{"id":745,"date":"2017-06-21T12:00:56","date_gmt":"2017-06-21T16:00:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine?p=745"},"modified":"2024-05-07T13:37:31","modified_gmt":"2024-05-07T17:37:31","slug":"the-fruit-of-their-labors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/the-fruit-of-their-labors\/","title":{"rendered":"The Fruit of Their Labors"},"content":{"rendered":"

Every year, 40 percent of all food in the U.S. goes uneaten. This is one of the disturbing facts Susan Pagano, former president of Monmouth University\u2019s Food Recovery Network, shares with people to drive home the issue of food waste\u2014when food gets discarded or goes uneaten for reasons that range from a lack of meal planning to people overestimating their hunger.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not just food that you\u2019re throwing away,\u201d Pagano says of the edible items that get trashed each day. \u201cIt\u2019s the water, energy, and manpower that went into producing that item. There are so many negative environmental effects that result from people throwing out their food.\u201d<\/p>\n

After hearing about FRN, a national student-run movement that tackles food waste by feeding those in need, Pagano set out to establish the Monmouth chapter. With help from students in a First Year Seminar class, she pitched the initiative to Gourmet Dining, the university\u2019s food service provider, in December 2015, and a collaboration was born. Twice a week, Monmouth\u2019s FRN members collect untouched, unserved food from campus eateries and deliver it to two partner agencies: Reformation Lutheran Church Community Food Pantry in West Long Branch, New Jersey, and Meal at Noon in Long Branch, New Jersey. Since spring 2016, Monmouth\u2019s chapter has donated more than 5,604 pounds of leftover food to the pantries, helping to feed approximately 4,670 people, according to Pagano.<\/p>\n

In the process, FRN has helped Gourmet Dining better identify what food items consistently go uneaten. Chris Ryerson, Gourmet\u2019s resident district manager, says this allows the company to make more informed decisions about how much food to order and prepare, resulting in less food waste.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere was one night in the beginning where we collected close to 300 pounds of food,\u201d says Pagano. \u201cNow, on Friday nights, we\u2019re getting like 70 to 80 pounds, maybe up to 150.\u201d<\/p>\n

FRN is extending its efforts beyond recovery and delivery, says Pagano. The group also aims to educate people on campus about food waste and how their individual choices have an impact. The group\u2019s \u201cScrape Your Plate\u201d event, held in Magill Commons in April, encouraged diners to scrape leftovers from their plates onto trays, which were then weighed. In under two hours, FRN collected 22 pounds of food scraps\u2014about the same weight as the average car tire.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe can do everything that we can to stop the waste of food that hasn\u2019t left the hot line in the dining hall, but we can\u2019t do anything about plate waste,\u201d says Pagano. \u201cI think the aesthetic impact of the Scrape your Plate event\u2014of actually seeing that plate waste weighed right in front of you\u2014forces people to confront something they would otherwise just brush aside.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Led by Susan Pagano, Monmouth\u2019s Food Recovery Network is reducing campus waste while feeding the
\nlocal community. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":747,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"image_focus":"{\"x\":51,\"y\":37}","hide_title":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-745","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-currents","category-tides"],"thumbnail":"\"\"","catString":"Currents, Tides","issue":"Summer 2017","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/745","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=745"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/745\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1013,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/745\/revisions\/1013"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/747"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=745"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=745"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=745"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}