When we stop food waste, we take a big step toward ending hunger. America has more than enough food to feed everyone. But each year, an enormous amount of food is wasted in the United States.
Feeding America partners with food manufacturers, grocery stores, restaurants, and farmers to prevent food waste and rescue surplus food to help feed people.
Approximately 72 billion pounds of perfectly good food—from every point in the food production cycle—ends up in landfills and incinerators every year. Rescuing this perfectly edible, whole food means feeding families facing hunger and taking a large step in protecting our planet and conserving our resources.
Food waste is an environmental crisis because of its devastating impact on climate change. If food waste as a whole were a country, it would rank third in impact on global warming behind China and the United States. Currently, food waste is contributing 8% of total global greenhouse gas emissions.
PPM has rescued TENS OF THOUSANDS of pounds of food this past year. Food Rescue is time-consuming, labor-intensive and unpredictable. It creates a lot of work – not just in unloading it, but in all of the arrangements, scheduling, planning, sorting, and other issues. Just the pick-ups and unloading for PPM takes about 15 to 20 hours each week.
PPM Food rescue has provided 1000’s of dollars of bread, 1000’s of dollars meat, and 1000’s of dollars of sweet treats for our clients. We’ve been able to provide 100’s of pounds of already prepared meals and pizzas. And we have brought a lot of smiles for kids on their birthdays with cakes and cupcakes. So yes, sometimes the quality is not as good as other times. Most of the time, the food is great quality – we often do quality control and taste tests ourselves! Sometimes we do have to send food to our pig and cow farmers. Sometimes we throw some things away. Occasionally there are spoilage issues (but not as often as you would think.)
Is it worth it? In my opinion – 1000% yes.
