Feed the Freezer is a student-run outreach program that recovers excess food from Colby-Sawyer’s dining hall and donates it to local food pantries. As an ongoing resource to New London and surrounding towns, Feed the Freezer assists food-insecure households while eliminating food waste.

“I founded this program in 2013. Colby-Sawyer was the first group to form a food recovery project in the state of New Hampshire, and we joined the Food Recovery Network,” says Sandi Brownwell. “To date, our student-led club has donated over 7,000 pounds of food to two of our [local] food pantries.”

According to the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), up to 40% of the food in the United States is never eaten. At the same time, one in every eight Americans struggles to put enough food on the table.

The New Hampshire Fiscal Policy Institute reports that almost 10% of families in the state were food insecure in 2016. Feed the Freezer enables Colby-Sawyer to support the wider community while moving closer to a zero waste campus.

Volunteers divide extra food from the dining hall into individual meals to be frozen and delivered to food pantries in New London, Danbury, and Newport. In its first two months, Feed the Freezer donated over 270 meals to people in need.

In addition to rescuing surplus food, Feed the Freezer volunteers place collection boxes around campus, particularly during the holiday season. Students, faculty, staff, and community members can donate any extra food they may have to someone in a food-insecure home.