Food Waste Prevention, Recovery, and Redistribution

CalFresh Healthy Living Policy, Systems, and Environmental Change
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With the fiscal year coming to a close, we wanted to hear your thoughts about one of the new sub-strategies, Food Waste Prevention, Recovery, and Redistribution. This policy, systems, and environmental (PSE) sub-strategy aims to prevent unnecessary food waste, recover surplus edible food, and redistribute food to feed those in need, all of which will increase access to healthy food in our communities.

We encourage you to share your insights, whether you’re a seasoned implementer or just starting to explore this strategy.

To kick things off, here are some discussion questions:

  • What current efforts are you involved in around food waste prevention, recovery, or redistribution?
  • How could you expand these efforts in your community or organization?
  • Do you have any exciting future plans to reduce food waste or support recovery efforts?
  • What advice would you offer someone just beginning their work in this sub-strategy?
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  • What current efforts are you involved in around food waste prevention, recovery, or redistribution?
    1)We visit a predetermined group of local grocery stores 5 days a week, using a refrigerated van. Through ongoing relationships with department managers at these stores we glean overstock, close to out-of-date and other items the stores set aside for us to provide to our neighbors, free. 5k to 10K of meats, vegetables, breads, sweets as well as canned and packaged food are provided each week.
  1. Our pantry “sells” food through a fully client choice model. This allows us to easily increase and decrease the amount of each item our neighbors can “buy”, mid-pantry hours, which eliminates 99.9% of any waste. We literally don’t send any cases of food to the landfill. In past years when we provided pre-made boxes of food, we sent a much greater amount of food to recyclers or the landfill.
  • How could you expand these efforts in your community or organization?
    We have a network of other pantries and free food providers that we share over-stock items with, on a weekly basis. That allows us to order with confidence that we will have too much of an item, that may not “sell” as anticipated. We communicate the overstock item and amount through a text group and another panty or provider claims it.
  • Do you have any exciting future plans to reduce food waste or support recovery efforts?
    We are currently working of recycling the cardboard we don’t repurpose as grocery delivery boxes. Price of used cardboard is very low so not in much demand, so not very confident we will enjoy much success in this area.
    We are also experimenting with multiple strategies to reduce the line and waiting time for our neighbors. Our current version allows people to pick up a place holder card with an time, so they can attend to other business. We know from experience the approximate time they can shop, within a 15 minute time frame.
  • What advice would you offer someone just beginning their work in this sub-strategy?
    Talk with and ask for onsite help from established pantries. Do it early in the process or when a change, such as changing to client choice is considered. Volunteer and paid pantry managers normally are more than happy to share their mistakes and successes.
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We (Sonoma LHD) partnered with a community org in Sonoma Valley who was interested in community fridges. They had done a needs assessment and found that hours and location were major barriers for people who needed to access free food. I had just attended the last CFHL Forum and was inspired by the Santa Clara community fridge project. I connected my partner in Sonoma Valley with the folks working on the Santa Clara project and also with the right people in County Environmental Health. We ended up subcontracting with the Sonoma Valley partner to help fund the staff time for planning and setting up the systems (we did NOT fund the fridges or installation).
The program started recovering food from the grocery stores and hospital in Sonoma Valley and stocking the fridges at two low-income housing sites, a Boys and Girls Club, and a site that serves the unhoused population. They are also providing gleaned produce to all the sites. So far they are averaging about 5,000 pounds of food per week but they are planning for more sites.
The funding for the fridges came from Zero Waste Sonoma–the joint powers agency that is responsible for SB 1383. I believe every county has something similar and they can be great allies for this work and might have funding for food waste prevention projects.

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