How food banks prevented 1.8 million tonnes of CO2 emissions last year

By Frida Garza & ground material

The latest annual impact report from the Global Foodbanking Network – a nonprofit that works with regional food banks in over 50 countries to fight hunger – 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 came from farms or wholesale fruit and vegetable markets, saved an estimated 1.8 million tons of carbon dioxide equivalent.

These numbers reflect continued high demand for food banks. Last year, the Global Foodbanking Network (GFN) served nearly as many people as it did in 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic drove up food insecurity. To respond to this urgent need in their communities, many GFN member organizations have invested in agriculture recovery and worked to rescue food from farmers before it is thrown away.

Their efforts demonstrate how food banks can serve the dual purpose of fighting hunger and protecting the environment. By intercepting perfectly good, edible food before it ends up in landfill, food banks help reduce the harmful greenhouse gas emissions caused by food loss and waste.

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“There is always food that is wasted unnecessarily,” says Emily Broad Leib, 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 current study. All this unnecessary waste means that “there is a continued need to increase the number of food banks and food recovery operations,” Broad Leib adds.

A recent analysis by the United Nations Environmental Programme estimates that by 2022, 13 percent of food was lost on the way from producer to retailer. Then, 19 percent was wasted by retailers, restaurants and households. The world’s households alone skip 1 billion meals every day. The scale of global food waste has been alarmingly high for years: In 2011, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations published a study suggesting that about a third of the food produced worldwide is never eaten.

Food waste on this scale has a massive impact on the planet. When food is not consumed, all the emissions associated with growing, transporting and processing it become unnecessary. Additionally, when food rots in landfills, it releases methane, a greenhouse gas that is about 80 times more potent than CO2 over a 20-year period. Last year, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency reported that 58 percent of methane emissions from U.S. landfills are attributable to food waste. Globally, food loss and waste are estimated to be responsible for 8 to 10 percent of greenhouse gas emissions, and reducing them is critical to meeting climate goals.

Food banks can play a special role in this reduction by rescuing more food before it is lost and getting it to those in need. “Our members have been building up their redistribution capacity,” said Lisa Moon, GFN president and CEO. “I think that was our first challenge in the face of this increasing need: How do we as an organization secure more supplies?”

To achieve this, GFN member food banks are working more closely with farmers to keep surplus food out of landfills. GFN defines surplus food as food from commercial sources that was grown for human consumption but cannot be sold for some reason. So-called “ugly” produce – misshapen food that never makes it to the supermarket because of its appearance – falls into this category.

Part of this redirection actually looks like cutting out food banks as middlemen. Moon gives the example of a food bank getting a call from a farmer with a surplus of green beans. Instead of driving to the farm to pick them up, driving back to the food bank’s distribution center, storing the green beans, and having people wait for the next distribution day to pick them up, the food bank in question could simply contact recipients in the area (think soup kitchens) to let them know how many green beans are available and where they can pick them up. GFN calls this a “virtual food bank” because members use tech platforms to match farmers with recipients rather than physically transporting the produce themselves.

The result of this emphasis on agricultural replenishment is that fruits and vegetables now make up the largest share — 40 percent — of the amount of food redistributed by GFN members. Moon says the organization is “just scratching the surface” of fresh produce replenishment opportunities.

To calculate that these efforts saved 1.8 million tons of carbon dioxide equivalent, GFN used the Food Loss and Waste Protocol developed by the World Resources Institute. This framework takes into account a number of factors, including where rescued food would have ended up if it had not been intercepted from the waste stream. These waste destinations can be landfills, but also animal feed, compost, and anaerobic digesters (a waste management technology that turns organic waste into biogas – which can, however, bring its own emissions issues). Moon acknowledged that GFN does not know in every case what would happen to the surplus food if it is not rescued by a food bank – but pointed out that most places where the network operates do not have robust circular food economies.

Broad Leib, a food policy expert at Harvard Law School, called the GFN’s estimate of carbon dioxide equivalents saved a “good indicator of impact.” While other waste targets are possible, “we also know that the majority of wasted food around the world ends up in landfills,” she said. “I think their estimate is probably not far off from the actual emissions avoided.”

This story was originally published by Ground materiala nonprofit media organization reporting on climate, justice and solutions.