With disastrous climate change roaring back into the picture with the past year’s winter freezes in Texas and food insecurity becoming more pervasive since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, we can\u2019t ignore the impact of food waste any longer. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
According to USDA\u2019s Economic Research Service, it\u2019s estimated that between 30-40 percent of the entire food supply in the United States is wasted. To break it down, that equals a whopping 133 billion pounds <\/strong>and 161 billion dollars <\/strong>worth of food thrown out every single year in America alone. With alarming stats like that, it\u2019s never been clearer\u2014the time to think of a holistic solution to food waste is now. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Creature of convenience? Good news\u2014there are several new apps and services that help make combating food waste easier than ever. Innovative brands like Imperfect Foods, send bruised or \u201cugly\u201d produce to your door that would have otherwise gone to waste. The Farmdrop app cuts out the middleman and connects consumers to farms that deliver fresh produce directly to their door. (Quite literally \u2018farm to table\u2019!) Additionally, Flashfood and No Food Wasted alert customers to grocery store items approaching their best-before dates and sell them at a discounted rate. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Apps like Food for All eliminate last-minute restaurant food waste by offering discounted meals near closing time in Boston and New York City. In London, the Karma app offers a similar solution to food sustainability by highlighting unsold food from nearby restaurants\u2014even including Michelin-starred ones. <\/p>\n\n\n\n On a more hyper-local level, Olio is a food sharing app that connects neighbors to swap unwanted or excess food. And in Spain, Yo No Desperdicio (\u201cI Do Not Waste\u201d) promotes the exchange of food by posting the item to offer it up with the quantity, location and expiration date. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Community fridges and food shares are also ways to give back and reduce waste. \u201cWe are addressing food waste by the tons,\u201d says Thadeaus Umester, founder of In Our Hearts (IOH), a New York-based network addressing food waste. IOH has gained notoriety mainly via their Instagram page <\/a>where like minded individuals, primarily women of color, came together to establish community refrigerators throughout New York City \u2014 they currently help operate and stock 97 fridges and counting. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe heard from a distribution warehouse that has a few pallets of tomatoes that are ripe and ready,\u201d Umester says of a call he regularly receives. The issue being that if the tomatoes are ready for consumption before going to a retailer, he explains, they will be thrown out. IOH helps take the food off the distribution center\u2019s hands and give it (for free) to the community via their fridges or Saturday food shares with the Food Not Bombs movement. \u201cWe are picking up a lot of slack in the food system, a lot of places where things would otherwise go to waste,\u201d he adds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n While IOH began in 2004, the first community fridge was only established in February 2020. Community refrigerators quickly became solutions not only for food waste but also food insecurity. \u201cEvery fridge is mostly empty at some point during the day,\u201d Umester says of their continual use. \u201cWe have a whole network with a few hundred volunteer drivers \u2014 they go around restocking them [with food] from nonprofits, food pantries, and different collection places.\u201d The fridges also serve a mix of people, not just those facing food scarcities. \u201cIt\u2019s not just for helping people, it\u2019s about eliminating waste,\u201d he says. <\/p>\n\n\n\nThere\u2019s an app for that<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Community service<\/h3>\n\n\n\n