Food Recovery—Connections for Households and Schools

December 22, 2015

As discussed in NERC’s recent Blog, Food Recovery—Bridging the Gaps, in most communities opportunities are available for larger commercial food generators, including grocers, to reduce wasted food through food donation or food recovery.

However, reducing food discards from household, restaurant, and smaller institutions (including schools) needs to be accomplished as well.  

A study conducted for the Food Waste Reduction Alliance found that households account for 47% of wasted food, followed by restaurants at 37%, and institutions at 11%; manufacturers account for just 3% while retailers are responsible for 2%. Many of the effective reduction efforts are found in the manufacturing and retailing sectors, where economic efficiencies are drivers and food recovery opportunities are more accessible due to the volume of recoverable food items.

Programs such as EPA’s Waste Wise,  Food Recovery Challenge and other resources, along with industry initiatives such as the Food Waste Reduction Alliance, have proved effective in helping food processors and larger commercial and institutional food scrap generators to reduce, recover, and divert wasted food.

Businesses, households, and schools can also significantly reduce wasted food just by adopting some easy to follow practices.

Standardizing food “sell by” and “use by” dates would go a long way toward reducing confusion over safe food consumption for retailers, households, schools, and other food scrap generators.  The recently introduced congressional bill to reduce wasted food addresses food date label standardization, by limiting food date labels to two phrases—one which would indicate quality (applicable for most foods), and the other—applying to high-risk foods where safety is a concern—to be determined by FDA.

Food donation presents another opportunity to reduce wasted food from households and institutions. Grocers often donate perishable food, including produce, to food recovery efforts. However, fresh produce is an item that food rescue organizations struggle to be able to collect. Gleaning—collecting excess fresh foods from farms, gardens, farmers’ markets, and other sources, and delivering then to food rescue organizations, can help to fill this need. USDA’s Let’s Glean, United We Serve Toolkit provides information on how farmers and communities can develop successful gleaning programs.

Households can also donate fresh produce to local food rescue programs. A great model for communities, neighborhood activists, community gardeners, and others to follow is the Friendship Donations Network (FDN). FDN strives to redistribute fresh, nutritious food that would otherwise be thrown away. FDN’s Neighborhood Food Hubs program received 8,268 pounds of fresh produce donated by household volunteers in 2015. Through the “hubs,” residents can donate excess produce from gardens or CSAs (community supported agriculture).  Volunteers working with FDN place a cooler on their porch for neighborhood donors to drop-off their excess produce. Community gardens, farm stands, farmers’ markets, community centers, and even public libraries also participate in the program by hosting hub collection points.

An estimated 1 billion food items—unopened milk cartons, uneaten produce, and other unwanted items—are discarded by schools each year. In 2011, the Richard Russell National School Lunch Act was amended to clarify that schools which donate food to charity are protected by Good Samaritan Laws. USDA and EPA recognize schools for their wasted food reduction and food recovery programs. Food Rescue has some great resources to assist schools in establishing food recovery programs.

As materials managers there is a lot we can do to promote low cost wasted food reduction and recovery opportunities for households and schools. Posting and promoting food scrap reduction tips along with compost outreach would be a great way to start. Consider working with local food rescue organizations, community gardeners, farmers, and community activists to establish neighborhood food hubs.

By Athena Lee Bradley

Through its Implementing the Food Recovery Hierarchy in Vermont project, NERC is putting together a compendium of wasted food reduction, recovery, and composting projects. Have a program or project you want to share? Send your program information to Athena Lee Bradley.