Rescuing Food. Feeding People. Protecting the Planet.
Feeding people is at the heart of everything we do — and it's also one of the most powerful environmental acts we can perform. Every pound of food we rescue is a pound that is saved from the landfill, a reduction in harmful greenhouse gas emissions, and a meaningful contribution to a more sustainable world.
What Is Food Waste Recovery?
Food waste recovery — also called food rescue — is the practice of redirecting surplus, edible food away from landfills and toward people who need it. It sits near the top of the EPA's Wasted Food Scale, a framework that ranks the most beneficial ways to manage food that would otherwise go to waste. Preventing surplus from happening in the first place is always ideal — but when surplus does exist, donation ranks as one of the highest and most preferred uses for that food.
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Production & Agriculture
Crops are left unharvested due to low market prices, high labor costs, and strict cosmetic standards that reject perfectly edible produce.
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Manufacturing & Processing
Surplus arises primarily from byproduct — peels, stems, bones, and trimmings not used in the main product.
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Retail
Grocery stores, big-box retailers, and food distributors pull items at or before their sell-by date, even when the food is still wholesome and safe. Date label concerns alone account for nearly half of food waste at the retail stage.
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Food Service
Restaurants, caterers, institutions, and corporate cafeterias generate prepared or surplus food that goes unsold or unconsumed. The majority of waste at the foodservice level comes from plate waste — food customers don't finish.
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Consumers
Households are responsible for the largest share of food waste globally, driven by over-purchasing, poor planning, improper storage, and misunderstood expiration labels.
Waste Not Want Not operates primarily at the retail and food service levels, working directly with grocery partners, food distributors, and food service providers across Northeast Florida counties to capture surplus before it ever reaches a landfill.
The Problem
The United States produces more food than any nation on earth — and wastes a staggering amount of it. According to ReFED's 2024 data, 29% of the U.S. food supply goes unsold or uneaten each year. While a small portion is donated and more is redirected to other uses, the vast majority ends up in landfills, incinerators, or left to rot — roughly 60 million tons of food sent to waste destinations annually. That represents nearly 114 billion meals' worth of food, approximately 1.3% of U.S. GDP, gone to waste every year.
The breakdown across the supply chain tells the full story. Farms generate about 16.9 million tons of surplus annually — crops left in fields or rejected for cosmetic imperfections. Manufacturers contribute another 13.1 million tons, largely from trimmings and production line waste. Consumer-facing businesses — retail, full-service restaurants, limited-service restaurants, and other foodservice — account for 7.8 million tons combined. And consumers, both in and out of the home, represent the single largest source: 32.1 million tons, nearly 46% of the total.
More than 80% of all surplus food comes from perishables — fruits and vegetables, meat, dairy, seafood, and bakery items — which by their nature are more vulnerable to spoilage and more likely to be discarded.
The Environmental Stakes
Food waste isn't just a hunger problem. It's one of the most significant drivers of climate change on the planet.
According to ReFED's 2024 data, uneaten food in the U.S. is responsible for 3.5% of all U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, consumes 15.5% of all U.S. freshwater, occupies 16% of all U.S. cropland, and makes up 24% of all landfill inputs.
Globally, the picture is even more stark. Food loss and waste are responsible for 8–10% of all greenhouse gas emissions worldwide — nearly five times the emissions of the entire global aviation industry — and occupy nearly 30% of the world's agricultural land, all for food that is never eaten. If food waste were its own country, it would be the third-largest greenhouse gas emitter on earth, behind only China and the United States.
The primary mechanism is methane. When food decomposes in a landfill under oxygen-free conditions, it releases methane — a greenhouse gas more than 80 times more potent than CO₂ over a 20-year period. In the United States, excess food contributes greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to driving 54 million cars — nearly one in five of all registered vehicles in the country.
The EPA notes that more than 85% of the greenhouse gas emissions associated with landfilled food are generated before the food ever reaches disposal — during production, transport, processing, and distribution. This means that rescuing food before it becomes waste is one of the most impactful climate interventions available.
In 2023 alone, producing surplus food in the U.S. consumed 16.2 trillion gallons of water — more than the total freshwater used by California and Idaho combined. If all the surplus food wasted in the U.S. were grown on a single farm, it would cover roughly 140 million acres — approximately the combined size of California and New York.
