[In cities across the U.S., hundreds of refrigerators stocked with
free food are reducing waste — and methane emissions. Food waste
accounts for as much as 10 percent of global greenhouse gas
emissions.]
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PORTSIDE CULTURE

COMMUNITY FRIDGES DON’T JUST FIGHT HUNGER. THEY’RE ALSO A CLIMATE
SOLUTION.  
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Max Graham
October 26, 2023
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_ In cities across the U.S., hundreds of refrigerators stocked with
free food are reducing waste — and methane emissions. Food waste
accounts for as much as 10 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions.
_

Eric Von Haynes (center) co-founded The Love Fridge in Chicago. , Max
Herman

 

Dan Zauderer and his in-laws had eaten plenty of pizza one evening in
early October, and they still had seven slices left. What to do?
“Well, we could just chuck it,” Zauderer thought. Instead, he and
his fiancée wrapped the slices in plastic wrap, slapped labels on
them with the date, and walked the leftovers a little more than a
block down the road to a refrigerator standing along 92nd Avenue in
New York City’s Upper East Side.

That fridge is one among many “community fridges” across the
country that volunteers stock with free food — prepared meals,
leftovers, and you name it. Zauderer had helped set a network up in
New York City during the pandemic as a way to reduce waste and fight
hunger. The idea came about when he was a middle school teacher
looking to provide short-term help to students whose families
couldn’t afford food. He stationed the first fridge in the Bronx in
September 2020. That one, the Mott Haven Fridge, was hugely popular,
and it motivated Zauderer to expand. Since then, he has helped plug in
seven more fridges in the Bronx and Manhattan, including the one where
he dropped off his leftover pizza.

“It just blossomed into way more than I ever could have expected,”
said Zauderer, who now works full-time at Grassroots Grocery, a
food-distribution nonprofit he co-founded in New York.

It’s not just Zauderer’s project that has blossomed. Community
fridges first cropped up a decade ago in a few isolated spots around
the globe, then spread across the United States right after the
pandemic started in 2020, when supply chains were crumbling, food
prices were rising, and families across the country were struggling to
find meals. At the time, the fridges were viewed as a creative
response to an urgent need. But when the pandemic subsided, it became
clear that the refrigerators — sometimes called freedges, friendly
fridges, and love fridges — were more than a fad. Today, nonprofits
and mutual aid groups are overseeing hundreds of fridges that bolster
access to food in cities from Miami to Anchorage, Alaska.

The fridges also embody a straightforward solution to climate change.
Each year, tens of billions of pounds of food, more than a third of
what’s produced in the U.S., get tossed into trash bins. Most of
those scraps end up in landfills, where they decompose and release
methane, a powerful heat-trapping gas. The sheer quantity of the
country’s combined waste makes it a major source of climate
pollution: Food waste accounts for as much as 10 percent of global
greenhouse gas emissions. And more food is being thrown out than ever.

“There’s no solution to our climate problem that doesn’t also
address food waste,” said Emily Broad Leib, director of the Harvard
Food Law and Policy Clinic.

There are many ways to keep food out of landfills and on dinner
tables. Companies are developing apps to connect people with donated
goods, and food banks have been around for decades. Experts say
raising awareness and changing policy around things like expiration
dates on food packaging, which can be arbitrary, would help, too. But
fridges are especially effective when other solutions fall short.
Though food banks are great for storing large amounts of shelf-stable
items like canned vegetables, they’re not well-equipped to handle
food that doesn’t last as long and turns up in small amounts— a
pizza slice here, a sandwich there. Those remnants make up much of the
country’s food waste, about 40 percent, and that’s where community
fridges excel. “These are just a really elegant solution to that,”
Broad Leib said.

The fridges also offer a degree of anonymity for those in need
that’s hard to find at more traditional food distribution centers,
like food pantries. People don’t have to sign up or prove their
eligibility to use them. “The whole point is dignified, anonymous
access,” Zauderer said. “We’re not the arbiters of how much to
take.”

In Chicago, an artist named Eric Von Haynes co-founded a fridge
network called The Love Fridge in 2020. Today, he helps oversee more
than 20 love fridges, each decorated with eye-popping colors and
phrases like “Free food for all!” According to Von Haynes, the
fridges are filled, cleaned, and maintained by hundreds of volunteers.
He estimates that thousands of pounds of food move through them each
month.

One concern that researchers have with projects that repurpose food is
that they require additional resources, like transportation and
electricity. “Rescuing [food] still comes at a cost,” said Kathryn
Bender, a professor and food waste researcher at the University of
Delaware.

But community fridges are about as low-key and energy efficient as
solutions get. Zauderer didn’t burn any fossil fuels to walk his
pizza to the fridge near his apartment. And the Love Fridge, which
acquires only used refrigerators, powers two of them with solar panels
— a vision that Von Haynes has for more to come.

Even a fridge that draws electricity from a coal-powered grid uses
less energy each day than a single cell phone, said Dawn King, who
researches food waste and policy at Brown University. “Is it worth
using greenhouse gas emissions to plug in a refrigerator so people can
eat food that otherwise would have gotten wasted? Hell yes it is.”

Other challenges include navigating concerns about rotten or unwanted
food, making sure fridges are working properly, especially during
increasingly hot summers, and keeping them stocked. Ernst Bertone
Oehninger, who helped set up what may have been the first
“freedge” in the U.S. in 2014 in Davis, California, has learned
that some items don’t belong in them.

“Think about a half-eaten burger. That’s a no-go,” said
Oehninger. “But this is very rare. Most people bring good
leftovers.” Like Zauderer’s pizza.

A fridge in Austin, Texas, once went missing. It had been
“borrowed” by someone who wanted to keep beers cold for an event
at South by Southwest, according to Kellie Stiewert, an organizer at
the ATX Free Fridge project. But such shenanigans are rare. That the
fridges can be placed with a property owner’s permission just about
anywhere — in front of a taqueria, a person’s home, an office
building — is what makes the concept “beautiful,” Stiewert said.

Organizers say keeping the fridges full is one of the toughest tasks.
People sometimes gather to pick up items within minutes of a fridge
getting stocked. “When I first get volunteers to do food distro with
me, I’m always waiting for them to recognize how fast the food
goes,” Von Haynes said. “It’s really hard to explain to
people.”

As for Zauderer’s pizza slices: “They definitely weren’t there
the next day.”

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