Our Partner Organizations
What is ReFridge?
ReFridge is a project initiated by the TU Dublin SVP Society in collaboration with the Enactus Society to bring surplus food from FoodCloud to students on campus, reducing food waste and providing food to students. ReFridge was inspired by the Broncho Bites project at the University of Oklahoma.
What do we do?
- We engage with the student community to distribute free food each week at our Food Pantry, currently located in the Lower House Canteen. Every Tuesday we have food delivered which will then be available to view here!
- We currently operate every academic week on Wednesday from 3:30 - 5:30pm.
- We partner with FoodCloud to obtain surplus food that was donated to them by companies as they are close to their expiry date, making this initiative cost effective and sustainable.
- So far this has involved between 3 - 16 volunteers each week promoting, unloading, serving students and then cleaning up. volt
- We also partner with the TU Dublin Student Volunteering office, who pay the cost of the subscription and provide support to us.
- Members volunteer their time and energy to keep the food bank running smoothly, efficiently and safely.
Community Solution
To get a perspective on the scale of food waste in Ireland here are some statistics, In 2021 Ireland generated 750,000 Tonnes of food waste [equivalent to ~37,500 Dublin Buses]. In the same year, "Food Cloud redistributed a total of 3,162 Tonnes [~150 Dublin Buses] of food donated by Irish food producers, distributors and retailers, supporting 650 community groups" in which TU Dublin has now joined!
