PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — A Philadelphia nonprofit has broken the Guinness World Record for food distribution.
Sharing Excess teamed up with Potato farmer "Potato Ty" last weekend to give away more than 543,000 pounds of food, breaking the record for the largest fresh produce donation in 24 hours on the other side of our border with Canada. They fed more than 30,000 people.
The organization's founder, Evan Ehlers, who spent a lot of time coordinating such a large effort, said there is a lot of good food out there that is destined to go to waste.
“There is an enormous amount that happens day of, and then there's a lot of preparation that goes into it. But we rescue and redistribute anywhere between 3 and 4 million pounds of food every week. So this is just a fraction; even though it's so much food, this is just a fraction of what we are rescuing as an organization," Ehlers said.
Ehlers began Sharing Excess as a Drexel University student, rescuing unused meal plans and distributing them to those in need.
The organization has grown since the dorm room days and now works with grocery stores, farmers and wholesalers to distribute millions of pounds of food every week.
