Rescue Operation: Leftovers by the Ton

As juniors at the University of Maryland, Ben Simon and his friends were shocked at the huge amount of leftover food discarded from campus dining halls. With so many people in the Washington, D.C., area going hungry, the students set out to distribute surplus food to those in need instead of sending it to landfills.

They began “recovering” the food — roughly 1,000 pounds a week — and donating it to local shelters and churches. The effort eventually became the nonprofit Food Recovery Network.

“We honestly could not believe that University of Maryland really never thought of this, had never put any kind of program in place,” says Mr. Simon, one of the organization’s founders. “And so we wondered how many other colleges across the country also didn’t have a food-recovery program.”

Few did. The students contacted friends at other colleges. Mr. Simon says the goal was to create “something that’s not incredibly resource intensive, that students can lead themselves with very minimal costs.” Today, the nonprofit has more than 160 campus chapters and has donated more than one million pounds of food in the last four years.

A two-year, $300,000 grant from the Sodexo Foundation, the charitable arm of the dining-services company, helped the group move from an all-volunteer operation to having a staff of 14 and an operating budget this year of $500,000.

In 2013, the group added a certification program to recognize restaurants, grocery stores, and other food businesses that donate surplus food instead of wasting it.

Here, students at the University of Maryland pack up excess food at a dining hall.