Fifteen years ago, The Global FoodBanking Network was created to ensure that people around the world have access to food. The mission was simple: launch, strengthen, and sustain a global network of local food banks to support communities when they need it most. This mission still guides us today.
Innovate to Alleviate celebrates our 15th anniversary by highlighting 15 unique innovations—game-changing approaches and adaptations from GFN and member food banks that make hunger alleviation efforts more efficient, effective, and inclusive. Kicking off on International Day of Awareness of Food Loss and Waste and concluding on World Food Day, this campaign demonstrates how food banks are an important component to solving hunger that are rooted in the communities they serve and essential to resilient food systems.
The belief that hunger alleviation is a food bank’s primary job is not wrong, but it’s incomplete. Food banks are also at the forefront of fostering healthier communities and a healthier planet through the reduction of food loss and waste. By recovering edible food, redistributing it to communities in need, and preventing it from sitting in landfills and emitting greenhouse gases, food banks play an important and innovative role in ensuring that edible food ends up where it’s intended: in the hands of our neighbors.
What is food loss and waste? Why is it a problem?
The combination of food loss—when food is lost after harvest but before retail—and food waste—when food is thrown out at the grocery and consumer level—is a serious problem, especially when 768 million people around the world currently experience hunger. Of all the food produced in the world, nearly one-third is lost or wasted. About 14 percent of all food produced is lost between harvest and retail due to surplus, cosmetic blemishes, and inadequate storage or transportation, and another 17 percent of total food production is wasted in grocery stores, restaurants, and homes. This paradox of millions of tons of food decomposing while millions of people go hungry causes significant damage to our communities, our economies, and our planet. Food loss and waste erodes food security, decreases food availability, and contributes to higher food prices. It also causes economic losses at every step of the supply chain as the resources used to produce food—water, land, energy, and capital—are squandered when that food is lost or wasted. Lastly, food loss and waste pose a threat to our planet. As lost and wasted food decomposes in landfills, it contributes 8 to 10 percent of the world’s greenhouse gases—ultimately intensifying climate change and causing further fractures in our food system.