Why is food recovery important?

The goal of our food recovery program is three-fold:

• Reducing the carbon-footprint of food waste: When food is thrown into the trash, it ends up rotting in landfills, where it is unable to properly decompose, creating massive amounts of methane, an extremely potent greenhouse gas.
• Feeding food insecure community members: Food insecurity is the reason this organization exists. Washington County, Arkansas is the second most food insecure county in the third most food insecure state in the nation. With this food, we can provide healthy, nutritious food to community members through our 10 partner organizations that use the food to stock their pantries and/or serve hot meals to those in need.
• Educating the public on the multifaceted issues of food waste and food insecurity: Food recovery is the most immediate and direct service that we can provide for our community to help combat these systematic issues. Through this program, we want to not only do the work of diverting and redistributing the food, but also educate individuals and families on what they can do in their own homes and communities to help combat these major problems.

Our program and partners

Tri Cycle Farms' food recovery program began in 2015, when we started collecting produce and coffee grounds from Ozark Natural Foods to add to our compost.

In 2016, we started a partnership with Whole Foods Market, where we made a plan to pick up food from the store three times a week. Both Tri Cycle and Whole Foods quickly realized how great of an impact this program was making and together we decided to expand the number of days and amount of food we would recover.

Since 2017, we have expanded the program to five days a week. At 8am Monday-Saturday, rain or shine, 2-3 volunteers drive to Whole Foods to load the Tri Cycle Farms Van full of food that has been weighed and sorted. That food is then delivered to our partner organizations, who currently include The Historic St. James Missionary Baptist Church, The University of Arkansas Full Circle Pantry, Chestnut Meadows Resident-Run Pantry, Fayetteville Housing Authority/Hillcrest Towers, Genesis Church Pantry, Salvation Army Fayetteville, New Beginnings NWA, and others.

Part of the reason our program has been so successful with few resources is because we are dedicated to keeping good relationships with both our donating and receiving partner organizations. When we bring the food to our partners, we deliver them crates of food that have already been sorted into one of eight categories: Bakery, Dairy, Eggs, Meat, Prepared, Produce, Frozen, and Dry. You can see photos of what our program currently looks like in the gallery below.