Story - SES - Food Fighters
Ellie DeMilt, left, and Mereya Riopedre, from Loyola's School of Environmental Sustainability, pick up food from Damen Dining Hall and deliver it to A Just Harvest food bank in Rogers Park as part of the Food Recovery Network. The program picks up food from the dining hall twice each week to donate to the food pantry. (Photo: Lukas Keapproth)
Loyola leads the way in fighting hunger and food waste in Chicago
School of Environmental Sustainability establishes community partnerships to expand its impact
Nineteen million tons of waste goes to landfills in Illinois every year, and 20% of that landfill waste consists of food waste. At the same time, over 1.5 million people in Illinois were food insecure in 2022, according to Feeding America.
Loyola’s School of Environmental Sustainability (SES), the first school of environmental sustainability at any Jesuit university, is the home of several initiatives to combat these statistics on many fronts, from science to social justice.
An environmental approach to increasing food equity
Since its founding in 2016, Loyola’s chapter of the Food Recovery Network (FRN), a national, volunteer-based student movement dedicated to fighting food waste and feeding those in need has collaborated with Aramark, Loyola’s food service vendor, to recover extra food from campus dining halls.
Following strict food safety guidelines, student volunteers pick up trays of food and deliver them to A Just Harvest, a Rogers Park community organization and food pantry with a longstanding partnership with Loyola, one of the school's many partnerships with local organizations to address challenges in the community.
After meals, students load the trays of unused but perfectly good food into a van, which travels a mile down the road. There, the busy pantry staff and volunteers feed hundreds of community members using rescued food that otherwise might have gone to waste.
Ellie DeMilt, a senior in SES, says it’s satisfying to see the impact of this hands-on work. “Volunteers can see the kitchen where food is prepared and the dining hall where food is served and eaten. By working with this local partner, we have been able to feel the gratitude from the community.” A single delivery at the end of January 2024 allowed the group to provide nearly 400 nourishing meals to hungry people in Rogers Park.
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Read the StoryCommunity roots on the north side
Kevin Erickson is the School of Environmental Sustainability’s senior sustainable agriculture manager and oversees SES’s Urban Agriculture Program. The program offers students hands-on experience building sustainable, equitable, and resilient food systems by working together to produce food using sustainable agriculture methods.
In 2023, Erickson established a partnership with Saint Thomas of Canterbury, an Edgewater Catholic church that manages a food pantry and soup kitchen, serving a largely immigrant population. Erickson provided expert guidance on urban gardening methods and arranged for two student interns in the Urban Agriculture Program to help support the initiative by bringing freshly harvested lettuce, mushrooms, carrots, and other produce from Loyola’s greenhouse and garden and prepare it for distribution in the food pantry and soup kitchen. They spent the rest of the day assisting in the food pantry and working on the newly established garden beds.
“As advocates of sustainable and local food systems, we realized that a more holistic approach should include food access, recovery, and food waste,” says Erickson. “And because of our location in Chicago, we wanted to address unique challenges and opportunities in the urban environment.”
Erickson emphasizes Loyola’s role as a collaborator that supports community groups working for food equity in Chicago. “We’re a piece of the puzzle, and most of the solutions we’re coming up with are partnership-based,” he says.
Training leaders in local sustainability
The School of Environmental Sustainability helps prepare the next generation of environmental leaders through collaborative educational programs, research, and direct action.
Last year, a team of SES faculty and staff working on sustainable food systems received a Schreiber Venture Fund Innovation Grant to advance their efforts. With the grant, the project team created 10 new internships that place students with community organizations. The internships are designed to contribute to the organizations' work while providing a valuable learning experience for the students.
“The overarching goal of the project is to understand how Loyola, and more specifically our sustainable food systems group, can best support organizations in the Chicago region that are working to reduce hunger, create economic opportunity, and promote social and ecological wellbeing,” says Tania Schusler, assistant professor in SES.
Interns provide skilled labor, bringing knowledge gained in the classroom and through experience in the Urban Agriculture Program and other campus sustainability initiatives. Interns participate in activities such as building and maintaining vegetable gardens, assisting in food pantries, and supporting the work of existing urban farms. The team will also conduct research informed by the priorities of practitioners on the ground working with local communities, interviewing leaders and staff of food justice groups to learn about the challenges they face and how Loyola can support their work. “We want our research to be relevant and useful,” says Schusler.
Community roots on the north side
Kevin Erickson is the School of Environmental Sustainability’s senior sustainable agriculture manager and oversees SES’s Urban Agriculture Program. The program offers students hands-on experience building sustainable, equitable, and resilient food systems by working together to produce food using sustainable agriculture methods.
In 2023, Erickson established a partnership with Saint Thomas of Canterbury, an Edgewater Catholic church that manages a food pantry and soup kitchen, serving a largely immigrant population. Erickson provided expert guidance on urban gardening methods and arranged for two student interns in the Urban Agriculture Program to help support the initiative by bringing freshly harvested lettuce, mushrooms, carrots, and other produce from Loyola’s greenhouse and garden and prepare it for distribution in the food pantry and soup kitchen. They spent the rest of the day assisting in the food pantry and working on the newly established garden beds.
“As advocates of sustainable and local food systems, we realized that a more holistic approach should include food access, recovery, and food waste,” says Erickson. “And because of our location in Chicago, we wanted to address unique challenges and opportunities in the urban environment.”
Erickson emphasizes Loyola’s role as a collaborator that supports community groups working for food equity in Chicago. “We’re a piece of the puzzle, and most of the solutions we’re coming up with are partnership-based,” he says.
Training leaders in local sustainability
The School of Environmental Sustainability helps prepare the next generation of environmental leaders through collaborative educational programs, research, and direct action.
Last year, a team of SES faculty and staff working on sustainable food systems received a Schreiber Venture Fund Innovation Grant to advance their efforts. With the grant, the project team created 10 new internships that place students with community organizations. The internships are designed to contribute to the organizations' work while providing a valuable learning experience for the students.
“The overarching goal of the project is to understand how Loyola, and more specifically our sustainable food systems group, can best support organizations in the Chicago region that are working to reduce hunger, create economic opportunity, and promote social and ecological wellbeing,” says Tania Schusler, assistant professor in SES.
Interns provide skilled labor, bringing knowledge gained in the classroom and through experience in the Urban Agriculture Program and other campus sustainability initiatives. Interns participate in activities such as building and maintaining vegetable gardens, assisting in food pantries, and supporting the work of existing urban farms. The team will also conduct research informed by the priorities of practitioners on the ground working with local communities, interviewing leaders and staff of food justice groups to learn about the challenges they face and how Loyola can support their work. “We want our research to be relevant and useful,” says Schusler.