What do you do when you see that tons and tons of good food are constantly being wasted ?
If you’re 412 Food Rescue, a nonprofit organization in Pittsburgh, you create an app to connect unwanted foods to people in need. Since the group’s formation in 2015, it’s made a big difference.
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A shocking amount of food is wasted every year.
According to a United Nations report, 17 percent — nearly a fifth — of all food that’s available at a consumer level is wasted in a year.
That works out to a staggering 931 million tonnes of food intended for households, retailers and restaurants.
412 Food Rescue is aiming to change that.
The group , led by a team of dedicated volunteers, was formed back in 2015. While finding unwanted food wasn’t an issue, distributing it quickly became a logistical challenge: how do you distribute hundreds of pounds of raw ingredients every day?
They opened a kitchen.
Since no local kitchen had the capacity to turn these large amounts of food into meals, 412 Food Rescue created a second group: a kitchen called the Good Food Project.
The sole mission for this kitchen is to turn many pounds of unwanted, random food into single-serving meals.
You’d better believe there’s an app.
Everything has an app nowadays, and 412 Food Rescue found that creating their own app was an effective way to link potential food donors with people in need of a meal.
App availability started in the Pittsburgh area (the group’s home region) and is expanding from there.
How’s it all work?
Through the app, food donors are able to send out alerts that they have food to donate. From there, volunteers are given pick-up and delivery locations,
To date, they’ve partnered with hundreds of food retailers and diverted more than 20 million pounds of food from landfills.
The kitchen creates healthy meals from unwanted food.
The group gets a random assortment of food, meaning it can be challenging to create cohesive meals. But thanks to a team of creative chefs, the kitchen creates a few hundred meals a week.
It doesn’t end there.
Reducing food waste and feeding hungry families is a noble enough goal on its own, but the volunteers at 412 Food Rescue and the Good Food Project have another goal: offsetting energy use by using solar power.
Virtually no food is wasted.
The turnaround time on food that’s near its expiration date is short, but the Good Food Project kitchen is able to turn most of it into meals. The food that can’t be used for meals is composted, which in turn helps promote future crop growth.
The group aims to expand its reach.
While things are up and running in the Pittsburgh area, the team hopes to expand into more cities across the country.
“We have a proven track record in Pittsburgh, our pilot city, and are actively looking to partner with other food rescue organizations to launch and scale food rescue in your community,” they write on their website.
It’s a fantastic initiative.
Food equity is a big problem, with people going hungry while food is being wasted elsewhere, so it’s truly inspiring to see groups aiming to alleviate the problem.
Make sure to check out 412 Food Rescue’s official site and Instagram .
