Food Recovery Network: Fighting Waste, Feeding People by FoodRecoveryNetwork

Please find below the judging results for your proposal.

Finalist Evaluation

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Judges'' comments

Thank you for your proposal!

We really appreciate how your idea is out there, tested, and appears to be really taking off. We especially liked how your proposal is a student-led initiative at universities; the volunteer component is what makes this proposal very compelling. We further appreciate how the proposal creates a high value with meals for people. One area that we felt the proposal could have improved upon is how their idea could be further enhanced by obtaining support from Colab.

Semi-Finalist Evaluation

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Judges'' comments

Thank you for your proposal to the Climate Colab contest!
Great effort and growth here. Here are a few development areas to make the proposal stronger for the next stage:

1. Can you quantify your costs in terms of student hours, hauling distances etc- and compare it to the value proposition? Quantifying it will demonstrate scaling feasibility to thousands of restaurants etc. Great work!
2. How could this be scaled to hospitals, cafeterias, restaurants around the world?
3. Can you estimate the world impact potentially of edible food that is thrown away?

Best of luck for this next round of iteration!

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Mia Zavalij

Jun 15, 2016
11:55

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Proposal
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Thank you for this helpful feedback! We have incorporated your notes into our revised proposal and outlined the changes below:

COSTS: Because FRN values building student leaders, FRN gives its chapters a great deal of autonomy when it comes to the logistics of the recovery process, as long as they meet FRN’s quality standards. For this reason, costs (volunteer time, energy expended transporting food) can vary from chapter to chapter, so it’s helpful to look at case studies of chapters. Take the University of Maryland chapter, for example. Every night of the week, 5-7 student volunteers will dedicate 45 minutes to an hour of their time to package up surplus food from campus dining halls and deliver it to nearby hunger-fighting agencies. The chapter usually recovers 200-300 pounds of prepared surplus food from the dining halls. While the University of Maryland chapter uses a car to deliver its recovered food, many FRN chapters whose hunger-fighting partners are nearer to their campus will bike or walk the food from the dining hall. In any case, the value of FRN’s work lies not only in its reduction of greenhouse gas emissions from food that would end up in landfills, but also in its ensuring that people have access to the nourishing food they need. Overall, FRN’s model efficiently redirects existing resources (eager student volunteers and surplus food) to fill resource gaps (hungry community members), a model in which the minimal costs are outweighed by the community value generated by FRN’s work.
WHERE WILL THESE ACTIONS BE TAKEN?: Ultimately, this resource-redirection process centers on building communities and connecting stakeholders through a common goal, and this community-centric model gives FRN the potential to extend its reach further, beyond higher education and into other areas, such as K-12 schools, corporate cafeterias, hospitals and more. Already, FRN has inspired a county-wide food recovery program in Montgomery County, Maryland, and FRN staff have spoken with officials from cities across the country about the potential for city-wide impact.
HOW MUCH WILL EMISSIONS BE REDUCED OR SEQUESTERED VS. BUSINESS AS USUAL LEVELS?: Globally, one-third of all food is wasted, according to the World Resources Institute. Furthermore, if we were to halve the percentage of food sent to landfills, we could reduce methane gas emissions 7.5 percent.