The interactive media of the Matching Excess and Need for Stability (MEANS) website networks thousands of pantries in 24 states in the US to save surplus food and redirect them to the needy.
Without programs similar to MEANS, Americans waste an annual total of $165 billion on food that end up in landfills - an estimated 16% of US production of methane come from landfills. Part of this cost, according to a 2012 study by National Resources Defense Council, accounts for an estimated 10 percent of the national budget on energy, use of half of US lands and around 80 percent of freshwater in the country.
Maria Rose Belding of Iowa began conceptualising MEANS as a high school student. She grew up with an awareness of the food wastage prevalent in her area and felt that this was something that could very easily be addressed if only people knew of a way to connect with each other and understand each other. She enlisted the help of friend and MEANS co-founder, law student Grant Nelson, who initially said: "This struck me as a changing-people's-behavior problem, rather than providing a tool to fulfill a need."
Belding responded: "Phones exist. Emails exist. Twitter exists. Facebook exists. What could we possibly build that would be slicker for all of the food banks and food pantries to communicate with each other that isn't already solved by something else?' "
A full year of planning, research and development bore fruit when the MEANS website was finally launched. The site's first 'client' came months after, giving away a variety of canned goods. Belding recounts: "They're like the off-brand Mountain Dew in the food world... You'll take it only if you have no other option. . . . So we were all anxiously sitting by our computers hitting refresh, and I said, 'Please, someone take this.' And then, it's gone. It just disappeared. . . . The beans had moved."
Stephanie Shallah of District's So Others Might Eat, who was on the giving end of that first exchange says: "We were kind of desperate... Beans come so often to me that I didn't think anyone would want them. So I said, 'I'm going to just post it and see what happens. I have nothing to lose." The goods were taken off her hands by a Landover pantry.
Many commended the MEANS initiative, including L'Oréal Paris - which named Belding among the 10 they have selcted as 'women of worth' - and Arianna Huffington.
MEANS now has grown to a membership of 200 large food banks, with smaller pantries joining in, too. The site also has several paid programmers - thanks to grant money, who help keep the network efficient across the 24 states they serve. Belding and Nelson with their team are looking to bring in the other 26 states into the network and help further the war on hunger in America.
