Retailers: Here’s why you should care about food waste

Hunger is on the rise. In September, the USDA released its annual estimate of food insecurity for 2023 showing an increase to 47.4 million Americans — that’s 1 in 7 people — who are food insecure, the highest rate in more than a decade. 

For years, the grocery-retail sector has partnered with the charitable food system to set aside high- quality, nutritious food to support people facing hunger in their communities. Just last year, the Feeding America network of food banks, together with their community food distribution partners, rescued 2.3 billion pounds of retail product. 

Our challenge: it’s simply not enough. 

That’s why Feeding America announced The Food Rescue Challenge, a call to action for new collaboration and innovation across the food industry to help rescue an incremental one billion pounds of food.

Retailers play a crucial role. By educating store staff, working with food bank and food pantry volunteers, and ensuring food safety standards, you make this system work every day.

Our research estimates there is more than 750 million pounds of additional retail food to rescue each year. Feeding America’s newly launched Food Rescue Fund will help us invest $50 million in capabilities to rescue even more of this surplus food – think refrigerated vans, new coolers and freezers, upgraded food safety equipment – to help us increase the frequency of store pick-ups.

The fund also supports feature enhancements to our national food sourcing and sharing platform MealConnect to make your donations more efficient. That data will help food retailers understand store-level performance, the types of products donated, and useful information on food waste diversion for sustainability and tax reporting purposes. 

Beyond retail food donations, the Food Rescue Fund will help offset the cost to transport full truckloads of donated food, expand our capabilities to sort and process agricultural commodities and large format food service or food ingredient donations into useable pack sizes, and create frictionless ways to share food across the Feeding America network. 

This increased food rescue is not only good for people in your community, but also for the planet: diverting surplus food into the charitable food system and out of landfills prevents harmful methane gas emissions. 

We are fortunate to live in a country that produces enough food to feed everyone. Yet more than 90 billion pounds of food goes uneaten every year, with more than 50 percent of this food loss stemming from food manufacturing, ag production, retailing, and food service operations. Together, organizations like Feeding America and retailers can do more to capture this surplus food before it becomes waste, and efficiently and equitably distribute to neighbors in need. 

This September is Hunger Action Month. As retailers are very much aware, hunger exists in every county, parish, and borough across the country. It impacts one in five children, seniors, hardworking families — these are your customers and neighbors.

Your generosity already does so much to help fight hunger and we know there is more to do. Please continue to advocate for food donations (across all store categories), engage store staff, contribute to the Food Rescue Fund, and learn more about Feeding America’s food rescue programs. Together we are creating the movement to end hunger.