One in seven people in the U.S. goes hungry. Yet we also generate tons and tons of food waste — items that are discarded, lost, or uneaten.
But there are increasingly more solutions to get that unused food to people who need it.
To find out more, WUWM's Maayan Silver spoke with Minnie Ringland, senior manager of climate and insights at ReFED, a national nonprofit focused on solving food waste.
This interview was edited for length and clarity.
Maayan Silver: What are some of the challenges in dealing with food waste?
Minnie Ringland: So a big challenge in tackling food waste is that it's a fairly distributed problem, with waste going unsold or uneaten at virtually every node of the supply chain.
So food can be grown on farms, but then never harvested due to labor shortages or lack of marketability. Food can spoil during transport or in stores. And of course, just because food makes it home from the market or the store doesn't mean that we're guaranteed to eat it. And in fact, ReFED estimates that about one third of all surplus food in the U.S. is generated by individuals at home.
So like, if you buy three bags of groceries, one bag is gonna end up going in the garbage.
Yeah, we like to use the example that it's like going to the grocery store, buying three bags worth of groceries, and then on your way out the door, tossing one of those bags in the dumpster, which is really hard to fathom, but I think it really paints the picture that not only is this a massive waste, but the food that's being wasted is perfectly good, perfectly edible, perfectly nutritious in many cases.
And I'd imagine that a lot of people would like to be able to donate food waste, whether that's a bakery or a grocery store or a restaurant or an individual. What are some of the obstacles to donating food waste?
There's a big misconception that you can get into legal trouble for donating food that might make people sick. So I think a lot of stores and restaurants don't even look into food donation because of that fear. But there was a bill passed all the way back in 1996, the Bill Emerson Good Samaritan [Food Donation] Act, and that protects people who are donating food in good faith, you know, taking basic safety precautions to ensure that the food is safe. It protects them from liability. So I think that's something that could easily be overcome with a little bit more education around those protections in place.
Another big obstacle is just that it's a ton of work to separate food that's being cleared from shelves and inventory and make a judgment about whether it's still good to eat and good to donate. So you have to have systems in place to store and transport that food to a food bank or nonprofit, and you have to train employees on those systems.
But increasingly, we are seeing organics diversion laws passed at the state and local level that require edible food recovery alongside a mandate to keep food out of landfills, and I think that's helping incentivize more investment in those food donation programs.
READ: State bans on commercial food waste have been largely ineffective, study finds
In Wisconsin, I know there's not a formal law around food waste diversion, but they have a state goal to reduce food waste, I believe, by 50% by 2030. And it sounds like in the last year, there's been a lot of really amazing work going on [with the FEED MKE Project — a City of Milwaukee pilot project that redistributed nearly 671,000 pounds of surplus food to hungry people over the course of two years.] I read the story about the Veggie Chop Shop, and it seems like a great program.
READ: The Veggie Chop Shop: A delicious way to combat food deserts
Other businesses, nonprofits and organizations that were supported by the FEED MKE mini-grant program include NourishMKE, programs with the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, My Soul Brew Kombucha, and some composting initiatives that seem to be doing really great local work.
Support for Seeking Solutions: Food Access in Milwaukee is provided by Jon E. Sorenson, Christine Symchych and Jim McNulty, Forage Kitchen, Capuchin Community Services and Antonia Foundation.
