NYC Teens Fight Hunger & Food Waste Amid Rising Grocery Prices

A New York City teenager is battling food waste and hunger one drop-off at a time by starting a student-led club that delivers cafeteria leftovers directly to food pantries, particularly as neighborhoods struggle with mounting grocery bills.

NBC New York's Linda Gaudino reports from the UES community fridge at NYCHA Holmes Towers.

(Narrator) While inflation
is expected to ease this year,

New Yorkers are still feeling the pinch
at grocery stores.

One group of teens is stocking fridges
with fresh produce

to help combat food insecurity.

Meet Skye, the 16 year old student

who started the Food Security Club
at Stuyvesant High School.

(Skye) This is just a routine delivery
for the Food Security Club at Stuyvesant

where we take the excess food
that's not eaten from the cafeteria,

and we collect that
over the course of a week,

and then we come to deliver it
to places like this,

like the community fridge
and also food pantries

- I'm Skye.
- I'm Max,

and we're the Stuyvesant
Food Security Club

That door leads you to cafeteria
here at Stuyvesant.

Over here's the table where students
can leave their extra food

that they don't eat
for us to collect after school.

So we just finished
counting and collecting all the food

so we can take stock
of everything we have.

Now we're gonna go over
and store this food

in the cafeteria fridges over there.

(Narrator) The club
has about 30 student members

donating around 300 pounds of food to date

to low income communities
and NYCHA housing.

Nearly 1.5 million New Yorkers
are food insecure,

including 1 in 4 children.

So when Skye got in touch with me
from Stuyvesant High School,

I said, "First of all, of course
we would love to accept

all of this excess food
that you're collecting."

And it doesn't need to be,
you know, a government thing

or coming from a big non-profit,

it could just be a group of kids
who care about their fellow neighbors.

(Narrator) These teens
are encouraging students

from other schools to join in, like Maya,

a 17-year old from Trinity School
on the Upper West Side

who decided to drop off meals
after cooking excess in class.

(Maya) We aren't mindful of our food waste
or what we are doing

not realizing that what we can do
can actually help so many people

and also saving food like this
helps the environment too.

(Narrator) There are over
one hundred community fridges

scattered across New York City,

which provide a unique space
for neighbors to connect.

(Sandra) People that
didn't know each other before,

were strangers,

now they became family.

That's the way I see it.

(Narrator) On the Upper East Side,
I'm Linda Galdino, News 4 New York.