August 17, 2024<\/p>\n
4 min read<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
How Food Banks Prevented 1.8 Million Metric Tons of Carbon Emissions Last Year<\/p>\n
Redistributing food to food banks before it\u2019s tossed or wasted doesn\u2019t just fight hunger\u2014such efforts also fight climate change<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
By Frida Garza<\/a> & Grist<\/a><\/p>\n Volunteers stack bags of potatoes at the San Francisco-Marin Food Bank in San Francisco, Calif., on May 28, 2020.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n David Paul Morris\/Bloomberg via Getty Images<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n The latest annual impact report<\/a> from the Global Foodbanking Network \u2014 a nonprofit that works with regional food banks in more than 50 countries to fight hunger \u2014 found that its member organizations provided 1.7 billion meals to more than 40 million people in 2023. According to the nonprofit, this redistribution of food, much of which was recovered from farms or wholesale produce markets, mitigated an estimated 1.8 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent.<\/p>\n These numbers reflect an ongoing, high demand for food banks. Last year, the Global Foodbanking Network, or GFN, served almost as many people as it did in 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic sent food insecurity soaring. In order to respond to this pressing need in their communities, many of GFN\u2019s member organizations have invested in agricultural recovery, working to rescue food from farmers before it gets thrown out.<\/p>\n Their efforts show how food banks can serve the dual purpose of addressing hunger and protecting the environment. By intercepting perfectly good, edible food before it winds up in the landfill, food banks help mitigate harmful greenhouse gas emissions created by food loss and waste.<\/p>\n If you’re enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing<\/a>. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.<\/p>\n \u201cThere is always food that is unnecessarily wasted,\u201d said Emily Broad Leib, the founding director of the Food Law and Policy Clinic at Harvard Law School, who has worked with GFN before but was not involved in the recent study. All that unnecessary waste means \u201cthere is ongoing need for scaling up food banks and food-recovery operations,\u201d Broad Leib added.<\/p>\n A recent analysis<\/a> from the United Nations Environment Programme estimated that 13 percent of food was lost while it was making its way from producers to retailers in 2022. Subsequently, 19 percent was wasted by retailers, restaurants, and households. The world\u2019s households alone let 1 billion meals go to waste each day. The scope of food wasted around the world has been shockingly high for years: In 2011, the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations released a study that suggested roughly one-third of food produced globally<\/a> is never eaten.<\/p>\n Food waste at this scale comes with massive planetary impacts. When food goes uneaten, all of the emissions associated with growing, transporting, and processing it are rendered unnecessary. Furthermore, when food rots in landfills, it emits methane, a greenhouse gas that is roughly 80 times more potent than CO2 over a 20-year period. Last year, the Environmental Protection Agency reported that 58 percent of methane emissions<\/a> from U.S. landfills come from food waste. Globally, food loss and waste have been estimated to be responsible for 8 percent to 10 percent of greenhouse gas emissions<\/a>, and reducing them is essential for achieving climate targets.<\/p>\n Food banks can play a special role in that reduction by rescuing more food before it\u2019s lost and redirecting it to people in need. \u201cOur members have been building out their redistribution capacity,\u201d said Lisa Moon, the president and CEO of GFN. \u201cI think that was our first challenge in the face of this rising need: How do we as an organization capture more supply?\u201d<\/p>\n In order to do this, food banks within GFN member organizations have been coordinating more closely with farmers to redirect surplus food from landfills. GFN defines surplus food as food from commercial streams that was grown for human consumption but that, for some reason or another, cannot be sold. So-called \u201cugly\u201d produce \u2014 misshapen food that never makes it to the grocery store because of its looks \u2014 falls into this category.<\/p>\n Some of this redirection actually looks like cutting out food banks as the middleman. Moon gives the example of a food bank that receives a call from a farmer with excess green beans. Instead of traveling to the farm to pick them up, traveling back to the food bank\u2019s distribution hub, storing the green beans, and having folks wait for the next distribution day to collect them, the food bank in question might simply reach out to beneficiaries in the area (think: soup kitchens) to inform them of how many green beans are available and where so they can pick them up. GFN refers to this as \u201cvirtual food banking\u201d because of how members are using tech platforms to match farmers with beneficiaries, rather than physically moving the produce themselves.<\/p>\n The result of this emphasis on agricultural recovery is that fruit and vegetables now make up the largest portion \u2014 40 percent \u2014 of food redistributed by GFN members by volume. Moon says the organization is \u201cjust only scratching the surface\u201d of possibilities for recovering fresh produce.<\/p>\n In order to calculate that 1.8 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent was mitigated by these efforts, GFN utilized the Food Loss and Waste Protocol<\/a> developed by the World Resources Institute<\/a>. This framework takes a number of things into account, including where recovered food would have ended up<\/a> had it not been intercepted from the waste stream. These waste destinations can be landfills but also include animal feed, compost, and anaerobic digesters (a waste management technology that converts organic waste into biogas<\/a> \u2014 but that can come with its own emissions problems<\/a>). Moon acknowledged that GFN does not know in every case what would happen to the surplus food if it were not rescued by a food bank \u2014 but pointed out that most of the places where the network operates do not have a robust circular economy for food.<\/p>\n Broad Leib, the Harvard Law food policy expert, described GFN\u2019s estimate of carbon dioxide equivalent mitigated as \u201ca good proxy for impact.\u201d While other waste destinations are possible, \u201cwe also know that the large majority of wasted food globally goes to landfill,\u201d she said. \u201cI think their estimate is likely not far off from actual emissions avoided.\u201d<\/p>\n This story was originally published by <\/i>Grist<\/i><\/a>, a nonprofit media organization covering climate, justice, and solutions.<\/i><\/p>\n<\/div>\n![\"Volunteers](\"https:\/\/static.scientificamerican.com\/dam\/m\/310a2abef2fb3e3a\/original\/People_at_foodbank_at_table_with_potatoes.jpg?w=600\")
On supporting science journalism<\/h2>\n