College Pals Raise $15M and Collect 100 Million Lbs. of Surplus Food to Fight Food Waste and Insecurity

The Farmlink Project co-founders Ben Collier and Aidan Reilly's mission to end food waste feeds families and curbs dangerous greenhouse gas emissions

In April 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic had taken hold in the U.S. Hospitals were filling up, thousands were dying and the country's food supply chain was strained as workers got sick and businesses shut down in an attempt to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus.

Ben Collier and Aidan Reilly, then 21, had just been sent home — Reilly to Los Angeles and Collier to Connecticut — during their junior year at Brown University, when they observed how labor shortages had caused food from local farms to go to waste as food banks scrambled to feed millions in need.

"There was bad news every single day, and we're like, 'Where can we help?' " Reilly tells PEOPLE.

The college friends decided to rent a U-Haul and call up local farmers, offering to deliver surplus food to a local food bank. "A month later," says Collier, who joined Reilly in L.A., "we'd delivered a million pounds of food, and we're like, 'We haven't even really started this thing.' "

Since then, The Farmlink Project has raised more than $15 million and delivered more than 100 million pounds of surplus food to food banks and communities nationwide through its growing network of 600 student volunteers.

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"This was such a clear solution to fix two gigantic problems — it kind of smacked us in the face," says Reilly, who, along with Collier, is now 24 and based in Los Angeles.

Not only does The Farmlink Project help put meals on families' tables (more than 58,000,000 meals in 2021 alone, according to an annual report), by diverting food that would have ended up rotting in landfills, the organization has also prevented greenhouse gas emissions from entering the atmosphere.

According to a calculation that uses metrics adopted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Reilly says their efforts have kept 350 million lbs. of carbon dioxide from contributing to global warming.

With plans to double their reach and effectiveness year over year, the two, along with the help of full-time employees Claire Rider and Thea Petrovich, have just launched a $100,000 field fellowship program for student volunteers aimed at creating future leaders and leaving a long-term impact on the food conservation sector.

"This will be our lasting legacy," says Reilly.

"We're trying to create systemic change in all of this," Collier adds. "And giving young people the opportunity to be involved in the food system is really powerful."

Collier and Reilly believe the fight against food waste begins by getting to know where food comes from.

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"We've found that not a lot of people have had the opportunity to learn a lot about the food system that feeds them, and how much goes into everything that it takes to get food to the grocery stores that they shop from, or to the restaurants that they eat at," Collier tells PEOPLE.

Reilly adds, "To combat food waste you can compost at home or create a garden, but also, you can go talk to a farmer or volunteer at your local food bank. Seeing where food comes from and who needs it creates respect."

As they near their third anniversary, Collier and Reilly say this is just the beginning for The Farmlink Project.

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"We'll be happy if in the next five years, we can move a billion pounds of food and bring more smart, young, motivated people into this space and enable them to have an impact," Reilly says. "We want to end the stigma around what it means to receive charitable food in this country, long-term."

"Every few months, I look back and Farmlink feels like a completely different organization," Collier says. "It still feels like we're just at the start of all of this."

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