Collegiate Conservation

However, inedible food waste comprises only part of the food that Fairfield University aims to keep out of landfills. Salvaging edible “waste” – food that is uneaten but still perfectly serviceable – is the objective of Food Rescue US, which acts as a conduit between food donors, like Fairfield University, and people in need. Fairfield University kicked off its partnership with Food Rescue in September of 2018, supplying the organization with thousands of what the university calls “rescued meals,” which get delivered to food pantries and other locations around the county. Nicole Straight, site director for the Fairfield branch of Food Rescue, was deeply impressed with how quickly the university got on board with the program. “They had reached out to me a year and a half ago, and we had a meeting on, let’s say, Wednesday. And by Monday, they were donating their food,” Straight recalls. “That is remarkable.”

The university’s Food Rescue partnership is spearheaded by Chef Dostilio and General Manager of Dining Services, Duane Gornicki. Gornicki had previously served as Director of Residential Dining and Retail Services for the University of California at Riverside, where he developed food pantries for the 60% of their students who dealt with food insecurity. Before that, he worked as a “mystery shopper,” testing menu items from fast food restaurants before throwing them away, nearly untouched.

One day, as he prepared to throw out an uneaten bucket of fried chicken, he saw a man scrounging for food in a nearby dumpster, so he offered it to him. “From that day on, I realized that there is a need, that we just don’t see it,” says Gornicki.

Dostilio, who has worked in dining services at 10 other colleges, has seen how much waste is generated by all-you-can-eat dining plans. “Kids are not aware of how much [food] is actually being wasted in what they take,” says Dostilio. Part of cutting down on that waste comes down to educating students. “At Fairfield [University], they listen,” says Dostilio. “They want to learn about it.”

With Gornicki and Chef Dostilio at the helm, rescued food is treated with special care to ensure that it will be safe for others to eat. For example, it never sits out on the serving line, where it could be touched, breathed on, or exposed to airborne pathogens. That’s a crucial stipulation laid out by both Sodexo, the contracting food services company that the university works with, and the Connecticut Department of Health. Rescued food also gets rapidly cooled in a blast chiller to keep it from developing illness-causing bacteria. “Our chefs do a great job ensuring that food is safe, and they would even feel comfortable eating it,” Gornicki says.

Taste, of course, is another crucial factor in how the university handles food. While items like leftover chicken might not be as juicy as it would be straight from the oven, a good sauce can add moisture and help the chicken reheat evenly when volunteers serve it. Gornicki states that, as of this past December, 10,360 pounds – over five tons – of food have been rescued by Fairfield University during the program’s lifetime, equivalent to more than 8,000 meals, and it looks like the university is on track to expand those numbers. He estimates that they’ve saved an additional 1,000 meals since this year began.

Some of that food goes to student athletes at Harding High School, where a Bridgeport nonprofit organization, Adversity to Prosperity, helps support at-risk and food-insecure youth through its wrestling and football programs. “Food has always been a major issue for us,” said John Ramos, co-chairman of the organization and Assistant Head Coach of the wrestling and football teams at Harding. “It’s something that our kids are always in need of.”

Ramos supervises 60 to 80 food-insecure students through the program, depending on the season. While the students receive free lunch through the school, they still have to eat during the long hours they spend training, and before the program connected with Food Rescue, they subsisted on donations and whatever food the program’s budget could afford. Students would also pick up meals or snacks from stores around the neighborhood, where gun violence has recently peaked. “They were actually putting themselves in grave danger,” Ramos says. “I often tell people from Food Rescue, ‘You guys are literally saving lives.’”