Food Rescue Meets the 21st Century
We talk about food waste a lot, and for good reason: it’s estimated that we waste nearly one third of all food produced annually. Not only does this waste contribute gargantuan quantities of climate-change-fueling greenhouse gas emissions to our atmosphere and deplete natural resources, but it also contributes to the reason why nearly 800 million people around the world suffer from hunger each year. Food waste is not some small issue. It’s huge, and what’s most frustrating about it: a big part of it is well within our control.
It’s worth making a quick distinction between food waste and food loss. That figure we mentioned earlier, that we waste nearly one third of all produced annually, that should really be “lose or waste.” Food loss is typically defined as food that spoils in the field, in transit, or in storage facilities before it reaches its final destination (often restaurants or markets). This loss often occurs in low-income or developing nations as a result of inadequate infrastructure, which can be a fairly complex and expensive problem to solve. Food waste, on the other hand, is the result of our behavior and most often occurs in high-income or developed nations. This waste typically materializes when eateries order more food than they can sell, individuals buy more food than they can eat, or both simply discard food they find undesirable.
As is often the case, we humans typically pick the low-hanging fruit, and as the gap between investment and returns on the side of food loss has begun to close (thus making it less profitable to invest in food chain infrastructure), our attention has turned toward food waste. Over the past several decades, organizations have been cropping up left and right to tackle one or more of the three types of food waste I listed above. Organizations like Imperfect Foods and Misfits Market tackle the “undesirable” category, packaging up unaesthetic produce that might otherwise be discarded and distributing them via mystery-box subscriptions. More localized, community-driven programs often tackle the circumstances where individuals purchase more than they can eat. For example, my alma mater had a social media page in which participants post about small or large quantities of food that are perfectly suitable for someone else’s consumption if anyone is interested: an extra meal or full catering from an under attended event. These kinds of programs are fantastic because they’re dynamic, bending to the supply-du-jour. Unfortunately, they can also be unpredictable for those in need. This brings me to the last category.
I recently stumbled upon an organization called “Too Good To Go.” This organization works to streamline the path from eatery-excess to hungry-customer. Restaurants and supermarkets regularly have perfectly good, untouched food that they can’t keep for the next day, and this app allows them to easily offer it to people rather than the dumpster at the end of the night. For a relatively small price, users can reserve packages of excess food goods from local restaurants, bakeries, grocery stores, and more via an app on their phones. This not only works to reduce overall food waste, but helps those in need, and gives eateries an incentive to find a home for their excess food. There have been other models like this through organizations like the Friendship Donation Network in Ithaca, New York and many others, but Too Good To Go connects the consumer and the restaurant directly, reducing organizational and administrative costs.
Collective-action is something of a buzzword these days, but these kinds of programs really illustrate how much of a difference we can make when we work together and share our excess with those in need (cliché! I know!). As solvable a problem as food waste is, it doesn’t seem to be vanishing anytime soon. In place of that, these kinds of programs can be a great first step for individuals to take towards helping our planet and our people. They can also help break down the “beggars can’t be choosers” model of food assistance, offering those seeking a meal a wider variety of options that can more closely align with their dietary and cultural needs and preferences. Expanding our society’s options when it comes to food assistance is a crucial first step for many on the path to food sovereignty, and regardless of whether you’re pursuing a discounted meal option based on convenience or need, everyone should feel a sense of dignity and respect.
So, if you’re one of those who experience excess in their life, consider supporting a local or regional food-saving program near you. If you find yourself striving for greater food security, we urge you to explore the myriad of options that are emerging, a handful of which we’ve listed below. I have an incredible amount of privilege to write about these kinds of problems and solutions, but if sharing these resources has a chance of helping anyone, it’s worth a try. Check these out and share if you can!
This list and the accompanying descriptions were compiled from Inhabitat.com and Foodtank.com
412 Food Rescue: (Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania)
This food rescue group harnesses the power of technology to match food donors and beneficiaries and mobilize volunteers to make it all happen. The team collects fresh, healthy food that is un-sellable but still perfectly good, and distributes it to community organizations that serve those in need in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. They also offer an Ugly CSA that provides ugly but edible produce at a reduced price
Binghamton Food Rescue (BFR) (Binghamton, New York)
Binghamton Food Rescue (BFR) collects perishable food waste and redistributes it as packaged meals and groceries to food-insecure communities in Binghamton, New York. Over 47,000 pounds of food have been rescued since the organization’s inception. The organization is encouraging community members to report local food waste for pick-up and repurposing. BFR also collects food donations and delivers them to around 100 households per week.
Boston Area Gleaners: (Boston, Massachusetts)
Boston Area Gleaners organizes groups of volunteers in Boston, Massachusetts, to rescue surplus farm crops and provide them to people in need. In 2015, they gleaned more than 360,000 pounds of produce in 66 crop types from 54 different farms.
Boulder Food Rescue: (Boulder, Colorado)
Boulder Food Recuse helps businesses identify food that would otherwise have been thrown away and diverts it, via bicycle, to day shelters and food pantries. To date, they have diverted more than 1.2 million pounds of food from landfills to hungry bellies in Boulder, Colorado.
Brothers Produce (Texas)
Brothers Produce is the largest Texas-based food and beverage distributor, supplying goods to retailers in Texas and Louisiana. In response to the pandemic, Brothers Produce has developed a new business model where boxes of fresh produce are sold directly to customers instead of companies. This ensures that food surplus that otherwise would be thrown away is redistributed and helps to keep the business afloat.
Center for a Livable Future: (Baltimore, Maryland)
Through research, analysis, and consumer awareness efforts, this program out of Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, Maryland, works to reduce the quantity of wasted food in the U.S. Some of their projects include: researching the nutritional content of wasted food, mapping wasted food and food recovery, quantifying seafood waste, developing better language for food labeling, analyzing crop donations and policy incentives, and more.
City Harvest: (New York, New York)
City Harvest was founded in 1982 as the world’s first food rescue organization. This year, they will collect 55 million pounds of excess food from restaurants, grocers, bakeries, manufacturers, and farms and deliver it free of charge to 500 community food programs across the city of New York.
Community Alliance with Family Farmers (CAFF) and Farmers Guild (California)
Based in California, The Community Alliance with Family Farmers (CAFF) and Farmers Guild is a nonprofit striving to build a more sustainable food system. To do so, they engage in political advocacy and develop grassroots programs to empower farmers and local communities. To eliminate the food surplus in California’s food system, CAFF works with farmers to redirect their food supply away from their usual commercial customers and into the hands of consumers. Additionally, CAFF created a spreadsheet designed to connect the state’s food surplus to consumers.
Community Food Rescue: (Montgomery County, Maryland)
This coordinated food recovery network in Montgomery County, Maryland, uses technology to enhance the work of businesses, individuals, and organizations that already recover and redistribute usable food to those in need.
Community Plates: (Norwalk, Connecticut)
Based in Norwalk, Connecticut, Community Plates works to end food insecurity by transferring fresh, usable food that would have otherwise been thrown away by restaurants, markets, and other sources to food-insecure families throughout the U.S.
Copia: (San Francisco, California)
Using an algorithm-based smartphone app, Copia facilitates donations and deliveries of excess food in six cities across the San Francisco Bay Area in California. Those with food to donate post their information via the app, and a driver will come pick it up. Someone looking for food can post their request online and wait for a match.
DC Central Kitchen: (District of Columbia)
This food distribution service based in Washington, D.C., delivers free meals to homeless shelters, transitional homes, and nonprofit organizations. Their food recycling program allows them to turn leftovers and surplus food into nutritious meals for those in need. They also offer culinary training for unemployed adults and healthy school lunches to low-income students in D.C.
Excess NYC: (New York, New York)
Excess NYC investigates the large amount of food that goes to waste in urban centers like New York City. They work to divert food from landfills by transporting waste and re-purposing it to feed people or sending it to compost. They plan to work with small businesses to change their food waste disposal practices.
ExtraFood: (San Rafael, California)
ExtraFood accepts donations of any type of food—prepared food, fresh produce, dairy, eggs, meat, packaged goods, and baked goods. Their volunteers pick up donated food and excess fresh food from numerous organizations in San Rafael, California, and deliver directly to the recipient in under 30 minutes. They have delivered more than 590,000 pounds of food and aim to serve the community’s most vulnerable members, including children, adults, and families.
Food Cowboy: (Bethesda, Maryland)
Food Cowboy uses mobile technology to prevent surplus food from wholesalers and restaurants from ending up in landfills. They also run the No Waste Promise Campaign, which allows growers, wholesalers, food retailers, and others to let their customers know that they are striving to ship food sustainably and recover and divert unsaleables responsibly.
Food Forward: (Los Angeles and Ventura, California)
Powered by volunteers, Food Forward rescues excess fruits and vegetables from private properties, public spaces, and farmers and wholesale markets in Los Angeles and Ventura, California. They deliver the produce to agencies that serve those in need. They have programs designed to get other citizens involved, such as private picks, where groups can get together and harvest surplus produce, and a youth service projects program that allows interested young people to complete service projects with the help of Food Forward. In total, the organization has rescued nearly 20 million pounds of produce.
Food Recovery Network: (Nation Wide)
This student-led movement to end food waste and hunger has more than 192 chapters and has recovered more than 1,300,000 pounds of food since 2011. It was founded at the University of Maryland in College Park, Maryland, and has since spread to 42 states.
Food Recovery Project: (Fayetteville, Arkansas)
An initiative of the Agricultural & Food Law Program at the University of Arkansas School of Law in Fayetteville, Arkansas, this project aims to raise awareness about the problems of food waste and hunger. They provide resources and legal information to encourage and support businesses to develop and implement food recovery programs.
Food Rescue: (Carmel, Indiana)
Food Rescue has connected more than 200 agencies with more than 200 restaurants and 350 schools, resulting in millions of meals rescued annually. They focus on connecting different organizations through advocacy and education, and they provide the initial logistics to build relationships and facilitate solutions among the participating companies.
Food Share: (Bloomfield, Connecticut)
Food Share is a member of Feeding America’s Food Bank Network and works to fight food waste and enable self-sufficiency for the hungry and food-insecure. Last year, they helped to distribute 11.5 million meals by collecting food donations from the food industry and distributing them to food pantries, community kitchens, homeless shelters, and other partner programs.
Food Shift: (Oakland, California)
Food Shift works collaboratively with communities, businesses, and governments to develop sustainable solutions that reduce wasted food and hunger. In their newly launched program, the Alameda Kitchen, Food Shift transforms surplus, otherwise wasted foods into nutritious products for the community, while providing employment and training for individuals overcoming homelessness.
Food Waste Reduction Alliance: (District of Columbia)
The Food Waste Reduction Alliance’s (FWRA) work is focused on U.S. operations including manufacturing, retail, and food service. The FWRA’s objectives are to reduce our environmental footprint by decreasing the amount of food waste being sent to landfills and donating that food to help those suffering from hunger.
Forgotten Harvest: (Detroit, Michigan)
Forgotten Harvest collects surplus prepared and perishable food from 800 sources, including grocery stores, fruit and vegetable markets, restaurants, caterers, dairies, farmers, and wholesale food distributors. They then distribute it to 280 emergency food providers in the Detroit area.
Harvard Food Law and Policy Clinic (FLPC): (Cambridge, Massachusetts)
Established in 2010, the FLPC gives Harvard Law School students opportunities to work with organizations on food law and policy issues, such as food waste. They produced a short film, EXPIRED, on how food date labels are misleading and contribute to waste in the United States. Recently, FLPC hosted a two-day food waste conference that attracted leaders to discuss models of food recovery and the cost savings of mitigating food waste.
Hungry Harvest: (Maryland)
This organization delivers boxes of rescued “ugly” produce that is still edible but can’t be sold in retail locations. The boxes are delivered straight to homes in Maryland, D.C., and Northern Virginia. For every purchase, Hungry Harvest donates one to two pounds of produce through one of their donation partners.
Imperfect Produce: (Emeryville, California)
Imperfect Produce believes that fruits and vegetables shouldn’t be rejected just because they’re cosmetically-challenged. They source imperfect produce from farms and deliver it to directly customers in the Bay Area at a reduced price. They also offer community drop-off points and a bulk ordering program.
Iskashitaa Refugee Network: (Tucson, Arizona, United States)
This grassroots organization prevents food waste through the harvesting program, where refugees and other volunteers learn how to identify, access, harvest, use, and store locally grown produce, mostly from edible trees. This program also empowers refugees by creating opportunities for them to apply their knowledge and skills from their home countries.
Island Grown Gleaning: (Vineyard Haven, Massachusetts)
Every week, a group of volunteers meets at one of the participating farms on Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts and helps to pick and pack up surplus from that week’s crop. In 2014, they rescued 24,000 pounds of produce and delivered it to more than 20 organizations.
L.A. Kitchen: (Los Angeles, California)
L.A. Kitchen reclaims healthy, local food that would otherwise be wasted and trains unemployed men and women to create delicious meals for the community. They work directly with local farmers and companies to collect fruits and vegetables that, due to cosmetic issues, would not be sold to consumers. L.A. Kitchen anticipates reclaiming 1 million pounds of food this year.
Lovin’ Spoonfuls: (Boston, Massachusetts)
This food recovery operation picks up fresh food that would otherwise be discarded from more than 50 grocery stores, produce wholesalers, farms, and farmers markets. They redistribute it the same day to more than 50 community nonprofits that feed the hungry in the Boston area. Each week, they collect more than 25,000 pounds of food and feed more than 10,000 people.
Move for Hunger (Nation Wide)
If food is discarded during one’s relocation process, Move for Hunger is available to collect and donate it to food banks. The organization connects people who are moving with a moving company to coordinate a pick up time for non-perishable food items. The service operates across the United States and parts of Canada. Since the beginning of the pandemic, Move for Hunger has expanded its operational efforts, delivering food to food banks faster than before.
Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC): (New York City, New York)
Since 1970, NRDC has been protecting people’s right to clean air, clean water, and healthy communities. Scientist Dana Gunders has been leading their work on food with the widely distributed publications of reports such as “Wasted: How America Is Losing Up to 40 Percent of Its Food from Farm to Fork to Landfill” and “The Dating Game.” They recently partnered with the Ad Council to change consumer practices in order to reduce food waste.
Replate (Nation Wide)
Operating in more than 300 U.S. cities, Replate is a nonprofit comprised of professional drivers known as "food rescuers" who collect surplus meals from businesses and distribute them to vulnerable communities. By partnering with Beyond Meat and DoorDash during the pandemic, Replate is able to provide fresh, nutritious meals to frontline workers and food insecure communities.
Rock and Wrap It Up (New York)
Rock and Wrap It Up is a New York-based anti-poverty organization that works to divert excess food from stadiums, companies and other commercial enterprises towards food banks and veterans. Since the beginning of the pandemic, Rock and Wrap it Up has collected thousands of pounds worth of food from Madison Square Garden and MetLife Stadium. As of early April, film and TV partners have donated over 2,000 additional pounds of food.
Salvation Farms: (Morrisville, Vermont)
This nonprofit is strengthening Vermont’s food system through agricultural surplus management. They facilitate partnerships across sectors to find efficient uses for a farm’s surplus food. They work with partner organizations to build a network to redistribute farm surplus across the state to help farmers while improving food access for low-income populations.
Society of Saint Andrew: (Big Island, Virginia)
This Christian hunger ministry salvages fresh produce and delivers it to soup kitchens and food banks across the U.S. One of their projects, The Gleaning Network, coordinates volunteers, growers, and distribution agencies to salvage food for the needy. The Potato & Produce Project redirects these 43,000-pound loads of fresh, nutritious produce to food banks, soup kitchens, food pantries, low-income housing areas, local churches, and other hunger agencies for distribution to those in need. Harvest of Hope educates participants concerning the domestic and global hunger problem, and encourages them to make lifelong commitments to being part of the solution.
Zero Percent: (Chicago, Illinois)
Zero Percent is a team of self-proclaimed “food recovery nerds” who have a passion for food and believe it shouldn’t be wasted. Zero Percent believes that hunger is a distribution problem, not a supply problem. Their website and app work to link neighborhood charities with restaurants and stores who have good surplus food in order to feed the community.