Leave No Crumbs Program Aims to Eliminate Campus Food Waste

Loyola’s Wellness Center recently implemented a new program Leave No Crumbs, a leftover food program that aims to limit food waste on campus by alerting students via text about free food available to pick up.

The food comes from third-party vendors and is left over from various campus events like, according to the Leave No Crumbs sign-up page, where students can sign up for text alerts.

Program founder and director of health promotion Mira Krivoshey said students who signed up for the program have 30 minutes to pick up food after the text is sent and the food is distributed on a first come, first served basis. 

The various staff of the campus event is responsible for sending out the message about the free food with the location of where to pick it up, according to Krivoshey.

When the program started this semester, Leave No Crumbs conducted a “quiet” initial sign-up where they got a total of 68 students to sign up. 

Krivoshey said she is also a founder of Nourish, a food literacy program that works with students to learn about things like sustainability, nutrition and food equity. Through this program, she said she came across other college campuses who are doing food leftover programs and was inspired to bring one to Loyola.

For Krivoshey, the Leave No Crumbs program seemed like a way to address both food insecurity and food waste issues in the United States.

“44% of undergraduates at Loyola and 39% of graduate students report some level of food insecurity, according to our National College Health Assessment Survey in 2022,” Krivoshey wrote in an email to The Phoenix. “Additionally, 40% of food in the United States goes uneaten and is discarded.”

In 2022, 12.8% or 17 million U.S. households reported food insecure, The USDA reported.. 

Krivoshey said the program is still in its beta testing phase and they have plans to spread it across the university in the fall. The program will be available across the Lake Shore, Water Tower and Health Sciences campuses, according to Krivoshey.

Featured Image by Leslie Meraz / The Phoenix