MSUS Culminating Experience Final Report

Hanna Layton
April 15, 2020
An Epic-Cure to Crisis Response
Epic-Cure Non-Profit
Abstract:
The original intent of the project was to attempt to mitigate the complex sustainability
issue of systematic food waste via creating a guide that would educate users how to
create a food saving organization that prevents edible food from ending up in landfills.
The guide was going to be based on a nonprofit organization my family and I founded
called Epic Cure, that has activated programs that serve to relieve community food
insecurity, encourage community connectedness, support environmental health, and
empower youth with entrepreneurial opportunity. The development of the guide was
going to be based on my personal experience developing and running the organization,
as well as my understanding of sustainable systems and frameworks. However, the
original scope and plan of this project has shifted considerably since the outbreak of the
COVID-19 virus. I have decided to put the guide on hold so that I can step into a space
of agency via working in real time, to adapt my organization so that we can continue to
operate when we are most needed. This shift is a response to the health and economic
crisis that continues to unfold daily. In order to sustain the wellbeing of communities, the
adaptation of a food aid service in the time of the crisis is an imminent need. This
project shift not only serves to provide emergency relief, but also to identify gaps in the
food distribution system and the supply chains that NGOs like Epic-Cure rely on so that
we might be more resilient in the face of future shocks to the systems.

1
04-16-2020

Page

An Epic-Cure Crisis Response

Table of Contents:
1. Introduction and Background
2. Literature Review
3. Project Approach and Intervention Methods
4. Outcomes/Findings
5. Recommendations
6. Conclusions
7. Appendix
8. References

2
04-16-2020

Page

An Epic-Cure Crisis Response

Introduction and Background
In this highly industrialized and capitalistic era, it is evident that we have become
disconnected from the resources and processes on which we rely. This modern
characteristic has led to inequities within our communities and to the degradation of our
natural resources. The United States of America is particularly well known as a throwaway culture. We are unnecessarily wasteful in the name of comfort, but our
environmental capacity to keep up with such a lifestyle is dwindling. One of the most
obvious examples of American wastefulness is seen in our food waste culture. Food
waste is generally defined as the discarding or misuse of food that is still safe and
nutritious for human consumption (FOA, 2014). In the U.S. 40% of food goes to waste,
accounting for the largest solid waste contribution to landfills (Gunders, 2012). The food
that is wasted in the United States pre- and post- “consumption” has the potential to
feed 25 million people each year but is instead thrown away leading to a misuse of
precious resources. Rather than feeding food to landfills, I am offering a way to take
advantage of the safe and nutritious food that would otherwise be discarded and
redistribute this resource to people.
Intervening on the food waste system provides potential to relieve an urgent social
dilemma, food insecurity, a very serious and largely avoidable issue that is embedded in
almost all societies across the world. In the U.S., 1 in 8 people, including 1 in 5 children,
suffer from food insecurity (USDA). Yet, as is the case in most developed countries, this
suffering does not correlate with a lack of food supply. Rather, people are threatened by
hunger and food related health issues rooted in systematic and structural inequities
driven by capitalistic tendencies, and as a result mostly marginalized communities suffer
considerable consequences that directly impede the population’s health, opportunity,
and justice.
Not only is the well-being of millions of people threatened because of inequitable access
to food, the economic and environmental impacts of wasting consumable food is a
misuse of our valuable resources. American industries and consumers throw away over
161 billion dollars annually in edible food (USDA), all contributing to an environmental
3
04-16-2020

Page

An Epic-Cure Crisis Response

crisis in which we are compromising our increasingly scarce resources such as water,
land, and fresh air. It is estimated that wasted food in North America accounts for 30
percent of cropland, 31 percent of fertilizer usage, and 35 percent of freshwater
consumption (Neff et al., 2016). More so, food waste in American landfills gives off 25
percent of U.S. methane emissions, a dangerous greenhouse gas (GHG) 25 percent
more potent than carbon dioxide (CO2) (Hall et al., 2009).
The solution I am focusing on works to stop consumable food from ending up in
landfills, and redirect it to address food insecurity, ensuring that community members,
regardless of income, age, and ethnicity, are nourished. Over the past year, I cofounded Epic-Cure with the mission of: “Nourishing our planet and its people by
eliminating food waste and hunger, teaching self-sufficiency, connecting generations,
and promoting individual success through accomplishment” (Epic-Cure, 2019). The
organization's programs have been active since May of 2019. By partnering with local
food retailers Epic-Cure has saved and redistributed over 350,000 pounds of food to
over 25,000 individuals and diverted more than 5,000 pounds of inedible food to local
compost facilities and pig farmers. The organization focuses on serving marginalized
communities by making food accessible and using it as a tool for economic relief and
educational empowerment. (See Appendix A). As the mission highlights, the goal is not
to create a system on which the community it serves is reliant, but rather work with the
community to capacitate and empower them with rescued food. Epic-Cure provides an
efficient, sustainable, and community first approach.
As the organization has grown its reach and operating capacity, it has attracted
attention from multiple community leaders in the southeastern region of the U.S., as well
as national food aid organizations. Individuals who wish to offer similar services to their
communities have reached out for guidance on how to replicate Epic-Cure’s success.
Therefore, for my culminating experience, I was going to create a transferable guide
and supporting toolkit that will outline how to replicate Epic-Cure NP services, to help

4
04-16-2020

Page

An Epic-Cure Crisis Response

combat community food insecurity via mitigating the sustainability problem of food
waste.
However, since I began developing this scalable guidebook, a global health crisis has
developed rapidly and mercilessly. As a non-profit community food aid organization,
Epic-Cure’s services have proven to be essential. We had thought briefly about how we
would respond in a disaster prior to this, but did not have a robust procedure. In the
month of March, I decided to travel back to Florida and help design a resiliency and
crisis operations plan in real time in response to the pandemic. This has led to a shift in
my project problem, rather than it being what can we do about food waste, it becomes:
how does an organization like mine scale up to meet rapidly increasing demands, with
less food inputs, while preserving the wellbeing of our volunteers, clients, and
environment. As the conditions and impacts of the health crisis continue to unfold each
day, my organization must continue to adapt accordingly. Thus, my project has become
a real time, on-the-ground crisis response project.
The intended outcome of this project shift is to scale up and serve the growing number
of community members that depend on our services to meet their nutrition and hygienic
needs. More so, I am working to create long term resilience within the organization via
creating a strong interdisciplinary team that is equipped to manage both ‘normal’ and
crisis situations. My hope is that through this project I can provide efficient and effective
community support, as well as build long term relationships within the community and
with other support service networks.
This project is an opportunity to expand my capacity to build successful and scalable
and robust community empowerment programs and structures. I aim to do this via
expanding my organization to the larger context in an emergency situation, while
identifying gaps in the food distribution system and the supply chains that NGOs like
Epic-Cure rely on. This is a space in which I can grow my resilience and ability to adapt,
while creating a timely and tangible impact in my community. Post-graduation, I hope to
work with communities in crisis to create solutions that create holistic wellbeing for the

5
04-16-2020

Page

An Epic-Cure Crisis Response

people and the planet. The goal is to learn how I can appropriately engage with and
empower communities to take sustainable solutions into their own hands.

Literature Review
Topic: Sustainable Food Aid Organizations
Keywords: food rescue policy, food waste policy, nonprofit regulations, feeding the
hungry, food deserts, food insecurity, food aid, sustainable food system, circular food
economy
As we have shifted to a largely industrialized food processes, the amount of food lost
and wasted has grown exponentially, across all levels i.e. growth to consumption. The
food that ends up in landfills rather than being eaten has contributed to environmental,
social, and economic deficits. The goal of this project is to redesign the food waste
problem so that it becomes an opportunity for environmental, social and economic
wellbeing. Although there are inefficiencies along all levels of the food supply chain, in
order to produce a quality solution, I have chosen to restrict the scope of my project to
focus on mitigating food waste at the retail level. While this solution is not the most
efficient intervention as it concerns the downstream production of food waste rather
than reducing the source at the production level, the scale of retail food waste provides
a viable and accessible intervention point for the scope of this project.
Problem Identification:
A study published by the National Resource Defense Council (NRDC) aims to explain
where and why 40% of food produced in the U.S. is being discarded along the journey
from farm to fork. Food waste in the United States is the single largest component of
municipal solid waste and contributes a considerable portion of U.S. methane
emissions. (Gunders, 2012). The life sustaining resources that are threatened by such
waste include land availability and viability, freshwater availability and air quality. The
issue is layered and complex, as the food is wasted or lost at each level. The incentive
to address the issue by industries and consumers does not outweigh the convenience
of wasting food. The study works to examine each stage of the food economy and
identify the key inefficiencies and offer mitigation strategies. As mentioned above, the
6
04-16-2020

Page

An Epic-Cure Crisis Response

stage I am primarily concerned with is the food waste at the retail level, which the study
estimates to be approximately 10% of the total retail food supply. The retail contribution
to food waste is much greater than that 10% because of the control retailers have up
and down the food supply chain, making retailers the most influential intervention point.
(Gunders, 2012).
More so, in the NRDC’s report concerning corporate food waste, it is estimated that
food retailers, restaurants, and services contribute to 16 percent (approximently 28
million tons) of all U.S. food waste, costing such organizations about $57 billion per
year. (NDRC, 2017). These industries are throwing out their investments along with
their food. This behavior is becoming increasingly unacceptable in the eyes of the public
as well. Neff et al., (2015) sampled the American consumers behaviors, attitudes and
awareness of food waste via an online survey. The data gathered created a baseline of
the American consumers’ understanding of, and contribution to the issue of food waste.
The results from respondents of the 1,010 self-reports that were obtained suggest that
most respondents are aware that food waste is an increasingly concerning issue and
that many believe the retailers can play an important role in creating a solution. (Neff et
al., 2015). The study indicates that consumers are interested in food waste mitigation
plans and that they are holding food retail agencies accountable as part of the solution.
Solution:
Rescuing food that would otherwise be thrown away from retailers is not a new idea,
rather it has been done by many organizations and proven to be a viable food waste
and food insecurity mitigation strategy. There are numerous studies and organizations
that provide evidence that support food rescue from retailers for community
redistribution as a promising food waste intervention point.
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), published a Food Recovery Hierarchy
diagram (EPA, 2019) that outlines actions individuals and agencies can take to prevent

7
04-16-2020

Page

An Epic-Cure Crisis Response

or reduce the amount of wasted food. The hierarchy identifies feeding hungry people as
one of the most effective strategies for reducing food
waste. The resource also highlights ways in which to
create a food saving and redistribution program, which
provides the foundation for my project’s usefulness.
Similar recommendations promoting food rescue as a
way to mitigate food waste are outlined and promoted
in multiple NDRC reports including Wasted: “How
America Is Losing Up to 40 Percent of Its Food from
Farm to Fork to Landfill” and “Tackling Food Waste in
Cities: A Policy and Program Toolkit.”
There are numerous successful organizations that have worked to rescue and
redistribute food that would otherwise end up in landfills. Feeding America rescued over
3.5 billion pounds of food in 2018 (Feeding America, 2019) and Waste Not Want Not
Florida which rescues around 4,750 pounds of food a day to provide over 14,000 people
with food annually (Waste Not Want Not, 2019). These organizations are primarily
concerned with the social impact of food rescue and the potential the food has to
nourish communities.
In an expert interview concerning sustainable food economies, I was able to talk to
Kristen Osgood, who served as Stern Produce’s Regenerative Strategy Manager for
three years. She was in charge of championing and implementing sustainable programs
within the distribution company. She tackled the issue of food waste via implementing a
food donation program for all of the food that was not being rotated out within the
company's time expectancy. She used the EPA food hierarchy represented above as a
framework for sustainably redirecting food ‘waste’ in an environmentally and socially
conscious manner. She created an inventory of all the products donated to these
partner agencies and used it to inform the stock budgeting annually, so that the
company could be more proactive in controlling the amount of product loss each year.
The implementation of this program is one of her core achievements in this role. Her
work emphasizes that food rescue organizations have the potential to influence players
8
04-16-2020

Page

An Epic-Cure Crisis Response

upstream. If the retailers donating to food aid agencies create a tracking program of
which food is generally being overstocked or otherwise unsold, they have the capacity
to reduce their food loss in the future via adjusting how much they order into stock
based on consumer interest.

Project Approach and Intervention Methods
As seen in the literature review, a substantial amount of food goes to waste. To feed
people instead of landfills, diverting consumable food from the waste stream is an
opportunity to feed hungry people. Epic Cure has fed many people with their food waste
diversion and delivery model. Many more people could be fed by replicating Epic-Cure's
model, therefore a guidebook showing other organizations how to replicate the model
would provide communities with a tool that provides social and environmental relief.
Through creating a guide on how to replicate and potentially improve on the programs
that Epic-Cure offers, I had expected to capacitate communities around the country to
take a grassroots approach to combating systemic food waste, while promoting
community empowerment. Ultimately, the vision was to create a consumer led
movement that opposes and prevents the current reality of edible food ending up in
landfills.
This guide was intended to promote the vision via teaching communities how to move
food in a more equitable and useful way. It would serve as an educational model on
how a group of individuals in a community can work together to improve the social and
environmental health of their communities by accessing a tangible and effective
intervention point, i.e. food loss at the retail level. By providing an open source guide
that explains how to replicate Epic-Cure’s programs, communities would be equipped to
divert large quantities of waste from landfills, promote nourishment and connection
within communities, and provide economic relief for low-income community members.
Economic relief for community members who struggle with economic insecurity is an
important function as it will enable these members to spend their limited monetary
resource on other life essentials such as electricity, transportation costs and medical
assistance. This model promotes holistic wellbeing for communities and their
environment.
9
04-16-2020

Page

An Epic-Cure Crisis Response

The Epic-Cure’s current model is summarized below. The model starts with the rescued
food arriving at the warehouse and then is distributed across the different programs,
based on the amount of food needed for each, the quality of the food received, and the
weekly schedule.

Rescued Food
into warehouse

Immediate
Distribution

Stationary
Distribution
:
Open up
warehouse
for clients to
‘shop’ for
what they
need

Mobile
Distribution
:
Bring food to
communities
identified as
economically
insecure or
as a food
desert

Cooking
classes:
Provide
capacity
building for
economically
marginalized
youth via
engaging
elderly
population to
teach youth
how to
prepare and
cook meals

Communit
y
programs:
Provide food
aid to
community
support
institutions
such as
schools,
healthcare
agencies and
Veteran
associations

Non-edible
for human
consumption

Local
gardens
/ farms
for
compost

Local
farmers
for
animal
feed

The model is congruent with the EPA’s food recovery hierarchy, distributing the food
first to hungry people, and if necessary, to farmers for animal feed or composting,
effectively diverting all food rescued from the landfill. This model will inform the guide
structure and content.
The guidebook I intended to create would hold the social and environmental impact of
mitigating food waste with equal balance, as this seems to be lacking from many of the
10
04-16-2020

Page

An Epic-Cure Crisis Response

similar organizations I have researched. From what I have already observed via working
with Epic-Cure, this model has worked to educate the community about the value of
food in terms of social and environmental impact. Not only have 550,000+ pounds of
edible food been diverted from local landfills and given to 25,000+ people who need it,
but we have observed that those who interact with the organization- clients and
nonclients alike, have begun to shift their attitudes and behaviors towards being more
proactive about preventing food waste. To name one example of this, there is a local
movement towards establishing a city-wide composting facility, led by volunteers who
learned about the impact of food waste in landfills from the organization.
The guide would highlight programs that teach users how to move and use food in a
way that serves and uplifts their community. The programs the guide would contain
include the food rescue, food distribution, and educational youth cooking program. The
finished guide would also include a section that explores alternative organizational
structures that users can build out. The alternative structures could include a
cooperative model and a benefit corporation model. The goal of the alternative
organizational structure module is to feature transformational and sustainable food
economy pathways, and how they might be built to encourage the mission and
programs of Epic-Cure.

Emergency Food Services
Since the project shift, my project approach has become an active, on the ground
approach. I have been working onsite at my organization's facility to work out the
unfolding barriers to our service, to ensure that we can continue to aid the community
through this tumultuous time. I developed an interdisciplinary team consisting of
healthcare professionals, law enforcement, economists, and leaders from national food
aid organizations. With the multiple perspectives and via building out partnerships with
other food aid services, food manufacturers and retailers, and federal agencies such as
USDA, we have been able to satisfy the growing demand while taking all known
precautions we can to ensure the health and wellbeing of our team and the people we
serve. I am taking notes and videos of the changes we make as they happen, so that
11
04-16-2020

Page

An Epic-Cure Crisis Response

afterwards I will have the necessary data to record our best practices and areas of
improvement. Once I finish collecting my data, I will have the means to create an
emergency preparedness guide of some sort should a similar situation come up in the
future.
To continue providing services through the restrictive, nonessential stay at home orders,
I have worked with local law
enforcement and Feeding America to
be deemed an essential service. I have
also formed partnerships with new food
suppliers such as Sysco and USDA, to
make up for the food inputs we lost
because of the diminishing retail supply
rescue chain.
To ensure the safety of our volunteers
and our clientele, we have a nurse practitioner who is familiar with the virus and its
conditions and gives our volunteers a
safety and precaution demonstration.
She examines the warehouse
procedures once a week and writes
a list of suggestions accordingly. I
have recorded a video of her giving
the recommendations and have
shared it with all of our volunteers on
our volunteer web page. We have
also adjusted warehouse procedures
to reflect the best safety practices we can manage.
Aside from on the ground learning, I am collecting a series of interviews from a variety
of stakeholders and perspectives. A barrier I have observed is that during this crisis,
12
04-16-2020

Page

An Epic-Cure Crisis Response

there are so many streams of mixed information. This causes frustration with our
everyday systems, whether it be healthcare, food systems, or employment
performing interviews with a variety of stakeholders including law enforcement,
clientele, health care workers to discuss the frustrations with the system, so that we can
document which systematic changes are needed. After the pandemic we do not want to
return to ‘business as usual’ rather we want to shift to business better than usual, to
create more robust systems, with more mobility for transformative networks of change.
The proximal goals of this project are to ensure that
all community members who rely on us through this
time of global need, are given adequate and
nutritious foods, and to protect the health and
wellbeing volunteers and clients alike throughout the
process. These goals are being carried out daily as
we continue to find more avenues to support larger
and more numerous distributions.
The long-term goals I intend to contribute to through this project include building
valuable relationships with key crisis agencies and food suppliers. I would also like to
use this as an opportunity to build more trust within the local community, so that we can
best serve and capacitate our local population in the future. With community trust, we
also have the ability to contribute to our community resilience. Included in FEMA’s
Natural Disaster Recovery Framework (see appendix C) is the recognition of nonprofit
and voluntary agencies as a key stakeholder and contributor to a community's resilience
post-disaster. These organizations are vital in an emergency as they help compensate
for the community’s unmet needs through the crisis. These organizations are usually
able to mobilize more quickly than government agencies in disaster situations, providing
essentials such as food, shelter, and coordination of volunteers. (FEMA, 2017). Finally,
as we work through this time of uncertainty, we are working to create long term plans
and programs that we can implement post crisis, which will hopefully bring us to a state
of business ‘better than usual’ rather than back to our pre-pandemic baseline.
13
04-16-2020

Page

An Epic-Cure Crisis Response

To measure the success of my intervention I plan to perform a reverse comparative
analysis using Arnim Wiek’s Transformational Framework for Sustainability Problem
Solving. (Wiek, 2015). I will compare the long-term vision, which is to expand our
services and provide capacity building material and programs for other like
organizations and our clients. I use the data I am collecting along the way to determine
if my solution strategies are sufficient to get us to the long-term vision and appropriately
mitigate the causal structures of the problem.
Along the way I have also been using the Sustainability Competencies Framework by
actively using the systems thinking and strategic competencies as the lenses to inform
my methods and interventions. (Wiek et al, 2011). With both of these frameworks, once
the crisis begins to subside, I will be able to refer back to my notes on how the
organization has adapted to fit the needs of emergency aid. I will analyze my
approaches via the framework and use of these lenses to determine any gaps in the
sustainability of my intervention, so that I can work to mitigate these in the future of my
organization.

Outcomes/Findings
Since adapting the project in the past three weeks to address the still unfolding global
crisis, I have been able to scale our services up to meet the growing demand. This has
been a result of numerous strategic partnerships with community agencies, businesses,
and federal relief programs. Although our usual supply of rescued food from local
retailers has decreased 70%, and the number of individuals we serve has already
increased 15% in the past month, we have been able to not only maintain, but to grow
our support services. We have shifted from four weekly distributions, serving on
average 1082 individuals per week in February, to 6 distributions weekly serving an
average 1234 individuals per week in March. More so, we have increased our amount
of ‘food in’ by approximately 30,000 pounds between February and March, while
decreasing our cost per family by $.58 to average only $1.78 per meal box per family.
(See appendix B.).

14
04-16-2020

Page

An Epic-Cure Crisis Response

Although we have managed to decrease our cost per family served, the crisis has
brought added economic insecurity to the organization. The organization is 100%
volunteer led, with contributions from a few local donors with the rest of the operating
cost historically covered by the founders. Since the crisis has unfolded, the founders no
longer have the opportunity to cover leftover costs. This has made our financial
sustainability an area of concern for us. In the past month my team and I have worked
to find emergency funding to enable us to continue to provide this relief. We have
received two of the five grants we applied for, which has provided enough security to
stay in operation for the next two months. Securing funding is something we are
continually working on in this time so that we can help as many people as possible.
The increase of distributions is a response to the immediate needs of our community.
We have begun to serve health care professionals, meeting them at the hospital during
shift change times, so that all of our first responders have access to food, without
putting the rest of the community at risk of contamination. We have also begun
programs in which we deliver four prepared meals weekly to seniors and supplied food
to the Veterans Affairs Association to ensure their members are nourished.
The work that this project has contributed is primarily centered around the organization's
resilience and capacity building. As an organization that is still in its early development
stage, prior to the crisis we were slowly building our capacity to expand service to the
community. We had reached four distributions per week serving on average 400
families a week with food we rescued from grocery outlets. Although we were efficient,
we would not have predicted how much more we could do. Since the crisis was
presented and we saw that almost half of the food aid services in our country were
halting their aid, we worked quickly to prepare how to accommodate for the increase of
need through a time in which our typical food supply chain would be greatly disrupted.
The actions we have taken to accommodate the growing need include partnering with
the USDA and Feeding America, working with food distributors including KeHe and
Sysco, renting a refrigerated truck and a box truck for extra storage and mobilization of
distributions, applying to grants for increased operating costs, and working with medical
professionals to ensure the health of our volunteers and clients. We have been able to
15
04-16-2020

Page

An Epic-Cure Crisis Response

increase our distributions to eight distributions on average per week, now serving 1,200
families per week.

So far, we have found our efforts to scale up quickly to be successful. We have been
able to continue our community support in the form of food aid and hygiene products,
despite the health barriers and despite the decrease in food rescued from our normal
streams (local grocery stores). This success has made us optimistic. As the
unemployment rate continues to climb, we are expecting and preparing for a steady
increase of clientele, and we are working to continue to grow our capacity daily, so that
we can manage the increase of need as it comes.
I have not yet finished gathering all of the data necessary to come to a definite
conclusion as the crisis continues to unfold each day. I will continue to perform my daily
research until the crisis subsides or until I am completely satisfied with our crisis
response operations. Once one of these options presents itself, I will perform my
reflective analysis using sustainability frameworks and criteria, to determine the
academic sustainability measurements of my intervention.

Recommendations
As my client is my organization, I will be able to implement my recommendations with
the help of my team.
1. Expanded Services
One of my final recommendations that I am working on getting implemented now is the
opening of a second warehouse in Putnam County, which is adjacent to the county we
service now. This county is characterized by extreme need with very few support
services. We have been able to do mobile distributions there each week, but it simply
does not fit the need. Opening a second warehouse in this county is a high priority for
us. I have a grant application in progress for the operating costs of this project now. We
already identified a warehouse location and are working on securing a lease for it now.
Our partners at Feeding Northeast Florida are very excited and supportive of this
initiative and have agreed to supply the necessary equipment such as refrigeration for
16
04-16-2020

Page

An Epic-Cure Crisis Response

the new facility. The warehouse we have identified is 15,000 square feet which is about
five times larger than our facility in St. Johns County. The new space will allow us to not
only supply the residents in need, but also to supply other food aid services in the area
with the resources necessary to achieve greater food security via food rescue and
redistribution.
2. Addressing Systemic Challenges
Prior to this project shift, I had received feedback about creating a project around a food
aid organization. The primary critique was that a food aid service is not a sustainable
solution, rather it is a social support ‘band-aid’ fix to much deeper systematic
deficiencies, such as inequitable institutions and the wastefulness of upstream food
economy players. Although I had agreed that it was the most impactful intervention
point, I had the agency to intervene downstream and address both outlet level food
waste and community food insecurity. When the crisis hit, this proved to be a much
more necessary intervention point than previously considered. With the crisis came a
serious shock to our economic and global trade systems. COVID-19 is acting as a
stress-test to our systems and it is exposing the fragility of our largely industrial and
globalized food supply chains and economies.
When the crisis hit many of the grocery stores in the U.S. and around the world were
barren, compared to the norm. This was a result of both ‘the tragedy of the commons’,
meaning consumers in panic mode flocked to the stores to buy any and everything they
could out of fear, and because of the increased travel restrictions. With so many
international ports and flights being closed or halted because of the virus, the
transportation of food primary food resources was impacted greatly. As a result, my
organization was affected, as our primary input of food items were rescued from local
food retail outlets. With a decrease of almost 70% of food we could rescue from these
outlets, we and similar agencies were forced to face the system deficiency head on. We
had to reconfigure our supply chain quickly so that we could continue to provide food
aid with the increasing pressure and demand. Our short-term survival action plan
consisted of working with national food aid organizations such as Feeding America,
federal organizations such as FEMA and USDA, and food manufactures such as Sysco
and KeHe. These partnerships have provided us the capacity to continue to serve our
17
04-16-2020

Page

An Epic-Cure Crisis Response

community through the crisis and have provided us the assurance that we can continue
work through systematic disruptions.
The realization that our organization depends on a somewhat fragile system has shifted
our thinking on how we should operate post disaster. We are thinking about how we can
continue to provide food and encourage the security of food via encouraging a more
robust local food economy. Some ideas we have for the future include building off of our
cooking class program for the youth to include cooking and entrepreneurial food
business related skills to our adult customers, working with local farmers to purchase
their excess or unsellable goods, creating a client compost program, and creating an
accessible food education initiative.

Conclusions
My original intent for this project was to use Epic-Cure as a model to build out a guide
that would highlight how to implement sustainable food aid programs via food rescuing.
Since the crisis, my project has shifted to the realm of crisis mitigation, working on the
ground in real time to adapt my organization so that it cannot only stay open, but
operate on a much larger scale to continue to provide food aid relief when it is most
needed.
This project has been one of constant learning and adaptation. As we continue to work
through the crisis with a solutions thinking lens, we have the ability to document our
changes so that post crisis we can highlight our most effective and meaningful actions. I
hope to use the data I am collecting now in the guidebook project I intend to finish postgraduation. This crisis mitigation information can serve to help our organization and
similar organizations work through future crises.
By focusing my immediate attention on my NGO’s adaptation to the crisis, I can gather
the necessary information so that once the crisis is resolved, I can continue the guide
book with more knowledge about building community trust and resilience, how to handle
crisis situations, and how to deal with supply chain shocks. By working to mitigate the
crisis with my organization as it unfolds, I have learned that as a sustainability
professional, I must always be prepared to manage the unpredictable outputs of
complex systems. I have learned that sustainability solutions require collaboration
18
04-16-2020

Page

An Epic-Cure Crisis Response

between multifield perspectives, it is the combination of approaches to the solution that
makes the solution not just possible, but real and able to be executed. This project shift
has proven to me that aid services are not just ‘band aid’ solutions, but at times,
lifelines, a necessity to preserve social and economic sustainability.
I look at this project not just as an immediate relief service project, but an opportunity to
observe the fragility of the globalized and capitalistic systems that the U.S. society is
dependent on. It is an opportunity to see the systematic weaknesses that are normally
hidden or overlooked. For my organization, it is an opportunity to think not just about the
short-term sustainability of our community, but about what we can develop so that after
when things begin to normalize, we can reach a better than before state, rather than a
business as usual state.
I am not quite sure if my exact project can be extended by future students, but I do think
that the lessons I am learning could be valuable. I would be happy to connect with
future students on adaptation of projects in the face of unforeseeable barriers.

19
04-16-2020

Page

An Epic-Cure Crisis Response

Appendix
A. Demographics of individuals served by Epic-Cure:
Provides evidence that the majority of the food insecure community members are
children. Creating a system in which provides sustainable food aid is critical for the
opportunity and health of our most vulnerable populations.

B. The data set of the increase of food rescued and redistributed per month, with
the organizations cost per family served highlighted.

20
04-16-2020

Page

An Epic-Cure Crisis Response

C. National Disaster Recovery Framework

21
04-16-2020

Page

An Epic-Cure Crisis Response

References
EPA. (2019). Food Recovery Hierarchy. Retrieved from:
https://www.epa.gov/sustainable-management-food/food-recovery-hierarchy
Feeding America. (2019). Fighting Food Waste With Food Rescue. Retrieved from:
https://www.feedingamerica.org/our-work
FOA. (2014). Technical Platform on the Measurement and Reduction of Food Loss and
Waste. Retrieved from
http://www.fao.org/platform-food-loss-waste/en/
FEMA. (2017). National Disaster Recovery Framework. Retrieved From:
https://www.fema.gov/media-library/assets/documents/117794
Gunders, D. (2012). Wasted: How America Is Losing Up to 40 Percent of Its Food from
Farm to Fork to Landfill. NDRC. Retrieved from
https://www.nrdc.org/sites/default/files/wasted-food-IP.pdf
Hall KD, Guo J, Dore M, Chow CC (2009) The Progressive Increase of Food Waste in
America and Its Environmental Impact. PLoS ONE 4(11): e7940.
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0007940
Neff RA, Spiker ML, Truant PL (2015) Wasted Food: U.S. Consumers' Reported
Awareness, Attitudes, and Behaviors. PLoS ONE 10(6): e0127881.
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0127881
(Neff et al., 2015).
USDA. (n.d.). OCE: U.S. Food Waste Challenge: FAQ's. Retrieved from
https://www.usda.gov/oce/foodwaste/faqs.htm
Waste Not Want Not. (2019). What We Do and Our Impact. Retrieved from
http://wastenotflorida.com/about-waste-not-want-not/what-we-do-and-our-impact/.
Wiek, A (2015). Solving Transformational Sustainability Problems – Tools for a New
Generation of Sustainability Professionals. School of Sustainability, Arizona State
University, Tempe AZ
Wiek, A., Withycombe, L., & Redman, C. L. (2011). Key competencies in sustainability:
a reference framework for academic program development. Sustainability science, 6(2),
203-218.

22
04-16-2020

Page