Rutgers New Jersey Agricultural Experiment Station [Solid Waste Resource Renewal Group]

News Feature:  Philabundance

Visitors to our website will notice a new entry to our list of New Jersey Food Banks, Philabundance, which serves the entire Delaware Valley, including parts of Southeast Pennsylvania and 5 counties in New Jersey.  Philabundance acquired 24 million pounds of food in 2007, of which they distributed 18 million pounds in their local service area.  Their efficient Delaware Valley distribution system includes not only producing meals and serving them at the meal production site, a women and children’s shelter, but also distributing these meals along with produce, dry and frozen food through an extensive network of local agencies on both sides of the Delaware River.  The community kitchen where cooking takes place serves as a job training site for future chefs from the communities Philabundance serves.  Philabundance follows these students for two years after they are placed into a permanent job, to ensure that they succeed.  Many of the students’ families have been accustomed to viewing the student as the most responsible member of the family, and the one they look to for income.  Philabundance works to help the families understand the value of allowing the students to complete the training and take their first jobs. 

In 2007, 6 million pounds of food were distributed to food banks in other areas to help feed hungry people.  Philabundance is so efficient in using donations that it only loses about 600,000 to 700,000 of its collected food per year (about 2.6 %), because it is too spoiled when it comes in the door or otherwise does not meet safe feeding requirements.  Even this relatively small amount, however, costs Philabundance between $70,000 and $100,000 to have hauled as trash each year.  Philabundance, which already recycles millions of pounds of food which would otherwise end up in landfills or incinerators through its primary programs, is looking to install an on-site composter to handle its food waste.  Philabundance is considering, among other systems, a Hot Rot composter, a continuous in-vessel system, which would pay for itself in between 7 and ten years.  Philabundance calculates that this system would have excess capacity which the food bank could offer to some of the neighboring produce processing facilities, at a cost lower than their current waste prices.  This would raise additional funding for Philabundance and create a food waste recycling node between neighbors which would benefit everyone.  Philabundance does not have uses for most of the compost on their own site, but anticipates that it will work with the community to provide compost to community gardens or other city or area projects.  Food waste has a 14 day “dwell time” in the Hot Rot composter, and is ready for use or for bagging at the end of that period. 

Philabundance is looking into a can crusher which separates the metal can from its contents, and recycles the can, which would solve one of the major de-packaging hurdles to using the food waste from unusable cans.  Currently Philabundance recycles the vast amounts of cardboard and shrink-wrap that come with handling such a large quantity of food items. 

There are several ways that Philabundance already “recycles” food.  Much of the food the organization receives is product that might otherwise go to waste.  This includes salvage material, better know as cans that are slightly dented or have a ripped label.  These come from stores that might throw the un-sellable, but not inedible, product away.  Philabundance also has a food rescue program that picks up frozen meat at various area grocery stores.  All of these programs not only provide food for hungry people, but also save money for the donating stores over disposing of the same items. 

Gleaning is another way that Philabundance uses food that would otherwise be wasted.  Working with local farmers, Philabundance takes the fresh produce that the farms cannot sell or use and may have been left to rot in the fields.     

Among the “excess” food which Philabundance already recycles to hungry people are millions of pounds of fresh produce, most of which comes from the Port of Philadelphia.  Hungry people often have less access to the fresh produce which can promote good health.  Philabundance has created a program called Fresh For All which operates as a farmers’ market-style distribution system, with clients receiving the produce for free.  Food distribution occurs at five locations at the same day and time each.  Individuals can go through the line and select up to five pounds of food.  Current New Jersey distribution locations are St. John’s Baptist Church in Camden on Tuesdays from 9:30 to 10:30 a.m.; the Grand Marketplace on Rte 130 N in Willingboro from 1:30 to 2:30 p.m. on Tuesdays; and St. John’s Pentecostal Outreach in Salem on Wednesdays from 10:30 to 11:30 a.m. 

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