Food rescue, also called food recovery, food salvage or surplus food redistribution, is the practice of gleaning edible food that would otherwise go to waste from places such as farms, produce markets, grocery stores, restaurants, or dining facilities and distributing it to local emergency food programs.
In 2022, the UN reported 1.05 billion tons of food were wasted. At the retail, food service, and household level, about 19% of food available to consumers was wasted, and around 13% of the world's total available food was lost in the supply chain. Meanwhile, it was reported that about one in eleven people globally faced hunger (around 733 million).
The recovered food is edible, but often not sellable. In the case of fresh produce, fruits and vegetables that do not meet cosmetic standards for shape and color might otherwise be discarded. Products that are at or past their "sell by" dates or are imperfect in any way such as a bruised apple or day-old bread are donated by grocery stores, food vendors, restaurants, and farmers markets. Other times, the food is unblemished, but restaurants may have made or ordered too much or may have good pieces of food (such as scraps of fish or meat) that are byproducts of the process of preparing foods to cook and serve. Also, food manufacturers may donate products that marginally fail quality control, or that have become short-dated. In many cases, products that have reached a "best before" or "sell by" date may still be usable. What dates mean varies in different countries.
Organizations that encourage food recovery, food rescue, sharing, gleaning and similar waste-avoidance schemes often work with food banks, food pantries, soup kitchens and shelters to redistribute food. Food rescue operations need to keep food safe during storage and transportation. They also need to share information quickly to ensure that near-perishable foods can be moved to where they can be used. Apps that match end-of-day produce with customers and charitable organizations are increasingly being used.
As well as addressing food insecurity, food rescue decreases the production of greenhouse gases in landfills and is an important step in helping cities to become carbon neutral. In recent years, the EU has taken considerable action to combat food loss and waste as part of their Sustainable Development Goals. In 2016, France required supermarkets to donate their unsold food rather than throwing it away. In October 2021, the city of Milan, Italy, won the Earthshot Prize for a citywide project to redistribute surplus food from supermarkets, restaurants and companies. In 2023, Brussels, Belgium, has begun work on improving the labeling system for "best before" and "use by" dates to help reduce the amount of food that is still safe to consume from being thrown out by consumers.
The food system
In most cases, rescued food is being saved from being thrown into a dumpster and, ultimately, landfills or other garbage disposals. Food recovered on farms is kept from being plowed under. On farms, the donations often must be harvested, or gleaned, by volunteers.
In the United States, businesses that donate food to nonprofits, such as food rescue programs, have received tax benefits for their donations and have been protected from liability lawsuits by the federal Emerson Good Samaritan Food Donation Act since 1996. In 2016 the USDA expanded the Farm Storage Facility Loan Program, which provides farmers with low-interest loans to upgrade or expand their storage facilities, thus enabling them protect more food from becoming waste.
The benefit of many food rescue programs is they offer healthy food to those in need, such as individuals living in a food desert, a region where its residents lack access to healthy and affordable foods due to poor retail access and other social and urban factors. Food rescue programs also benefit those who may not meet the application requirements of state food-assistance programs. Many programs also provide immediate emergency assistance, without having to wait through an application process. Food rescue organizations are less restricted by cost and availability of food, as so much edible food is thrown out and free for the taking, so eligibility requirements are generally unnecessary. This organizational model often allows food rescues to provide nutritional assistance more quickly, with more flexibility and accessibility than other types of hunger relief programs.
Greenhouse gas emissions According to the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization, food waste is the third-largest source of greenhouse gas emissions. 98% of food waste ends up in landfills, where they decompose and release methane gas into the atmosphere. Because food waste decays more quickly, food waste contributes more methane emissions than anything else that goes to landfills. Methane gas is over 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide in affecting climate change. Wasted food in landfills accounts for 8-10% of global greenhouse gas emissions. Greenhouse gasses from rotting foods contribute to warmer global temperatures and extreme weather events, sea level rise, as well as ozone depletion and increased risk of diseases.
Food rescue helps fight greenhouse gas emissions from landfills. Every US dollar spent on rescuing food from going to the landfill or compost saves roughly 7.5 kilograms of greenhouse gas emissions.
Between August 2016 and July 2017, Aria, a major resort and convention center in Las Vegas, Nevada, collaborated with Three Square Food Bank to launch a food rescue program, rescuing over 24,000 kilograms worth of surplus food from large gatherings. The program provided over 45,000 meals to individuals experiencing food insecurity, as well as preventing approximately 108 metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions from releasing into the atmosphere, the equivalent of 250 barrels of oil consumed.
Food waste hierarchy The food waste hierarchy is a guideline of waste reduction strategies ranked from most to least favorable. The five tiers on the pyramid, from most favorable to least, include prevention/reduction, reuse, recycle, recovery and disposal.
Food reuse strategies There are various ways to rescue food that would otherwise go to a landfill, as described in the priority levels of the waste hierarchy above. The United States Environmental Protection Agency recommends actions such as (in order of preference): source reduction, feeding hungry people, feeding animals, industrial use, and composting, all of which are preferred to the least desirable options, incineration and landfill.
Source reduction Reduce the amount of food that is generated and potentially wasted. At an individual level, food waste results from choices made during the planning, shopping, storing, preparing, cooking, eating, and discarding of food. Individuals can for example make shopping lists so they do not buy more food than they really need, to reduce food waste at the household level. They can also buy smaller amounts of produce more frequently, to avoid spoilage at home. Studies of food waste behaviors suggest that another reason that people waste food is misconceptions about date labeling, so learning about food labels can help to reduce waste. A useful tactic is to use visual prompts such as brightly colored tape to mark foods that need to be used soon. Reminders that cue people about what to use can be particularly helpful in large households.
Source reduction is often advocated at all stages of the food supply chain, and could be achieved via Prevention and valorisation pathways for human consumption, such as food donations, or upcycling and re-processing into new food products. This can also include measures to overcome current hinders that limits the food potential per produced unit of food, such as unharvested "ugly" vegetables at farms, "best-before" dates at retail level, or under utilized by-products from food processing. Via source reduction, by either recovering food resources for human consumption or preventing waste generation, the food potential can be increased. A higher food potential can support self-sustainability and self-sufficiency, which in turn can infer both environmental, economic and social benefits.
The Flashfood app, designed by Josh Domingues, is being used in Canada and the United States to keep edible food from becoming waste. It notifies users of deeply discounted groceries, encouraging shoppers to buy soon-to-be-remaindered foods. They can make their purchase online, then go by the store to pick up their food. Initially focusing on restaurants and bakeries, the Too Good to Go app enables customers to buy discounted Surprise Bags of food. Too Good to Go was first used in Denmark in 2015 and was in use in 15 countries as of 2022.
Human consumption
Organizations can donate both non-perishable and unspoiled perishable food at the end of its shelf life to food banks, food pantries, food rescue programs, homeless shelters, and other organizations that redistribute food.
Individuals who practice food rescue are sometimes referred to as freegans or dumpster divers.
Feeding animals Many animals, particularly livestock, can eat food scraps. However, with animals, as with humans, spoiled or contaminated foods may cause illness. As described in Virginia State University's standard for animal care: "Food must be fresh, palatable, uncontaminated with biological or chemical agents, and nutritionally adequate for the intended species." Some farmers, solid waste collectors and recycling centers collect discarded food for use by animals. Local laws for the collection and use of such foods will vary.
Industrial uses Anaerobic digestion is a conversion process that converts food waste and other types of organic waste into renewable energy. Food is separated from any packaging before being broken down into a more digestible state and mixed with bacteria in oxygen free holding tanks known as digesters. The bacteria work to break down the waste converting it into methane biogas which can be used to generate electricity.
Hydrothermal liquefaction is the process of heating food waste under high pressure, converting the food waste into an oil that can then be refined into fuel. Once the initial liquefaction is complete, the watery waste left over then goes through anaerobic digestion where the microbes break down the waste into methane and carbon dioxide biogas. This biogas can be used for heat and electricity.
It is also possible to use fats, oils, grease, and meat products for rendering and biodiesel production.
Composting Add remaining food waste to an existing compost. Composting has many benefits over general waste landfills, including reduced methane gas production and improving the quality of the soil.
Countries Organizations in communities around the world, and national and international agencies, are concerned with rescuing food, minimizing food waster, and preventing the release of greenhouse gases from decomposing wastes. The 2015 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) call for a 50% reduction of global food waste at the retail and consumer levels worldwide by 2030.
Australia
an estimated one in six Australians experiences food insecurity. Australia was the first country to adopt the Sustainable Development Goal of a 50% reduction in food waste, with the Australian government providing some support for food rescue initiatives. Australia's leading food rescue organization is OzHarvest. OzHarvest works with over 3,000 food donors and 1,800 charities in Australia and has provided over 210 million meals. Locations can be found using its online resource locator.