Fighting food waste and hunger through food rescue

Imagine a world where everyone has enough to eat, and we make the most of our resources.

The Feeding America network makes this vision a reality by rescuing food. We've saved 4 billion pounds of food from waste. We've helped feed millions of our neighbors experiencing food insecurity. And this is just the start.

A child holding a cob of corn and an apple.

A woman holding a yellow crate filled with scallions while standing in a field.

The problem of food waste

Food waste is an urgent global crisis. People and companies throw away billions of pounds of edible food every year. This not only strains our environment but also deepens food insecurity. The statistics are staggering:

38%

of all food goes unsold or uneaten.

92B

pounds of food go to waste each year.

145B

meals' worth of food goes to landfills.

51.7%

of waste comes from the food industry.

How food rescue works

Food rescue is a powerful solution to this complex problem. We can reduce hunger and help the environment. Food rescue sends surplus food from farms, stores, and restaurants to food banks.

Identify

Our team works closely with food donors to intercept food before it goes to landfills.

Pickup

The Feeding America network of food banks and meal programs pick up the donated food.

Sort

Our members carefully inspect the food to make sure it’s fresh and ready to enjoy.

Distribute

The rescued food reaches people experiencing food insecurity.

What is food waste?

Food waste is perfectly good, safe-to-eat food that gets thrown away instead of eaten. It happens at home, in stores, restaurants, and farms. Food gets wasted because of things like:

Ugly or oddly shaped fruits and veggies
Upcoming sell-by or expiration dates (food is often still safe to eat)
Overproduction at farms
Food getting damaged during transport

The environmental impact

Food waste is a major contributor to climate change. It's responsible for 8% of all global carbon emissions, making up most items in our landfills. Growing food requires lots of water, fuel, and fertilizer.

By preventing food waste and rescuing food at risk of being discarded, we can lessen our environmental impact and ensure that resources are used to nourish communities.

Fuel the fight against food waste!

Join us in our mission to rescue 5 billion pounds of food this year! Contributions to the Food Rescue Fund help keep good food in our community and out of landfills.

Learn more

Benefits of food rescue

By supporting food rescue, you’re helping us create a future where no one experiences food insecurity and good food never goes to waste.

Less waste, more food

We keep good food out of landfills and give our neighbors nourishing meals.

Nourishes communities

We provide fresh fruits, veggies, and food to people visiting food pantries and meal programs.

Stronger food system

We create a more efficient way to get food from farms and stores to families.

Join the movement!

Help us end hunger and stop food waste. Here's how you can get involved:

A mom and her child carrying a frozen turkey.

Donate

Your support helps us rescue even more food.

Donate now ›

Volunteer

Sort, pack, or even glean food from farms.

Get involved ›

Reduce your food waste

Plan meals, store food properly, and get creative with leftovers.

A person holding a box of food and smiling.

Involve your company

Partner with Feeding America to start a food rescue program.

Explore more about food rescue

Check out food rescue stories and learn how you can help reduce food waste.

Mike Etchart kneels in a field; crisp, leafy cabbage plants up to his waist. He slices a plump head off a nearby plant and holds it up, admiring it against the clear, warm Arizona sky.“We harvest green cabbage from November to June every year,” he said. “This is for retail.

A man picking up produce at a grocery store.

Did you know that Feeding America is the biggest food rescue organization in the country? Every day, the Feeding America network of food banks works to rescue safe, healthy food and distribute it to neighbors facing hunger, so they have the food needed to thrive.

Whenever Tom Hong walks into a grocery store, it’s like he owns the place.Hong, a longtime retail relations specialist at the Northern Illinois Food Bank, breezily makes his way through the swinging doorways and onto the receiving docks typically off-limits to everyday shoppers. There, he’s greeted

Feeding America’s food donation platform, MealConnect, recently hit a major milestone: it has helped facilitate six billion pounds of food rescue since its launch in 2014. While we celebrate the achievement, we know there is still much work to be done.

Stacy Nichols poses in front of a Starbucks flag.

“Lots of coffee.”That’s how Stacy Nichols, the manager of a Starbucks store in California, describes her days. She supervises 26 staff at her store. She’s loving it. And coffee is – quite literally – her life right now. However, a few years ago, Stacy was in a much different place.

Nestled into rolling hills about an hour north of San Diego, California, Ray Lodge’s small farm has been growing some of the best citrus in the country for more than half a century.“There’s history here,” Ray said. “The ranch was first established in 1862 with fruit trees and then cattle.

There are so many people working towards ending hunger every day – volunteers, food bank staff, food pantries, donors, and more – they all play a crucial role in ensuring neighbors facing hunger have the food we all need to thrive. But what about the people who grow the food we eat?

Emmy and four-time James Beard Award winning chef Andrew Zimmern has spent his life exploring the final frontiers of food around the world. He believes promoting cultural acceptance starts with an understanding of the food people eat, why they eat and as importantly, who doesn’t get fed.

Food banks work with local farmers to provide fresh, local produce to people facing hunger and rescue food that would otherwise go to waste. Sometimes, food banks go directly to the fields to get these great fruits and veggies before they go bad.

Tara Kuczykowski of Deal Seeking Mom shares her pumpkin pie recipe.

Planning a family gathering can be hard enough. The last thing we need to worry about is all the Thanksgiving leftovers. But, unfortunately, food waste during the holidays can be a big problem.Each year, 92 billion pounds of food goes to waste in the United States.

Closed restaurants, canceled events, and more meals at home mean more perfectly good food going to waste. You may have seen the photos or read stories of crops being destroyed or gallons of milk being dumped. Food waste in our food system is nothing new.

In the fall, our thoughts turn to golden leaves, giant pumpkins and one amazing fruit: apples. We all love biting into a crisp, refreshing apple in autumn. They're delicious, juicy and have a ton of health benefits.

As restaurants and grocery stores offer more fresh, healthy options and look for ways to conserve the environment, Feeding America is testing new methods to rescue that food when it’s in danger of going to waste.

Pasta salad with broccoli and olives created by Beth Moncel of Budget Bytes

One of the biggest ways to reduce food waste is to utilize our leftovers. But I’m not just talking about the leftover casserole from last night’s dinner, but also the leftover ingredients that never made it into the casserole.

Gary Pahl is a farmer who donates produce to his local food pantry

My name is Gary Pahl and I’m a fifth-generation vegetable farmer in Apple Valley, Minnesota. Along with my brother Brian and my wife Jane, our family has been in vegetable farming for over 100 years.

Can you imagine summer without sticky fingers from fresh watermelon or kernels in your teeth from sweet corn? Fresh produce adds nutrients, flavor, and color to our patios and picnic tables all season long.

Did you take up gardening as a hobby during the past couple years? Whether you’ve got a seasoned green thumb or are just digging in, you’ve probably found yourself with more produce than you can use. Don’t let that perfectly healthy produce go to waste!

Reducing food waste in the kitchen, like most things, is all about creating good habits. Food waste isn't just about tossing your leftovers or buying more than you can eat, it's the little bits of food here and there that go unnoticed that really add up.

For Matt West, farming runs in the family. Starting with his great-great-grandparents, every generation in his family has farmed small plots of land, so it was only natural he would follow in their footsteps. But Matt was the first to take his farming to a larger scale.

Updated 10/10/2024Feeding America is the largest and most established food rescue organization in the country, rescuing 4 billion pounds of food annually in the U.S. We recently launched the Food Rescue Challenge to rescue an additional 1 billion pounds of food each year.

The day before Thanksgiving last year, I woke up, made coffee, and routinely opened my subscription of the California Today section of the New York Times. The title of the first featured article was “In a California Valley, Healthy Food Everywhere but on the Table” written by Thomas Fuller.

When we talk about food waste in America, we’re talking about much more than just food that spoils in your refrigerator. Food waste is a billion-pound problem — one that’s taking a serious toll on the environment.

Karen Hanner at the White House food waste event

The days of the current White House Administration may be winding down, but they still took time to make history recently by hosting the first White House Roundtable on Food Waste.For all of us at the table, the invitation was validating.

Food waste is a HOT topic, and it’s helping elevate the critical conversation of aligning food recovery and fighting food insecurity. The EPA has feeding people facing hunger at the top of their Food Recovery Hierarchy, symbolizing it should be the first recovery option explored, yet much of the ch

Each April, we celebrate “Earth Day” – which has evolved into a time to acknowledge all the work that has been done to protect our environment and to continually raise awareness of the challenges that remain.

April 22 is Earth Day, an international event to celebrate the importance of making smart choices when it comes to how we treat our environment. More and more often, the topic of food waste is being included in conversations about the environment.