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USAID’s Kitchen Sink: A Food Loss and Waste Podcast
Welcome to USAID’s Kitchen Sink: A Food Loss and Waste Podcast! 30 to 40 percent of the food we produce is wasted or lost, contributing to a global food crisis with over 800 million going to bed hungry. Listen on as USAID experts speak with researchers and development professionals to explore approaches to solving this critical issue that demands a kitchen sink approach. When it comes to climate, food security, agriculture production, and food systems sustainability, we have no time to waste.
USAID’s Kitchen Sink: A Food Loss and Waste Podcast
Future Leaders Fuel Food Access: Locally Driven, National Impact with Regina Harmon of Food Recovery Network
Our latest episode is with Regina Harmon, Executive Director of Food Recovery Network, one of the largest student-driven movements against food waste and hunger that recovers and donates perishable food that would otherwise go to waste. Regina shares the story of Food Recovery Network and how they’ve successfully engaged with college students. Together, Regina and Nika discuss how to avoid “analysis paralysis” when faced with the seemingly overwhelming problem of food waste. We conclude our episode with recommendations of how anyone can engage in Food Recovery Network to have a lasting impact to reduce food waste.
If you have an idea for an episode topic you’d like to see featured or if you would like to participate in an episode of USAID’s Kitchen Sink, please reach out to Nika Larian (nlarian@usaid.gov).
There’s no time to waste!
[Music] welcome to USAID's kitchen sink a food loss and waste podcast I'm your producer Nika Larian 30 to 40% of the food that is produced is either lost or wasted contributing to a global food crisis with over 800 million going to bed hungry listen on on as USAID experts speak with researchers and development professionals to explore solutions to this critical issue that Demands a kitchen sink approach when it comes to climate food security and food system sustainability we have no time to [Music] waste thanks for tuning in to USAID's kitchen sink a food loss and waste podcast my name is Nika Larian senior food safety advisor and producer of the kitchen sink today I will be speaking with Regina Harmon executive director of Food Recovery Network one of the largest student-driven Mo movements against food waste and hunger that recovers and donates perishable food that would otherwise go to waste thank you for joining us Regina I'd like to start with the story of food recovery Network what makes your model unique na thank you so much for having me I'm really excited to have this conversation and for the opportunity to tell the story of food recovery Network so yes it definitely begins with the story for sure um way back in 2011 and actually a little bit before that students at the University of Maryland were uh on their campus and you know this unique wonderful time you know for those of us who have the opportunity to go to university um they were just trying to figure things out they were in Academia hearing about all of these different Global issues Global poverty the global climate crisis and as they were getting those understandings of of the world around them there weren't a whole heck of a lot of solutions that went along with these big problems that seemed insurmountable but then at the same time you know they were trying to figure out you know who do they want to be out in the world so they were taking the time to do a lot of volunteering efforts to help alleviate some of the issues that they saw in their direct community so they saw people who were hungry in their direct community so they were participating in peanut butter and jelly sandwich making drives they were volunteering at soup kitchens to deliver food to people um but then a couple of the students one had um a work study um where they were working at the kitchen at one of the um dining Halls at the University of Maryland um and then at the end of their shift all the food that wasn't sold they literally had to throw that food away another student was an athlete and um participated in in a sport and then at the end of practice would Sprint down the campus to get to one of the dining Halls um to buy food and sometimes he made it and sometimes he didn't um but literally would be okay if I made it at 458 p.m. I could purchase the
food but if I got there at 5:05 p.m the food was all gone and it was thrown away so light bulbs went off here's all this extra food that's perfectly good I know that is perfectly good I can see it I'm being asked to throw this away um but meanwhile so many people in our communities are suffering from food insecurity so one thing led to another the light bulb started to go off and the student said hey we can package up this food and bring it to these locations where instead of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich Drive they can have all this awesome food that our school has um and I will say it took a very long time to convince the dining hall so this is you know well over 12 years ago now at this point longer things were in a very different place back then um and so it took a lot of convincing so this is the tenacity the resiliency of these students who kept hearing no from quote unquote adults you know people of authority but they wouldn't be removed from from their idea and So eventually the dining hall manager heard them out and was thinking wow this is actually a very good idea um and that's how food recovery network was born um through the power of young people who saw hey we see all these problems but we can literally do something about this um and then eventually over time what happened was they just started calling up friends at different colleges and universities across the United States to say hey we're doing this cool thing it's called food recovery you should do it too here's how and then they gave them the tools on how to talk to their dining managers where to bring the food and that is how food recovery network was born the power of young people to start a new movement to solve a couple of really big problems I love that story Regina and I think you really really encapsulated just like you said the the passion and the momentum that can be generated by by young people and I really resonate with with how you discuss like this time in college as you're trying to find yourself and I would definitely recommend any of our listeners who are are still in school or maybe who have kids that are in school to to really get out there as you said and and explore as many different volunteer opportunities as you can because that's something that even through grad school where I was really pushed to to be in the lab all the time but I was really dedicated to getting out there and doing things in the community that were still related to nutrition and and the program that I was in and those volunteer experiences ended up shaping so much of what my career is today so I I definitely want to reiterate that point that you made and I think we'll we'll Circle back to the importance of Youth and and the role that they play and the the issue of food loss and waste later in this episode but as you mentioned it's it's a big issue to tackle and some of these large institutions are are hesitant to change and with the the recent food waste index report we we heard that the world is wasting one billion tons of food one billion meals every single day it's hard to even grasp the magnitude of those numbers so how do we shift from this hesitation to change this analysis paralysis into action I love that question and it's it's so true you you underscore um what is happening every day that is perpetuating um this this terrible situation and as you've indicated there's absolutely lots of things that we can do um and I talk about this a lot and it is let's be inspired by the students who um created food recovery Network they weren't trying to you know solve the issue all across the globe they understood that food waste was a problem in their community that precious food was being thrown away and they understood in their community that people were hungry so that was in the scope of their control they could do something within their community and as you were mentioning you know these incredible moments of volunteerism I can't wait to talk about about that and how it does shape us um that's how they then inspired other people to do this work in their own communities so for food food recovery Network we say we are a national nonprofit with a local solution so the first thing is to understand that yes these numbers are are are really big um we know from our partner organization over at refed we love them so much that 88.7 million tons of food went unsold or une Ian in the United States so for in the United States that's about 38% of our total food supply um and so what we could do about that is understand these are the numbers and I always say you know we have to take that deep breath and and understand we cannot be frozen by this you know with Bight flight Fawn or freeze we have to fight um and so luckily there are lots of things that people can do to sort of hear these numbers and overcome them just like the students at at the University of Maryland um and so there's legislation that helps us to change the policies from food waste to actually food recovery and for everyone listening here you know what we can do is we can encourage restaurants grocery stores our events that we have at our jobs to ensure that there's a food recovery plan in place because cplus food happens for all kinds of reasons it really does and if we have a plan in place we can capture that precious food and ensure it doesn't go into landfill which is the number one place that all that precious food is destined for um and so we have all kinds of res sources on our website to help people and I and I want to say you know we have to start small think about all the things that everyone is good at that's listening you didn't just become good at that in a day and said oh I want to be really good at soccer or oh I want to be the best leader ever and boom it happened it's gradually over time so if we just remind oursel that Perfection isn't even in the room with us here we have to remember it's not about perfection it is about small efforts every single day um and later on we can also talk about at the individual home you know what we can do to ensure that our leftovers um you know the extra produce that we have um isn't being tossed away um that we can you know keep the value of that food um in our own homes as well you you touched on a lot of themes that I love I know you were you're speaking to the US context but this idea of a global problem with local Solutions is approach that us Aid takes as well in the country that we're working in and you also mentioned this um human- centered approach of there there are so many people that are going to bed hungry every single night and we're at the same time we're wasting billions of tons of food and uh on a recent episode with rethinks Ken Baker we talked about this human- centered approach and and really making that that connection that personal connection with people because I think what we've been learning in the the food waste space is how to make our message hit home and I think the message for different audiences is obviously different I think when it comes to businesses and institutions a lot of times the economic argument is is the way to go because money talks and if you can make the financial argument that reducing food waste is going to increase their bottom dollar they like that argument and while at the same time I think the economic case can ring true for consumers I I definitely think that's valid but at the same time I think there is is that that human argument that human approach that that really needs to to hit home and I think that's how we conceptualize and contextualize a lot of these big numbers because a billion tons of food like I can't even how big is that you know it's it's so big you can't even imagine it but when you try to break it down and say this many people are going hungry in the US in your community and were wasting 1 billion meals every single day that could be feeding these people I think I think it helped contextualize that message and like you said it's going to take small efforts every single day um by everyone in our community to to tackle this issue and of course we're we're talking a lot about youth today so I want to continue um that conversation and ask you what is the role of college students in fighting food waste it is critical the role of college students in fighting food waste is is critical and just a really quick story you know to to to further underscore the beautiful comments that you made and what you're seeing across these awesome conversations in the work of usaid um you know we have um students who we have over about 200 chapters food recovery Network chapters all across highered we are in 46 States and in the district of Colombia um so food recovery literally is happening every single day and we say this is the power of young people um who are transporting food literally one car load of food at a time some of them have ebikes some of them are walking the food over to where it needs to go these wonderful locations um these are homeless shelters these are soup kitchens these are after school programs these are DV locations that are helping people get back on their feet these are locations that help veterans underemployed people o um people who have are unhoused you name it these are locations that are on the front lines helping our community members and our our students our student leaders at the at Food recovery Network are going to these locations literally every single day and a lot of times the food is staying right on college campuses because they want to help their own student body tackle food insecurity there um so just really quickly based on what you were saying you know this is the power of young people we have one chapter that every Saturday their food recovery Network chapter goes to their local Bagels shop and they recover the bagels from the day before there and then they bring the the the bagels to their their local hunger fighting partner agency every single Saturday and that is their food recovery effort they hang out they get to see the people at the bagel shop they get to go to this incredible nonprofit that they love so much and say hey here's some bagels and then they go about their Saturday it is a beautiful thing then they've directly helped feed people in their community and then we have other chapters they recover prepared meals three meals a day seven days a week it really does um run the gamut on how much recovery is happening at any one chapter but what all of these chapters have in common is people saying I can take my time to do this food recovery you know they everyone's been um trained on how to handle the food safely I can transport this food and I can bring it to locations in my community that I know this food is needed most and that is the power of young people they started this they are sustaining this they are continuing to encourage more people to do this work um our number one way that we get more chapters is by word of mouth because people find this work this effort this care to be so important to them and who they are that they want to encourage other people to do that so it is really so incredible this movement that has started by young people and the power of young people back to your question is why are they why are they so critical well it's because food recovery can happen at any time now if you think about a restaurant or if you think about dining Halls on college campuses if you think about you know a National Conference that you've gone to at the end of any meal well you know hey we had lunch and now I go back to my workshop at this big Conference next Workshop starts at two so the food is there now at 2 o'clock but you're at your Workshop then everyone else around you is at their day jobs who's around a lot of times it is college students oh it's a Tuesday at 2 o'clock I don't have class I can take my time and I can go to that event and I'm I'm perfectly trained on how to handle this food safely I know exactly where it needs to go I can do this um so it is this latent capacity of young people who there thousands thousands and thousands of college students so this is the beautiful thing about young people starting this movement that they're around and they care and I will say too they're also very busy just like all of us um but they can work their schedules around to ensure that food doesn't go to waste definitely sometimes I look back at the things that I did in undergrad and grad school and I'm how did I find the time to do all of that the energy seems Seems endless when you when you look back at it but I I love this um aspect of community that you mentioned and and really on both sides one the importance of community in terms of spreading the word and raising awareness of the food waste issue but also what's happening in the space what can you do about it but but on the other hand you mentioned that this The Bagel example I so many of the the the potential Solutions and interventions and organizations that I've I've spoken with in the food waste space are really providing opportunities to interact engage and connect with your community and oftentimes people that you otherwise may not encounter in your day-to-day life so like you said whether it's talking to the people in in the bagel shop or talking to the people in the organization where the rescued food is ultimately going there's there's just so many more opportunities for connection and for these young people to to really get ingrained in their community and learn more about people from different contexts and like I said I think that helps make this human centered approach um really ring true and I want to I also want to follow up you mentioned that the students are trained on handling food safely and I'm in the Food Safety Division at us a so I know that food safety and food loss and waste are very closely related so I I wanted to to give the opportunity for you to speak a little bit more about that and maybe some of the training that these students go through or if there's any legislation or regulations that you'd like to speak to that's really shaping the Food donation and food Rec rescue space I love this question yes yes yes um and just to you know when here's a here's a large number that I think everyone listening in can actually really love to hear and that is through the power of young people food recovery network has been able to recover more than 18.3 million pounds of food and that translates into about 15.2 million meals all across the United States for people who are experiencing food insecurity and hunger um so these are really big numbers that we want to celebrate um and so um with our students all of our students are are trained on how to handle their food safely so there's um you know training guides that we provide to them but then if we think about you know the fact that this so so there's that period um you know they they know how to keep the temperature of the food how to package it safely um when they transport the food to the nonprofit that nonprofit also has to be able to handle food safely meaning is it going to the refrigerator is it going into the freezer um is it being served right away these are all the steps you know that we take but back to the the idea of training our students on how to handle the food safely there's all of the um um training that they would need to be able to do that and feel confident that this food isn't going to um cause harm to anybody um and um so we also have hats hand you know gloves you know all these things no opened uh closed uh no open toed shoes you know things like that uh food is never to be put on the floor I could go on and on about how to handle food safely but the beautiful thing you know to kind of weave this into what you were talking about with these beautiful relationships is the students are working directly with the people who just created those meals you if you think about back in the kitchen all this incredible work um staff the kitchen staff who with love over the course of hours created all of this precious food they too know how to handle this food safely and the last thing they want to do is throw this food away at the end of their shift um so this is again the power of keeping dignity and value in the food so every step of the way the food is being created with love it is being uh uh packaged with love and care it is being donated to a nonprofit with love and care and safety in mind um and um so so there's just there's just that but I will say you know to to your point about you know what are laws and things like that that can help make U food recovery um safer and things like that there's actually two laws that um I really want everyone to to know about and to celebrate because it shows that our federal government no matter who's in office it doesn't matter our federal government as an entity says we want to promote food recovery as an action um now the first one is in 1996 the bill Emerson Good Samaritan law that says if you donate food to a nonprofit in good faith that you can't be held liable um and there's no case law um on this 1996 law meaning no one has sued and and tried to use the bill Emerson Good Samaritan act because it it shows us that culturally we do understand that food people deserve food and people care about the food that they are providing to others and we want to make sure that that food is safe and healthy for everyone to eat and to consume um and then in 19 or excuse me in 20123 um a new law was enacted called The Food donation Improvement Act and that expanded that 1996 law the bill Emerson Good Samaritan law it expanded it and made it clearer for people and it and the expansion was when you donate this food you can now donate to um individuals before it used to be nonprofits and food recovery Network we still you know continue to donate to nonprofits in particular because they're the most equipped to help their communities in need but it has allowed us to do some other really creative ways to to feed people um and it also expanded to include who can donate this food because in 1996 it didn't include Farmers agriculture now these are the folks that they have a lot of food um and when we didn't include Farmers back in 1996 what that meant was they too then weren't able to get the tax benefits that go along with donating um food so you're talking ni I love this so much it it shouldn't be about the money it should be about there's 44 million people meaning there are hungry people in every every single zip code that this shouldn't be the case at all but if if you're going to do the right thing with your surplus food you now have some tax benefits that can help make this a bit more cost-effective for you because we're leaving money on the table um so that's what the beauty of this Food donation Improvement act um enabled all of us now I can't tell people that you're never going to get sued that's impossible you know we could end this conversation at you know and you might say I'm going to sue Regina I didn't like how she answered that question you know these are it's it is a reality um and we get that hesitation from people all the time but I just want to say with love with care and with food recovery Network expertise you too can create a food recovery plan all of the barriers we can we can move all of those out of your way if you had any hesitation it just means you want to do food recovery you want to do the right thing with your surplus food yes there might be fear and fear is legitimate I understand that but come on with us and start doing the right thing with your surplus food there's so many more efforts to say yes to do this than there are to say no don't do this I love that I love this idea of of reducing barriers and I appreciate you breaking down the Food donation Improvement act and and how that changed from from the previous law in in the 90s we've we've mentioned the Food donation Improvement act on this podcast before but really haven't dived into what that means what what are the changes and how is this really impacting efforts on the ground and you've caught me on a good day Regina I'm not feeling particularly the tigis so I I don't think you'll be seeing a lawsuit from me after this um but I guess on that note uh yeah it's it's kind of hard to believe sometimes that I am apparently an adult so I am no longer a youth uh so how can I get involved in food recovery Network I know what you mean I know what you mean what I I'm so thankful that I get to be surrounded by such inspiring young people every single day it's really such an honor um but sometimes I do feel like you know the older person in the room so but it does not matter what your age is you know to your question there's so much that people can do um to begin this continuous effort of changing the dialogue and the action from food waste to food recovery we need everyone on Deck to help with this um so the first is you know as I mentioned before find out you know wherever you work wherever you go to school there's going to be food there if if it's a a national uh conference that you've gone to your local golf tournament um at your church you know that that big uh family meal that everyone has at the end of the U month or whatever whatever it is is there a place for the surplus food um and if there isn't you know come on to the food recovery network uh website to find out what you can do um that's the that's really the first place to understand is food waste happening um and do people feel like they have the the resources to stop that action from happening now I will also say all across the United States there are really incredible food recovery organizations AR FRN we are powered by young people um but there are so many organizations that locally have the capacity to receive Food get to know who those organizations are we have a lot listed on our website um get to know the Food donation Improvement act it's a it's super short it really is so short um and understand what that means because let's celebrate you know when we think about Federal actions it's like okay what does that mean in my everyday life well what this means for all of us in our everyday life is we can recover food it does not need to go into landfill um right now there's a new piece of legislation that we are working on so um you Congress is just getting back into to um action you know after the August recess um we have an election coming up but there are things that we can still do now there is the food date labeling act and this says there is confusion and maybe all of you feel this in your own homes about the dates that we have on our packaged Foods Best Buy freshest buy just a random date um is this food still safe for my family to consume I don't know I'm going to throw it away that confusion around date labels causes about 80% of households in the United States to unnecessarily throw away food it means millions of tons of food that have these dates that don't really mean anything are not able to be accepted by food banks and all of this food as I've as I've indicated through before goes to landfill that is the number one place that food goes whether it is perfectly fine to eat or it should have been composted only about 8% of food that's available still for humans to eat is recovered about 5% of food is composted some of it goes to animals some of it goes to making energy most of it is going into the trash let's stop that because when it goes into landfill it's causing greenhouse gases to be emitted unnecessarily so we can see that this dizzying effect we can stop this um so so if we help encourage our elected officials to sign on to the food date labeling act and many have already this is bipartisan meaning Republicans are saying yes to this and Democrats are saying yes to this people in the middle as well you know if you have an independent um as an elected official that's awesome too but we need more people um our elected officials to do the right thing and sign on to the food date labeling act so we have more information about that on our website as well excellent we will be sure of course to link the website in our episode description so all of our audience members can check out those resources because like you said everyone has a role to play whether it's with f FRN or just more globally in the food waste issue whether you're a young person on a college campus you're an adult attending a conference or you're just young at heart and looking to get involved there's a role for everyone and and you said you mentioned being surrounded by Youth and I think the one thing that we can learn is just to to just be inspired by the energy and the initiative that they take I think sometimes the older we get it's easy to kind of stuck in the status quo and even if we see an issue that we know there's probably a solution to it's it can get easy to just say oh well maybe someone else will take care of that or I don't have time I'm too busy I have work to do and I think we should be inspired by the young people involved in F FRN and more just globally with with the food waste issue is if you see a problem and you know that there's probably a solution out there check out these resources go to fn's website see what other people are doing to tackle food waste and I'm sure there are resources and people that would be willing to help you walk through a solution to this this problem that you're seeing so I think we should all be inspired by the youth around us and their energy that I admire so much um that's what keeps us young at heart so I really appreciate this conversation today Regina it's been great to learn more about food recovery Network and really just get inspired by the people that are involved in F in and just all of the great work that's happening so thank you and thank you thank you for your enthusiasm and your encouragement it really means a lot this has been wonderful thank [Music] you thank you for tuning in to us A's Kitchen sync this podcast was produced by ni laan and is organized by the USAID food loss and waste community of practice co-chairs Ahmed Khablan and Ann Vaughn additional Thanks goes to feed the future the US government's Global Food security initiative and the USAID Center for nutrition [Music]