9.25: CKWLU connected with their local Wal-mart earlier this month to rescuse many pounds of quality food from its inevitable dumpster destiny. To find out more, check out the full story below.

A mere two days before the class of 2013 began to arrive at W&L, I went with Jenny to make CKP’s first food pickup from Walmart.   After some initial confusion about which of the many back doors we were supposed to go to, we made our way to the egg bunker where we met the women who would be facilitating the food pick-ups.  As they took us to the back of the store, I was stunned by the sheer volume of food.  The women gave us a brief tour and then we started loading up the cars.  My first impression of these two women was how excited they were that this food was not going to be wasted.  Despite the fact that they had to do some extra work to give us the food, they were more than happy to do so and just as excited as we were to be rescuing this food that otherwise would have been wasted.  Walmart has high standards on what can be sold, so there is an abundance of perfectly good food that they cannot sell because of damaged packaging.  The number of eggs that they were throwing out was unbelievable.  After saving the eggs for only two days, they were able to send us away with over 500 eggs.  From now on, CKP will be picking up from Walmart three times a week, which will supply more than enough food to fill the fridges and many hungry mouths, if my experience is any indication of a normal Walmart run.                            - Austin Branstetter

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