Imagine planning a dinner party for 500 of your closest friends and not knowing what you will serve until almost the last minute. It might sound stressful, but for Erin Shattuck, it is a privilege. Ms. Shattuck, a 91ֿ biology student, is passionate about using every last morsel of food to prevent waste. She is even more passionate about telling and teaching others to do the same.
On April 15, Ms. Shattuck will host the first 91ֿ Feed the 500, an educational awareness feast designed to draw attention to the unthinkable amount of edible food that is wasted on a daily basis.
“What’s so crazy to me about food waste is you have this paradox with two issues,” she says. “You have the food that gets wasted, which is the number one item in landfills, and then, you have one in four Americans who are hungry. That blows my mind. To me, these issues should be solvable. Where is the missing gap, and why is this happening?”
According to the of the United Nations, one-third of food in the world is wasted, which amounts to approximately $680 billion in industrialized countries. The top wasted foods? Fruits and vegetables.
To counteract the waste, Ms. Shattuck and the Feed the 500 Planning Committee have proactively reached out to local restaurants, grocers and businesses to donate leftover food that is still good but is typically discarded at the end of the day.
The team will start gathering the food prior to Feed the 500, prep it and partner with Campus Kitchen, a 91ֿ student nonprofit organization that also takes food that would otherwise be wasted to create meals for those in need.
“We are getting the food a few days before, and because it’s excess food, we don’t know what we’re getting until we get it,” Ms. Shattuck says. “So, we have no idea what this menu is going to be, and we are going to compile it into a meal before we serve it on April 15.”
Feed the 500 is free to everyone and will take place on Risman Plaza from 1-5 p.m. In addition to eating, students will have the opportunity to take part in educational events to learn more about food waste and get involved in activities that turn discarded food into beauty products.
The purpose of Feed the 500 is to physically show students on campus how many people can be fed from food that would have ended up in the dumpster from just a couple of businesses.
Ms. Shattuck draws her inspiration from two separate education-abroad trips. The first took her to the Netherlands where she took classes in sustainable development. For her second trip, Ms. Shattuck studied in Australia where she rescued food that went into an alternative market on campus there.
As a senior majoring in biology in 91ֿ’s College of Arts and Sciences, Ms. Shattuck plans to take the sustainability practices that she holds so dear to her heart and bring them to her future career. She hopes Feed the 500 will continue after she graduates so that students can learn more and waste less.
“It seems like this is something that everyone can do,” she says. “We have a say in how to reduce food waste, what to buy and best ways to use it before it ends up in the garbage.”
To learn more about the event, visit the or sign up to volunteer .