ELI in Action

For several years, ELI has served as the project coordinator for the Nashville Food Waste Initiative, a project of the Natural Resources Defense Council. In this capacity, ELI Senior Research Associate Emmett McKinney and I have worked with NRDC to develop and implement a promising pilot program in Nashville that explores local approaches to addressing food waste.

NRDC’s landmark report “Wasted: How America Is Losing Up to 40 Percent of Its Food From Farm to Fork to Landfill” documents the shocking amount of food that is thrown away — and that almost all of it is landfilled or incinerated. From an environmental, social justice, and flat-out cost perspective, however, it is far preferable to prevent wasted food, rescue surplus food, and recycle food scraps — in that order.

Consequently, NFWI has worked in partnership with the metro government of Nashville and encompassing Davidson County and a wide range of stakeholders on a holistic strategy that fosters these alternatives to landfilling and incinerating. Most recently, NFWI has focused, in particular, on the rescue of prepared foods.

The catalyst for these efforts, in part, was an analysis by NRDC exploring the potential to expand food rescue from consumer-facing businesses, such as restaurants, retail grocers, and caterers located in Nashville and other cities. Its 2017 report “Modeling the Potential to Increase Food Rescue: Denver, New York City and Nashville” found that an additional 2.3 million meals potentially could be rescued each year from restaurants, hotels, and caterers in Nashville alone — mostly in the form of prepared foods. Furthermore, these potential meals represent 23 percent of the 9.3 million meals needed to feed the food insecure in the city.

To further assess the landscape for prepared food rescue and identify barriers to rolling out a program nationwide, NRDC and ELI conducted a series of interviews and surveys with local “last mile” organizations — nonprofits that address food insecurity — and potential donors, such as restaurants.

The study, “Nashville Food Rescue Landscape Analysis,” concluded that a substantial portion of the nonprofits could increase the number of meals they served, but several barriers limited donations and the ability to accept them. These impediments included staffing, storage, and funding constraints, as well as concerns about liability and lack of knowledge about federal tax incentives.

Furthermore, a threshold barrier for potential donors was the need for more information about nonprofits that could receive donated food and handle it safely. To address this barrier, NFWI launched an effort to introduce some of the largest potential donors to recipient organizations. This multi-step process has included soliciting more detailed information from hunger and poverty nonprofits about their needs and reaching out to large potential donors.

As part of the effort to encourage potential donors, NFWI partnered with the National Restaurant Association’s local chapter and the independent restaurant association Nashville Originals on a workshop for their members about the tax benefits of and liability protections for surplus food donations. The workshop also introduced potential donors to organizations that facilitate donations, such as the Food Donation Connection, which is a nonprofit that manages businesses’ food donation programs with its communication, reporting, and monitoring networks, and One Generation Away, a local organization that picks up surplus food and delivers it to nonprofits.

To date, NFWI has successfully facilitated donations from about 11 businesses, including Ascend Amphitheater, several Hilton hotels, and Bridgestone Arena — in some cases matching them with Food Donation Connection or One Generation Away, which in turn will ensure that a wide range of local nonprofits benefit from the donations.

Typically, matchmaking is as simple as setting up a conference call to kick off the partnership. In other cases, potential donors want to talk first with other businesses that have donated food to learn more or tour the recipient organization before they donate.

Future efforts to encourage surplus prepared food donations include the relaunch of the 2017 Mayor’s Food Saver Challenge for Restaurants, in which over 50 restaurants participated by adopting measures to address food waste. For example, Country Music Hall of Fame has donated 1,000 trays of food — each serving 20-40 people — since joining the Challenge, compared to none the year before.

The relaunch is anticipated to include not only restaurants but the entire hospitality industry in the region and may involve regular reporting and adoption of measures, including surplus food donation, on an ongoing basis.