Serving Sustainably with Campus Kitchens

Campus Kitchen’s food collection. Photo by Jamie Dickman.

Northwestern University is host to a litany of clubs dedicated to philanthropy or sustainability, but a rare few do both. The student-led organization Campus Kitchens is one of those few. 

Paul Graham, a second-year History major and group member, grew up in Evanston. While looking for a service club to join, he says he wanted to find an organization that gave back to the community in a tangible way. This quality is what made Campus Kitchens stand out, he says. “I saw all the clubs that talked about raising awareness, but this one was actually doing something” to prevent hunger and need.  

Feeding thousands of college students generate a surplus of uneaten food. Normally, Northwestern’s dining halls would throw it out, although the food is still edible. Thanks to Campus Kitchens, Northwestern’s food waste is reduced by distributing the extras to the town. 

Campus Kitchens has already recovered approximately 600 pounds of food this fall, distributing about a hundred pounds to food-insecure Evanston residents each week, according to Emily Lester, a third-year social policy and economics major and Vice President of Campus Kitchens. If this pace continues, the group will have saved over 1,000 pounds of edible food from waste by the end of this quarter.

“We have a lot of community partners ranging from the YMCA to certain soup kitchens to individual families. We give out about 200 meals a week at this point,” Lester says.

Campus Kitchen members routinely sign up for shifts throughout the week, where they recover, prepare, or distribute food. All the food is brought to their headquarters, or the Great Room Kitchen at 600 Haven Street, so members can check it for safety and package it into individual meals to distribute. 

Each shift lasts 45 minutes to an hour, and members are allowed to be “involved as little or as much as you want,”  Lester says. 

At an academically rigorous university like Northwestern, keeping students engaged in a service organization can be challenging. Campus Kitchens is reorganizing their club structure to make membership more accessible.

Emma Manley, a first-year journalism major and a Campus Kitchens member, says she doesn’t mind the time commitment and enjoys the work. “It’s a thing I feel good about at the end of the day. So, in a selfish way, it breaks up my day, gives me something to do, but I do enjoy the people,” she says, “I enjoy having the stuff to do and knowing that it's going to help someone down the line.”

According to Graham, the final step is the most important: meal delivery. “Seeing that those people had food to eat because we provided it to them,” he says. “That was just a great feeling.”