator, not a commercial one, and almost half of the unit is a freezer which we are unable to utilize for produce. The change from our current unit to an all fridge unit would result in an increase from a total of 18 cubic feet of fridge space to a total of 82 cubic feet of cold storage.
It is the mission of the Food Pantry to provide food assistance to students, staff, and faculty who for whatever reason are struggling to put food on their plate. Food insecurity is directly addressed through our no-cost, no-questions-asked model as well as the numerous support services we partner with and can direct students to. Food insecurity is negatively correlated with student success, and redirecting neglected food to campus community members addresses both hunger and health through nutrition, relieving strain on the hunger portion of a struggling Husky’s life and allowing them to focus their efforts on other pressing priorities.
How The Project Addresses the Problem
By extending the gleaning coordinator position and acquiring an additional refrigeration unit, the Pantry will be able to serve more students, staff and teachers dealing with food insecurity issues. The Pantry will not have the problem of turning down food that needs refrigeration and will be able to keep the donated food fresher longer. The Food Pantry is able to assist in the sustaining of education through dependable access to food at no cost. The Pantry also provides the opportunity for campus members to know where their food is coming from, specifically the UW Farm and campus eateries, while supporting waste diversion. Subsequently, the gleaning coordinator position provides valuable hands-on experience regarding food waste and how to manage cross-campus food operations.We currently glean from dining locations out of the 30+ on campus, but with additional funding and space, we would work towards maximizing our gleaning reach to include as many locations as possible.
We can be sure that with the increase in food recovery, the food will be put to good use and that there will not be a gap in supply and demand through the Pantry business model. Pantry shoppers' weekly allotment is dependent on how much product we have; when there is more product, we have lower fewer limits on abundant product, and when there is not enough, we impose more limits to spread the supply. This type of negative feedback system allows for us to buffer the provisions and make sure there is enough for everyone while also ensuring that there is never food leftover at the end of the day. Ready-to-eat food is almost always the first to go, especially when the limits are high. In the month of March 2020, the Pantry gleaned 572 lbs of food from HFS and the UW Farm alone, which is a significant increase from March 2019, when we gleaned 422 lbs from HFS and UW Farm.
Since gleaning is not an exact science, we cannot predict how much food is gleaned from week to week. However, as of recently, the Pantry has been averaging around 150 people a week. Since February 2019, the UW Food Pantry has redistributed over 3618 lbs of gleaned food to put in the hands of food insecure students. This is 3618 pounds of food from Center Table, The Nook, the UW Farm, Suzzallo and the HUB Starbucks, and City Grind Espresso that would otherwise have been thrown away. In addition, the 2019-2020 school year (we are including summer 2019 in this calculation), the UW Food Pantry so far has had over 2,535 visits from shoppers—all of whom are UW students, staff, or faculty. In 2017-2018 alone, the UW Food Pantry had 748 shopper visits. This means the number of visits from the 2017-18 school year have over tripled compared to the 2019-20 school year. This upward trend of visitors is no doubt related to awareness about the Pantry since opening, but also due to the ability of the Pantry to provide for its visitors, which can be built upon by the continued gleaning and the improvement of our cold capacity storage.