A new University of Washington project maps Little Free Pantries around the Seattle area, making it easier to find and donate to the community-run food cupboards.
Why it matters: The small pantries — which are like Little Free Libraries, but for food — are becoming more common locally. But knowing where they are, and what goods they already have versus which they might need, can be a challenge.
Zoom in: A UW team created a tool called PantryMap.org to not only pinpoint locations of dozens of pantries, but also to provide information about what’s inside each one.
The app lets people share what food they’ve donated and add items to a wish list for each location.
What they’re saying: “We know that there is a lot of food insecurity in Seattle and in the United States in general,” Giacomo Dalla Chiara, a UW senior research scientist with the UW Urban Freight Lab, said in a news release.
“But we know that there is also a lot of food waste. … And we want to see how grassroots efforts like micropantries can address both food insecurity and waste at the same time.”
Between the lines: The UW team installed weight sensors on a few pantries to detect their stock levels and update the app automatically — part of a data-gathering experiment to see how the pantries are used.
“It puts numbers on what we’re actually accomplishing, and it helps us get a lot more in touch with what’s going on on this street,” said Stephen Crippen, rector at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church near Seattle Center, which runs a Little Free Pantry with a new sensor installed.
What we’re watching: The UW team is working with businesses and nonprofits “to encourage and track food distribution throughout the pantry network,” per the university.