UNIVERSITY PARK —There are 6,702 unserved meals from dining halls at Penn State’s University Park campus that have been donated to local shelters, food pantries and other organizations by the Food Recovery Network at Penn State since its inception in spring 2023. And, thanks to the drive and determination of Adeline Peat, a senior studying nutritional sciences in the College of Health and Human Development, the number of meals — as well as the organization’s overall impact — has continued to grow.
The student-led Food Recovery Network aims to increase sustainability, food security and awareness of issues surrounding food waste. The organization recovers unserved food from four University Park dining halls and transports it to four student and community partners.
“When I ate in the dining halls during my freshman and sophomore years, I could not ignore the trays of untouched food being thrown into the compost at the end of each meal,” Peat said. Peat serves as the president of the Food Recovery Network at Penn State
“At the same time, I could not ignore the increased requests for donations to student food pantries and the growing food insecurity among students. That juxtaposition between the waste and the need didn’t make sense to me. There was a clear misalignment that could be changed.”
From there, a seed was planted in Peat’s mind. Along with friend, Anna Janaszek, a fellow nutritional sciences major who works in campus dining, the two created a plan to take action.
They began the process of establishing a student organization and securing a staff adviser. Meanwhile, they discovered that two other students at University Park — Emmanuel Kraft, a rising junior studying political science and communication arts and science, and Jeff Shi, who earned a bachelor’s degree in biochemistry and molecular biology in May 2024 — shared similar motives.
These leaders combined into a single force to address food waste and food insecurity by joining a national movement known as Food Recovery Network, a nonprofit with more than 230 chapters at higher education institutions across the country. In the spring of 2023, a new chapter of Food Recovery Network was born at Penn State.
FEEDING (AND BUILDING) A COMMUNITY
Powered by 40 student volunteers, the Penn State chapter of the Food Recovery Network conducts four weekly food recoveries during the fall and spring semesters — and this year they’ve started summer operations, too. During, each recovery student volunteers travel to four separate dining halls to pick up meals, which have been prepackaged by campus dining staff. They load a volunteer’s car with the meals and drop them off at various student and community partner organizations including Abba Java Coffeehouse, Community Café at St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church, Out of the Cold Centre County and The Lion’s Pantry.
“Addy’s passion for making a positive impact in this important work is evident in her leadership every day,” Leslie Pillen, associate director for farm and food systems and Food Recovery Network co-adviser, shared. “In addition to the real difference that these recovered meals make for students and community members, she is creating opportunities for club members to connect directly with community partners over shared meals and fellowship.”
Beyond feeding the community, the Food Recovery Network makes an environmental impact too. In its first year, more than 2,500 pounds of food were rescued and redistributed, preventing waste from going to landfills. This prevented the release of more than 9,500 pounds of carbon dioxide from decaying food waste, according to the organization’s annual report. Since the chapter’s emergence, this mitigation has increased exponentially from 9,500 pounds to more than 23,200 pounds of greenhouse gas emissions.
Partnering with the Food Recovery Network is just one of many ways that Penn State’s Residential Dining leaders are working to reduce food waste and improve sustainability. According to Amy Bressler, associate director of campus residential dining, some sustainability-focused efforts include utilizing a menu management system to forecast patron counts and recipe production; batch cooking menu items and serving proper portion sizes to reduce food waste; and measuring customer post-consumer waste through the LeanPath program.
“With the addition of the Food Recovery Network program, we are able to repurpose some of the leftover food to positively support our students and the community,” Bressler said.
