The CMC Food Recovery Network chapter has won one of the Bon Appétit Management Company’s ten, $1,000, Student Activist Grant Awards. In celebration of The Bon Appétit Management Company Fellow Program’s 10th anniversary, the program devised a grant contest for compelling projects to improve food system sustainability. Out of a pool of roughly 50 applicants, from all corners of the country, the CMC Food Recovery Network chapter was selected as one of the ten winners.
“With $1,000, I would buy new food transportation bins for the CMC Food Recovery Network (FRN) club,'' stated Julia Weinstein, President of the CMC Food Recovery Network Chapter.
The grant funds will go towards purchasing food-safety transport bins for the chapter. Members of the chapter currently have to use one-use aluminum trays, which go against the network’s mission to be sustainable.
Speaking from three years of experience as the CMC FRN President, Weinstein shared “we have great student involvement and already have a schedule filled out for the entire semester with a driver and an assistant to transport food three times a week. However, the new General Manager for Collins Dining Hall recently informed me that the bins we have used in previous years, under different management, are not food safe. Pam even showed me one of our bins with plastic peeling off of the corner. She told me she could not send food in these containers.”
With the current frequency of food transports, the waste builds up quickly, and unfortunately, the food-safe bins are as costly as $40 per bin. In accordance to FRN’s goal to promote sustainability, Weinstein has striven to fund a new shipment of approximately 12 food-safe bins but, due to the high bin prices, has struggled to gain enough funding from the ASCMC Clubs and Organizations committee. The Bon Appétit Management Company Student Activist Grant Award, in all likelihood, saved the program at CMC.
CMC Food Recovery Network chapter wins this grant alongside organizations from Johns Hopkins University, University of Chicago, MIT, and others. Congratulations CMC Food Recovery Network!