Community Corner
Grocery Rescue Programs Save Food from the Landfill, People From Hunger
A Mountain View non-profit benefits from a food recovery program that links it with local grocers to get fresh fruits and vegetables.
More hungry people can get food, if it's distributed on time.
"Hunger is not about a lack of food," Kathy Jackson, CEO of Second Harvest Food Bank of Santa Clara and San Mateo Counties, said. "There’s more than enough food to go around, we just need to capture food while it’s still in a highly nutritious state and get it to the people who need it."
Uneaten food is the single largest component of solid municipal waste in America, according to the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). However, market demand, cosmetic imperfections and approaching expiration dates end the shelf life of hundreds of pounds of food at grocery stores everyday before they can be eaten.
Up to 40 percent of food in the U.S. goes to waste each year, but a collaboration of food banks, grocery stores and local non-profits work to disrupt this path to the landfill so that more food finds its rightful place in hungry mouths and grateful bellies.
"On a very small scale, locally, that’s what our grocery rescue program is all about," Jackson said of the program Second Harvest of Santa Clara and San Mateo counties established in 2011.
Second Harvest is part of a network of over 200 food banks that comprise the largest nation-wide domestic hunger-relief charity, Feeding America. Feeding America partners nationally with Walmart, Save Mart (including Lucky and Food Maxx) and Target in their grocery rescue program, where local grocery retailers can donate the food they can’t sell and would otherwise throw away to non-profits like shelters, pantries and soup kitchens.
"Sometimes it’s just that we’re changing our assortment, we’re not selling the product anymore," Morley Kornegor, director of Resource Recovery at Target who oversees grocery rescue, said. "A lot of it’s just about our brand standard and how long we’ll keep the product on the shelves."
While this food might not be fit to sell a product, most of it is perfectly fine to be eaten. To make donations easier for the grocers, Second Harvest provides training for their non-profit agency partners to be able to transport the food, including safe food-handing practices and sometimes even equipping them with temperature guns, coolers, thermal blankets and scales.
Directly connecting local grocers and non-profits saves resources by eliminating inventory and distribution with the food bank, which otherwise acts as a whole-sale middle-man. This also saves precious time when dealing with perishable goods.
CALL (Christian Action Life Line) Primrose Center in Burlingame models this system, picking up donations from their local Lucky Store twice a week, amounting to between 400 and 600 pounds of food.
Community Services Agency (CSA), a non-profit that provides social services, including food assistance, to Mountain View, Los Altos and Los Altos Hills since 1957, has also developed their own network of partnerships with local grocers. CSA regularly receives upwards of over 100 pounds of food, mostly bread, frozen meat, produce, and other baked goods, from Trader Joe’s, Safeway, Draeger’s, Whole Foods and Costco. CSA also receives left over food from farmer’s markets and Los Altos’ non-profit organic farm Hidden Villa.
It’s a win-win-win: grocery stores save money (the food is picked up at no cost to the grocer) and reduce their waste while being protected from criminal and civil liability by the Good Samaritan Food Donation Act. Partner agencies receive the food free of charge. Hungry people get the food.
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"We’re really solving two problems, we’re solving a grocery waste problem, or a potential grocery waste problem, and we’re feeding hungry people," Jackson said.
In an affluent area such as Silicon Valley it's possible to believe that people don't go hungry. After all, if you aren’t homeless it means you can afford to live in one of the most expensive places in the country. The average rent in Santa Clara County for a 2-bedroom apartment, according to CSA annual report is $1,961, and has risen by 12.9 percent in the past year.
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With such a high-cost of living, low-income families who were hit the hardest by bad economic times struggle to put food on the table without having to uproot their families and leave the area. Still, CSA reported that an average of 20 percent of their clients have moved out of the area each year for the past four years. Even as the economy improves, these people are the last to see it.
"A rising tide raises most ships but a rising tide doesn’t raise all ships and there are people that are sinking in this economy," Executive Director of CSA Tom Myers said.
In a region which may seem immune to hunger, Second Harvest provides food every month to a quarter million people.
“This means that literally one out of every 10 people in these two counties [Santa Clara and San Mateo], which are incredibly wealthy, you’d think, received at least some of their food from their food bank,” Jackson said.
But many food assistance programs have higher aims than just putting food on their clients’ plates.
CSA’s center in Mountain View hosts a pantry program that allows clients to choose from not only canned goods, but a variety of fresh fruits and vegetables, dairy products, and baked goods. Walking among boxes of lettuce, eggs, apricots, grapefruits, bagels, and baguettes, Meyers said, "It’s great to get lots of calories, but frankly we’d like to get fresh and healthy food for our families."
Mary Watt, executive Director of CALL Primrose Center, said that the grocery rescue program has allowed them to provide healthier items like meat, bread, and dairy, that are otherwise hard to come by on the budget of a non-profit or food bank.
"It’s not just a matter of making sure no one is hungry, people need to be full with healthy food," Watt said. "This has really changed that game for us, by having this stuff from grocery rescue it’s really increased our ability to provide some healthier items."
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