Agrlilinks Call to Action: The Intersection of Food Waste and Food Justice

This past summer Food Recovery Network partnered with Baltimore City Schools to distribute fresh produce to area communities.

Originally posted on AGRILINKS 9.19.2024

As the Executive Director of Food Recovery Network (FRN), I have dedicated the past nine years to addressing the critical issues of food waste and food insecurity. It has been a journey that has brought me to a point of clear focus: we need to take action to bring about systemic change in our approach to food production, consumption, and distribution. And the time to make that change is now, and it has been now for a while.

When I became the Executive Director for FRN in 2015, I was driven by the belief that through the power of college students, we could make a tangible difference in the fight against food waste and hunger. Our model at FRN is simple yet impactful. We mobilize students to recover surplus food from college dining halls and surrounding businesses, safely package it, and donate it to hunger-fighting nonprofit partner agencies. This grassroots approach has allowed us to redirect millions of pounds of food from landfills to the plates of those experiencing food insecurity.

And our work goes beyond the college campus. There is surplus food all around us. We support large-scale events, corporations, and advocacy initiatives to create comprehensive food recovery plans and advocate for systemic changes. Our goal is not just to recover food but to take action to help address the root causes of food insecurity and reduce CO2 emissions to tip the balance on climate change.

It can be easy to be overwhelmed by the big numbers—47 million people in the US are hungry right now. And the large-scale nature of our current climate crisis can seem insurmountable and immeasurable. But there are simple and accessible things every person can do to take action and join the movement to reduce food waste. We can take a collective deep breath to ground and strengthen ourselves. Then, we must focus on small things we can do together to create a larger change.

1. Make a decision to talk to the person who just brought you your food

“Does your restaurant have a food recovery plan in place? No? Do you know why? Oh, maybe your manager might want to talk to me about it.” Just beginning these wonderful, curious questions can begin to change the issue. You do not need to be an expert; you just need to be curious.

2. Advocate for legislation to change the root causes of systemic food waste

Currently, advocates are working to get senators to sign on in support of the Food Date Labeling Act. Standardizing date labels is estimated to have a net benefit of $3.55B annually, mostly for consumers. It will also immediately prevent millions of tons of perfectly good food from going to landfills unnecessarily. Copy the letter we provide on FRN’s website and send it to your legislators.

3. Find out if your alma mater, current college, or college closest to you has a FRN chapter

Put FRN in touch with the sustainability department or connect us with your favorite professor to speak with their class about FRN.

4. Connect FRN with large-scale event planners or corporations

If you are planning a large-scale event or your corporation can benefit from hearing directly from our FRN team - reach out and let us know.

I am encouraged by the growing momentum behind the food justice movement. And our work is far from over. There are still millions of individuals and families who lack consistent access to nutritious food. Together, we must continue to raise awareness, advocate for policy changes, and grow the power of communities to take ownership of their food security.

I invite you to join us in this crucial work. Whether you are a student, a professional, or an advocate, there are numerous ways to get involved in the fight against food waste and food insecurity. Together, we can create a future where every person has access to an abundance of delicious food and our food systems are sustainable, equitable, and just.

Regina Harmon,
Executive Director, Food Recovery Network

Powerful Partnerships

Food Recovery Network believes no one should be hungry. To recover surplus food to feed everyone who is hungry in the U.S. means we must reconfigure structures big and small because many of those structures currently make accessing food harder, not easier for people.

I am thrilled to share the incredible journey of our partnership with Gaylord National Resort & Convention Center in the heart of National Harbor which has increased food access for people experiencing food insecurity. Our partnership is a powerful testament to the transformative impact that can be achieved when organizations unite for a common cause. Yes, we have the power to design structures that meet our business goals. And, as you will read, we also have the power to design structures that at the same time do the most good for our communities.

A Beginning

An event organizer engaged with FRN to recover surplus food for a 1,000-person event happening at Gaylord National. FRN has helped hundreds of businesses and events design and carry out a food recovery plan. At the event’s end, we recovered an immense amount of food — 3 days worth of breakfast, lunch, and dinner surplus. 1,278 pounds actually. To put that amount of extra food into context, that is the same weight as a polar bear. When we brought it to Central Union Mission, an organization that serves people experiencing homelessness in the DC area, they were so grateful. To further contextualize the amount of food we recovered from one event at Gaylord National it was enough to feed the Central Union Mission community for a whole week.

Recovering from this event at Gaylord National could have been a one-time occurrence. But what happened next has been transformative. And I am not being hyperbolic. The Gaylord National team immediately saw the potential scale of significance a consistent food recovery program could have for the greater DC region. They didn’t want to let go of this newly emerged opportunity to help after they saw they could feed so many people so easily. Just as handily as they decided they wanted to keep going, they could have stopped at just one recovery. After all, the recovery was initiated by an event group using the space of Gaylord National. And after all, currently in the U.S., recovering food when it’s no longer needed, goes against the grain.

The majority of unused food in the United States goes to landfills. Once in a landfill, all of that food — millions of pounds of which is still perfectly good to eat — decomposes and creates burdensome additional and unwanted CO2, methane, and other greenhouse gases. Each year, at commercial and institutional settings — places like farms, large-scale events like sporting events or the event FRN supported at Gaylord National, corporate cafeterias, higher education dining halls, grocery stores, restaurants, and food distribution companies — 26 million tons of food is wasted, representing 40% of all wasted food across our entire food supply chain.

Saying Yes

Gaylord National made a critical decision to say yes to being a positive contributor to their community by sharing their surplus food. And that one decision has had an amazing ripple effect. It is these transformative moments and decisions that FRN seeks to multiply across the food system involving producers, retailers, and consumers.

Our work also aligned with Gaylord National’s commitment to being a more ecologically sustainable business. We both understood the beauty of recovering food meant we could help increase access to food and help the environment. Our joint motivation to help seal the continuation of our efforts. From a foundation of shared commitment, we moved, together. The FRN team designed a short six-week pilot program in partnership with Gaylord National focusing on their specific resources and needs in mind. Those short six weeks quickly demonstrated the potential for substantial impact — we recovered an additional 9,000 pounds of food.

Importantly, over the course of the pilot, it didn’t take long for our teams to begin to work seamlessly together. We determined a schedule for pick-ups that worked for everyone, roles of Gaylord National’s team, roles of the FRN team and those of the team at Union Central Mission. We all discussed what was working well and what we might alter to make the recovery process better for everyone and we had those conversations in the moment with loads of respect for one another. Soon, the recoveries began to take less time to conduct. Before long, everyone began remembering one another’s names, we had opportunities to exchange stories about career paths, families, sports, and current events. We enjoyed talking about what foods were being recovered, how the foods were prepared, and our excitement for the community who would receive this food made with expertise and love.

Yes is a powerful word. From one event to a designed 6 week pilot, Gaylord National deciding to say yes to reconsidering what they could do with their surplus food has helped the lives of DC community members. The power of yes has shown the breadth of difference and increased impact our organizations could make, together. For our extended DC community and for the environment, when we work together, we are unstoppable. Our six-week pilot underscored the importance of consistent cooperative efforts to achieve our mutual goals. Said another way, together, we are feeding a lot of people incredible food and mitigating our footprint on our planet.

Big Impact

I can proudly say that just a year after our initial partnership launch, we’ve recovered nearly 50,000 pounds of delicious surplus food, served nearly 400 unique individuals, and including Central Union Mission, partnered with 7 additional area hunger-fighting agencies. From a sustainability perspective, Gaylord National has mitigated nearly 60.88 tons of CO2 emissions — the equivalent of driving 13 passenger vehicles for a year.

Our key learnings along the way:

1. Common goals and cooperation are necessary to succeed

2. You can’t expect perfection

3. Leadership matters

1. Common goals and cooperation are necessary to succeed. Many of us at FRN and our colleagues at the Gaylord National work and live in the DC community. Just by living and working in our community means we all have seen firsthand the amount of need present. We have seen the inequitable distribution of resources from one community to the next and the impact that inequity has on low-income areas. For those of us who have grown up and work here, that deeply personal desire to make an improvement for our home communities motivated us. It gave us a common desire to make a difference and provided a place of cooperation from which to begin.

2. You can’t expect perfection. We needed to adapt some of our processes as we recovered from event to event in the first month of our pilot. Every catered event is slightly different. So of course, the way we recover food must be adaptable. But nothing was insurmountable. We had our processes refined in mere weeks. We understand that for many, food donations from an operational standpoint can seem overwhelming and that’s why many businesses don’t even try. We’ve heard from businesses that they worry the logistics will be too hard. We understand those fears, and we have years of experience helping to unlock businesses so they can move forward with a plan that works for them, and FRN is there at each stage to help, guide, support, and celebrate. Working with the Gaylord is a testament to what can happen when businesses try. We didn’t allow an expectation of perfection to prevent us from starting.

3. Leadership matters. All of our success was achievable because of the leadership at Gaylord National. Thanks to Executive Chef Jakob Esko for his leadership in helping make our partnership official and special thanks to Brian Coffman, Sous Chef, and the entire Gaylord team for valuing sustainability and community involvement. Hospitality and service businesses exist as a space for people to have a good time and they can do so much good behind the scenes with the right leadership. Gaylord National is a shining example of leadership for other organizations to emulate.

Powerful partnerships are one of FRN’s key strategies for achieving our vision of recovering surplus food to feed everyone who is hungry in the U.S. Food Recovery Network’s powerful partnership with Gaylord National demonstrates that the strategy works! Anyone can make a difference, one small action at a time. We just have to say yes. We just have to begin.