“I was stunned,” says Harward. “Sophie said the little boys were crying because their bellies hurt. We just had no idea there were kids in our community that were hungry.” Harward and some families gathered food for the family, but she knew more had to be done. 

It was her daughter who mentioned all the food going to waste at her school and asked her mom a simple question: Why couldn’t they give families the food from her school instead of throwing it away?

Sophie’s idea became the spark that launched the Georgia nonprofit Helping Hands Ending Hunger, which now works with 150 schools throughout the state to divert food waste.

And there’s a lot of food going to waste. A 2019 USDA School Nutrition and Meal Cost Study found that 31 percent of vegetables and 41 percent of milk were tossed.

But those figures are changing. Schools in Atlanta are working to feed hungry families and rethink how they approach school food. Here are three making huge environmental impacts.

Helping Hands Ending Hunger

Harward thought her daughter’s idea to repurpose the food kids didn’t eat sounded simple, but the USDA has strict rules on preventing cold cafeteria food from being saved. 

But Harward wasn’t deterred. In 2016, she formed a 501(c)(3) and tested the pilot in her daughter’s school. After lunches, students collected uneaten prepackaged food or dry goods, such as apple sauce, packaged carrots, and unopened milk cartons. The students learned how to safely collect and store the unused food, and then handed it out weekly to families in need. 

In Georgia, that included more than 13 percent of children who lacked access to healthy food in 2022 (the latest numbers available), according to the nonprofit Feeding America. 

Today, the Helping Hands program is in 150 Georgia schools and is run by students. “We now train volunteers and school staff at every school chapter to teach kids that food is not trash,” says Harward.

Students at Atlanta Public School’s Springdale Park Elementary School (SPARK) STEAM program rescued about 700 pounds of food between February and May 2024 alone, according to Harward. It was repurposed into 566 meals and another 486 pounds of food for the community. 

“Food that can’t be saved is collected in compost buckets in the cafeteria and used in our [rooftop] garden; nothing goes to waste,” says Kristin Siembieda, STEAM program specialist and Helping Hands coordinator at SPARK.

Harward says the program works incredibly well. “These kids are taking charge and are going to be amazing future leaders.” 

Food Waste Warriors

The students at Gwinnett County School’s Lovin Elementary have a warrior mentality when it comes to food waste. 

In 2018, Gwinnett Clean & Beautiful’s Green and Healthy Schools had a rare opportunity to participate in a new initiative of the World Wildlife Fund, the Food Waste Warriors program.

“The World Wildlife Fund was looking for systems to collect data for its first food waste report, and to help write curriculum around how to do food waste audits,” says Gwinnett Clean & Beautiful board member Jay Bassett, who also works for the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). “The Green and Healthy Schools program was already established [at Gwinnett County Schools], so we did it.” 

In 2019, Gwinnett County Schools enlisted Lovin Elementary in Lawrenceville to be part of the Food Waste Warriors program, conducting food waste audits. They sorted milk, fruits, and vegetables left on lunch trays into buckets and weighed it all. They were shocked that the school had trashed almost 600 pounds of food — in one day. 

Thirteen Gwinnett County Schools completed the 31 food waste audits for the WWF’s Food Waste Warriors report. The data for Gwinnett County Schools was eye-opening: On average, 95,169 pounds of food per school, per year was wasted, and 49.4 pounds of food per student, per year was wasted, as well as almost 56,000 cartons of milk per school, per year.

The first 31 audits launched the ongoing relationship with the WWF and Gwinnett County Schools, which continues to focus on K-12 education. Today, the Food Waste Warriors program is a critical part of the Green and Healthy Schools and STEAM education within Gwinnett County Schools, which is the largest in Georgia.

“The most important thing about the Food Waste Warrior program is the students tackle every aspect of the project,” says Brenda McDaniel, environmental education manager, Gwinnett County Schools. “It’s not just about doing food waste audits; the students must come up with solutions to tackle the problems.”

That first student-led audit at Lovin Elementary provided the school with different resolutions it has now implemented, including serving food differently to reduce packaging waste, eliminating straws and breakfast cutlery, and using biodegradable trays.

Third-graders now collect food scraps that would be trashed at the end of lunch and add them to the compost bin that’s part of the Food Well Alliance’s Compost Connectors program. They learn about composting in STEAM classes and how to use it to fertilize their gardens and help feed the school’s chickens.

First- and third-graders have improved their skillsets in science and math so much, the county revised its middle school curriculum to accommodate their new abilities.

“I never envisioned where this would go,” says Bassett. “We just wanted to change policy on how to reduce waste in cafeterias. That led to systemically building this culture around agriculture, nature-based learning, biology and engineering. Reducing food waste is just a small part of it.”

Raccoon Eyes

Georgia Tech in Atlanta is synonymous with engineering, prestigious research and cutting-edge technology. Soon, its dining services could be a leader in what universities can do to cut down on food waste in their dining halls, thanks to Tech students Bruce Tan, Ivan Zou, and Nathanael Koh. 

The three students focused their CREATE-X Capstone, which is an undergraduate senior design course for entrepreneurial projects, on reducing food waste on campus because of the amount of food being trashed in the university dining halls. Their solution: Raccoon Eyes. 

“The eye-opener for me was a time I was in the kitchen at the end of lunch service,” says Zou. “A worker pushed in carts full of food that were going straight to the trash.” 

Raccoon Eyes has two components: 3D cameras and a computer screen on the dining hall trash cans. The 3D cameras take pictures of every plate and calculate the type and weight of food waste going into the trash using software the three students developed. The computer screen uses visual and audio to collect feedback about the food and to nudge students about future food waste.

During the period between Jan. 11 and May 2, 2024, the system tracked and measured the amount of food waste on more than 240,000 plates at Tech. While there was still about an ounce of food left on each plate, the overall amount of food being tossed dropped by 19 percent during the semester.

The post On the Ground With Atlanta Schools Reducing Food Waste appeared first on Modern Farmer.

In a span of less than 10 minutes, no fewer than five people open the doors of the bright yellow community fridge and pantry just outside the Medlock Park neighborhood in Decatur, Georgia. Most come here searching for fresh food and produce, or personal products such as toothpaste or diapers, donated by the community.

“I come here about three times a week,” says Anne. She depends on the food, especially fresh produce, to supplement her diet. “If it wasn’t for this fridge, I definitely wouldn’t get to eat as healthy as I do,” she says. “It’s amazing what people donate.” 

The community fridge, known as ATLFreeFridge, stands in front of North Decatur Presbyterian Church. The goal is to provide free food and help reduce food waste. It’s open 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and anybody can take or donate food.

The ATLFreeFridge was one of six installed in 2020 as part of the volunteer initiative Free99Fridge started by former Atlantan and activist Latisha Springer. Her goal was to maintain community fridges and pantries across metro Atlanta to help combat food insecurity and waste. (Springer ran the program until she left Atlanta to pursue other opportunities.) Initially, all of the fridges were a success.

But unlike the fridge at the church, the others depended on local businesses such as coffee shops and breweries for their spaces and electricity. When Springer left the program, the fridge sponsors had to choose whether to keep their fridges or close them down. Only North Decatur Presbyterian Church chose to keep its fridge, renaming it ATLFreeFridge.

Today, volunteers install, clean and monitor the ATLFreeFridge. They donate the food, hygiene products and dry goods, and make sure no food is expired or goes bad. Most of the fresh food comes from the neighboring community, although a team of volunteers coordinate food pickups from local restaurants, farms, and grocery stores that also provide tons of fresh food.

“It was a new idea here when I first heard about it,” says Monique. “It was unusual because it was a mutual aid project instead of a non-profit. It was so smart and done with respect. There were no questions asked whether you were donating or coming for food.”

But neighbors in Medlock Park had a lot of questions early on. They expressed their concerns to the church and volunteer coordinators about things such as sanitation, people lingering at the fridge, and homeless encampments that began popping up. Most reservations, though, were about safety around the neighborhood. Those were exacerbated in 2022 after a man who appeared to be having a mental health crisis threw the contents of the fridge into the street, some at passing cars. 

That’s why, Nancy Gathany, a church member on the ATLFreeFridge executive committee, says the church doubled down to keep the fridge rather than close it. “I’m sure it was stressful for the other commercial businesses [hosting fridges] because they become magnets for unhoused people,” she says. “But it’s hard to ignore the needs of so many people coming to our fridge. It hits you in the face.” 

Co-pastor Rev. David Lewicki held a meeting in October 2022 to address community fears. They’ve since established rules for fridge shoppers, including new boundaries on the campus grounds, although there’s rarely a time without someone loitering around the fridge. The church also now enforces no overnight sleeping, but it still happens off church grounds on occasion. 

North Decatur Presbyterian now provides local resource information, including temporary housing, legal assistance, employment services, and child and pet care, to users and has designated parking spaces to address concerns about traffic.

Perhaps the biggest change is the church now has a dedicated case manager for anyone who needs assistance. He’s available once a week and sees about four clients on average, helping them get health care, housing, and employment. 

“The congregation is very supportive of the case manager,” says Gathany. “We are really trying to get the shoppers past their struggles.” Between August 2023 and March 2024, he had nearly 100 client meetings, Gathany says, and assisted several families get off the streets.

Of course, not all the shoppers at the fridge are homeless. Gathany says the fridge feeds more families who come in cars, but they have so many singles who come on foot, and are down on their luck. The 2020 poverty rate in Dekalb County for children aged 5-17 was 26.6 percent, much higher than the state average of 18.8 percent. That number improved to 18.6 percent in 2022 (the latest numbers available), but it’s still higher than the state average of 16.3 percent. And with poverty comes food insecurity, whether it’s because of lack of money, long waits for SNAP benefits, or a lack of transportation.

And, according to Feeding America, the number of food-insecure children in Dekalb County where the fridge is located hovered around 21 percent in 2022 (the latest numbers available), much higher than the county’s overall rate of 11.2 percent.

“What many don’t realize is that some of these people are coming from the neighborhood,” says Monique. “Sometimes, people are ashamed that they don’t have enough money for food. The fridge is one great place they can go for it.”

Still, some neighbors who support the fridge are still hesitant to do so. “Those who are gathering there are a deterrent to my donating,” says local Kern Thompson. “I can only assume that I’m not the only person who’s cut back donating because of their presence.” The fridge has become a hangout, of sorts, which can be both a good and bad thing when it comes to prospective donations. 

Medlock resident Monica Morgan says that’s one reason she consistently donates. “Every time I’ve been there, there’s such a need,” she explains. “There are people waiting—families—who are just down on their luck. But I’ve never felt uncomfortable dropping off food. All the people seem very grateful.”

Today, nearly four years to the day the fridge was first installed, there is still support for the ATLFreeFridge. 

But it’s not without controversy. During the writing of this piece, on July 9, the fridge was vandalized again. An unknown person cut the electrical wire, destroying the fridge and taking it out of commission for nearly a week until volunteers could find a new one. Gathany says she has no idea who did it or why, but that doesn’t change the demonstrated need.

“The fact that we even need this fridge shows us where our society is failing,” says Gathany. “Everybody is having a hard time, not just the homeless. There’s never going to be anything that 100 percent of the community supports. But the church is doing this because it’s the church’s business.” 

The post This Community Fridge is the Only One Left in Atlanta—and the Need is Growing appeared first on Modern Farmer.