One 20-something from Philadelphia has reached yet another major milestone in his efforts to be socially responsible and sustainable — but in real life, rather than marketing buzzwords.
Sharing Excess is a nonprofit food rescue and redistribution organization that Evan Ehlers originally started in 2018, as a student at Drexler University when he wanted to make good use of the leftover meal swipes in his dining account.
“I did not expect this path for my life,” said Ehlers on this “Tip of the Iceberg” podcast episode. “But here we are five years later, and what started with meal swipes on a college campus has grown to a movement now where we've rescued and redistributed over 25 million pounds of food and been able to feed over a million people just by partnering up with food businesses that have really big hearts and a lot of food that they'd like to see get into the hands of community members.”
Sharing Excess rescues and redistributes more than 250,000 pounds of food every week in partnership with grocers, retailers, wholesalers and farmers.
“We're solving the logistical barriers between access and scarcity,” he said. “We take care of all the logistics from pickup to delivery, all the coordination that it takes to get perfectly edible food into the hands of community members rather than the landfill.”
Sharing Excess is based in Philadelphia, and for the last two years, specifically the Philadelphia Wholesale Produce Market.
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“And we've now surpassed over 10 million pounds of food rescued from this wholesale market. We've been able to cut the organic waste by 50% in this wholesale market and been able to feed hundreds of community organizations and major food banks in the Philadelphia area,” he said in August. “And we just couldn't be prouder of our partnership with all the incredible produce vendors in the Philly wholesale market.”
More locations are cropping up nationwide. For more information, visit SharingExcess.com