Food banks avoid carbon emissions and combat climate change

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

Frida Garza & Grist

According to the latest annual impact report of the Global FoodBanking Network, a nonprofit that works with local food banks in more than 50 countries to fight hunger, its member organizations provided 1.7 billion meals to more than 40 million people in 2023. This redistribution of food recovered from farms and wholesale markets has mitigated an estimated 1.8 million tons of carbon dioxide equivalent emissions, according to the nonprofit.

These figures reflect the continued high demand for food banks. Last year, the Global FoodBanking Network (GFN) fed nearly as many people as it did in 2020, a year when food insecurity soared due to the COVID-19 pandemic. To meet this immediate need in their communities, many of GFN’s member organizations are investing in agricultural recovery, working to rescue food from farmers before it goes to waste.

Their efforts demonstrate that food banks can serve the dual purpose of solving hunger and protecting the environment: By collecting perfectly edible food before it ends up in landfills, food banks help reduce harmful greenhouse gas emissions caused by food loss and waste.

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“There will always be food that is wasted unnecessarily,” said Emily Broad-Live, 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. Unnecessary waste means “we will continue to need to expand food banks and food recovery programs,” Broad-Live added.

A recent analysis by the United Nations Environment Programme estimates that in 2022, 13% of food will be lost between producers and retailers. After that, 19% is wasted at retailers, restaurants and homes. One billion meals are wasted every day in households around the world alone. The scale of food wasted worldwide has been growing alarmingly for years. In 2011, the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations published a study suggesting that around one-third of the food produced in the world goes uneaten.

Food waste on this scale has a huge impact on the planet. When food is left uneaten, all the emissions associated with growing, transporting, and processing it are unnecessary. What’s more, when food rots in a landfill, it releases methane, a greenhouse gas that’s about 80 times more potent than CO2, over a 20-year period. Last year, the Environmental Protection Agency reported that food waste accounts for 58 percent of methane emissions from U.S. landfills. Globally, food loss and waste are estimated to account for 8 percent to 10 percent of greenhouse gas emissions, making reducing them essential to meeting climate goals.

Food banks can play a special role in reducing food insecurity by rescuing more food before it’s lost and getting it to people who need it. “Our members have been building their redistribution capacity,” said Lisa Moon, president and CEO of GFN. “Faced with this increased demand, I think the first challenge we faced was, how do we as an organization secure more supply?”

To achieve this, food banks within GFN member organizations are working more closely with farmers to redirect surplus food away from landfills. GFN defines surplus food as food grown for human consumption that is removed from commercial waterways but cannot be sold for some reason. This includes so-called “ugly” produce – misshapen foods that don’t make it to grocery stores because of their appearance.

Some of this pivot actually seems to cut out the middleman: the food bank. Moon gives the example of a food bank that received a call from a farmer with surplus beans. Instead of going to the farm to pick up the beans, then returning to the food bank’s distribution center to store them and have people pick them up until the next delivery date, the food bank simply contacts a beneficiary in the area (such as a soup kitchen) and tells them how many beans they have and where they can pick them up. GFN calls this a “virtual food bank” because instead of members physically delivering the produce, it uses a technology platform to match farmers with recipients.

As a result of the focus on agricultural recovery, fruits and vegetables now account for the largest share (40 percent) of food by volume redistributed by GFN member countries, and Moon says the organization is “only scratching the surface” on the potential for a fresh produce recovery.

To calculate the 1.8 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent saved by these efforts, GFN used the Food Loss and Waste Protocol developed by the World Resources Institute. The framework takes into account a variety of factors, including where the recovered food would have ended up if it hadn’t been removed from the waste stream. Destinations for this waste include landfills, but also animal feed, compost and anaerobic digesters (a waste management technique that converts organic waste into biogas, but which can come with its own emissions issues). Moon acknowledged that GFN doesn’t know in every case what happens to surplus food if it isn’t rescued by food banks, but noted that most of the places the network works don’t have a strong circular food economy in place.

Broad Ribe, a food policy expert at Harvard Law School, called GFN’s carbon savings estimate “a good indicator of impact.” While other waste destinations are possible, “we know that a large percentage of food that gets wasted around the world goes to landfills,” he said. “I think their estimate is not too far off the actual emissions avoided.”

This story begins: GristA nonprofit media organization covering climate, justice and solutions.