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Dan Zauderer and his in-laws had eaten plenty of pizza one evening in early October, and they still had seven slices left. What to do? “Well, we could just chuck it,” Zauderer thought. Instead, he and his fiancée wrapped the slices in plastic wrap, slapped labels on them with the date, and walked the leftovers a little more than a block down the road to a refrigerator standing along 92nd Avenue in New York City’s Upper East Side.
That fridge is one among many “community fridges” across the country that volunteers stock with free food — prepared meals, leftovers, and you name it. Zauderer had helped set a network up in New York City during the pandemic as a way to reduce waste and fight hunger. The idea came about when he was a middle school teacher looking to provide short-term help to students whose families couldn’t afford food. He stationed the first fridge in the Bronx in September 2020. That one, the Mott Haven Fridge, was hugely popular, and it motivated Zauderer to expand. Since then, he has helped plug in seven more fridges in the Bronx and Manhattan, including the one where he dropped off his leftover pizza.
