Project 4 Less strives to fight food insecurity within our local community. Student dining halls can create incredible amounts of food waste which is normally just thrown away, thereby wasting energy, time, manpower, resources, and money. Simultaneously, Urbana-Champaign has the largest percentage of food insecure households in the entire state of Illinois—people who don’t always know where they’ll find their next meal. Our organization bridges the gap between these two issues by recovering leftover food from student dining halls and redistributing it to members of the CU community who are in need.

Project 4 Less works with Lincoln Avenue Dining Hall to recover pre-consumer food waste every Wednesday evening, with the intention of expanding to more nights of food packaging each week and/or expanding to more dining halls. Meals are currently transported to Wesley and UniPlace food pantries on campus.