Dive Brief:
- Nonprofit organization Feedback has announced three new "Feeding the 5000" events in Maine, New York and Colorado where free meals will be provided made from fresh ingredients that would have been wasted otherwise.
- Feedback is also asking people to sign a petition calling on the food industry to standardize expiration date labels in an effort to reduce waste.
- Date labels are one of four main reforms that the organization is working toward. They are also calling for stores to sell "ugly" produce, measure food waste more accurately and work to ensure that unsold food is donated.
Dive Insight:
Feedback hosted its first event in London in 2009 and has since brought food waste feasts to more than 40 cities. With support from the Rockefeller Foundation, the organization's most recent events were in New York and Washington D.C. this year. According to Feedback, food waste in the U.K. has been cut by 20% and they are encouraged by plans to halve food waste by 2030 in the U.S.
"I have never seen a country build momentum as fast from every quarter — public appetite, entrepreneurial innovation, government legislation and coordinated solution-building from the nonprofit sector, of which the Feeding the 5000 events are a perfect example," said founder Tristram Stuart in a press release. "It's time for the corporates to jump into action and help take food waste 'Off the Menu,' too."
Stuart was among many speakers that discussed this issue at a recent Harvard conference focused on reducing and donating the estimated 40% of food which is wasted every year. The waste and recycling industry has also begun to rethink how its role can involve more than just processing the remaining organic material in service toward the 2030 food waste goal. Teaming up on large events like this that draw awareness to the problem while also feeding hungry people could be a good place to start.
