Food Redistribution as Optimization

In this paper we study the simultaneous problems of food waste and hunger in the context of food (waste) rescue and redistribution as a means for mitigating hunger. To this end, we develop an empirical model that can be used in Monte Carlo simulations to study the dynamics of the underlying problem. Our model's parameters are derived from a data set provided by a large food bank and food rescue organization in north central Colorado. We find that food supply is a non-parametric heavy-tailed process that is well modeled with an extreme value peaks over threshold model. Although the underlying process is stochastic, the basic approach of food rescue and redistribution to meet hunger demand appears to be feasible. The ultimate sustainability of this model is intimately tied to the rate at which food expires and hence the ability to preserve and quickly transport and redistribute food. The cost of the redistribution is related to the number and density of participating suppliers. The results show that costs can be reduced (and supply increased) simply by recruiting additional donors to participate. With sufficient funding and manpower, a significant amount of food can be rescued from the waste stream and used to feed the hungry.

Before the COVID-19 pandemic it was widely reported that, in the United States, over 40 percent of food produced was wasted During the pandemic, news reports have described unprecedented household food waste, up by 30 percent according to Republic Services, one of the largest waste management services in the US (Helmer 2020) But upstream, food waste was, and continues to be, equally problematic When institutions such as schools and universities, large businesses, restaurants, and other venues must shut down, so too must the food supply chain for those locations Farmers who produce food for large-scale public use have been unable to redirect their products for grocery markets, and so in many cases their harvests and dairy cannot be used Elsewhere along the chain, farm and other food laborers (e g , meat-packing workers, delivery workers) without access to protection and health care cannot continue to pack and deliver food at "normal" levels, and so potential food has been left in fields and warehouses (Evich 2020)

Globally, one third of food produced goes to waste, which contributes to climate change, nega­tively impacts air and water resources, and can lead to environmental and human health risks. Mitiga­tion efforts have surged in response to these stag­gering statistics on food loss and waste, including initiatives such as food rescue and upcycling pro­grams. Circular economy practices are important for a sustainable future. Limited literature is availa­ble that compares different food rescue programs worldwide and synthesizes considerations for plan­ning new interventions. This paper is a scoping review of peer-reviewed literature on programs and interventions for food rescue and food waste reduction that occur at the retail level. The search in Scopus and Web of Science yielded 400 records for studies published in the past 30 years. Analysis of 18 full-text reports showed diverse food pro­grams from the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, Greece, New Zealand, Canada, Sri Lanka, and Israel. Studies were conducted in vari­ous settings, including restaurants, institutions, and retail food stores. The collection methods of res­cued food varied according to the program’s capacity and included accepting donations, redistribution programs, and social enterprises. The results of these reports highlight some of the barriers that food rescue programs face, including logistical and workforce challenges, liability concerns, food avail­ability, and financial restraints. Facilitators that pro­moted food rescue included the use of comple­mentary technology, cooperative alliances, support­ive policies, and favourable incentives. Report find­ings highlight the key role of volun­teers, partner­ships, and innovative technological solutions in advancing food rescue and waste reduction pro­grams. Our research focuses on con­solidating the lessons previously learned as a means of helping future food waste diversion programs overcome obstacles and improve operational effi­ciency. While food rescue is an important interme­diary endeav­our, addressing the root causes of wasted food and reducing inefficiencies in the cur­rent modern industrial food system is necessary to meaningfully reduce food waste at a global level.

Food rescue has been identified as a sustainable approach in preventing wastage of surplus food and achieving food security. Although food insecurity is widely prevalent in developing countries, there is a paucity of research investigating food donations and rescue operations in these countries. This study focuses on surplus food redistribution activities from a developing country perspective. Specifically, the study analyses the structure, motivations, and limitations of the existing food rescue system in Colombo, Sri Lanka, by conducting a series of structured interviews with twenty food donors and redistributors. The food rescue system in Sri Lanka characterises a sporadic redistribution, and food donors and rescuers are mainly driven by humanitarian motives. The findings also reveal missing institutions — facilitator organisations and back-line organisations — in the surplus food rescue system. Food redistributors identified that inadequate food logistics and establishing formal partnerships as major challenges in food rescue operations. Establishing intermediary organisations such as food banks to provide the required food logistics, imposing food safety parameters and minimum quality standards required for surplus food redistribution, and community awareness programmes on food redistribution can increase the efficiency and effectiveness of food rescue operations. There is an urgent need to embed food rescue as a strategy to reduce food wastage and to enhance food security in existing policies.

In this paper we investigate the economic and environmental efficiency of charities and NGO’s “rescuing” food waste, using a 2008 case study of food rescue organisations in Australia. We quantify the tonnages, costs, and environmental impact of food rescued, and then compare food rescue to other food waste disposal methods composting and landfill. To our knowledge this is the first manuscript to comprehend the psychical flows of charity within an Input-Output framework—treating the charity donations as a waste product. We found that 18,105 tonnes of food waste was rescued, and calculate that food rescue operations generate approximately six kilograms of food waste per tonne of food rescued, at a cost of US$222 per tonne of food rescued. This a lower cost than purchasing a tonne of comparable edible food at market value. We also found that per US dollar spent on food rescue, edible food to the value of US$5.71 (1863 calories) was rescued. Likewise, every US dollar spent on food rescue redirected food that represented 6.6 m3 of embodied water, 40.13 MJ of embodied energy, and 7.5 kilograms of embodied greenhouse gasses (CO2 equivalents) from being sent to landfill or composting, and into mouths of the food insecure. We find that food rescue—though more economically costly than landfill or composting—is a lower cost method of obtaining food for the food insecure than direct purchasing.

Food waste (FW) has been increasingly recognized as a severe environmental, social, and economic problem. Therefore, it should be tackled innovatively by analyzing and synthesizing existing solutions. This study aims to achieve a comprehensive understanding of different social innovation measures adopted for reducing FW using a systematic literature review. After locating, collecting, evaluating, and analyzing 50 publications from four databases, we conclude that social innovation activities such as digital food-sharing platforms, social supermarkets, solidarity stores, and food rescue hubs are widely deployed in different FW reduction processes. Based on the findings, we synthesized several research gaps and proposed corresponding future research directions related to research methodology, country, food redistribution, food rescue, food donation, and food sharing. These directions include conducting research to develop suitable key performance indicators to evaluate the performance of digital food-sharing platforms, linking with specific theory to conduct empirical research on partnership analysis regarding social supermarkets, and investigating the structure of multiplex relations among different participants in the food rescue activities using social network analysis. We suggest that more keywords should be scrutinized and included when searching publications in future research as keyword selection is subjective.

Food loss and waste occur at an alarming rate while many households in the City of Vancouver are food insecure. Set within the context of City of Vancouver’s Zero Waste 2040 long-term strategic plan, the City seeks to promote a circular economy, including through food waste reduction and prevention, better food redistribution, and partaking in awareness campaigns. Food rescue and redistribution is often framed as a win–win solution to avoid throwing unwanted, unmarketable, or surplus foods from the landfill and instead redistributing the food to those who are food insecure. This solution has been framed as a useful tool to promote a circular economy. However, both food waste and food studies scholars have rightly noted that connecting unwanted foods with those who are food insecure to address systemic hunger is not a panacea, nor is it a systemic solution to prevent food waste. Drawing on key informant interviews with agri-food experts across the system (n = 20), this study identified the challenges, opportunities, and the overall vision of the circular food economy and how it is mobilised in the City of Vancouver. It seeks to understand how equity factors into the vision of a circular food economy and its implementation by agri-food and relevant actors. The findings in this study highlight the importance of dynamic governance systems that targets critical points for change including regulation, funding, and capacity building to ensure a circular food economy that considers equity and justice.

Purpose – Food rescue is used in the emergency food sector internationally to reduce waste and improve food supplies to frontline providers and their clients. The purpose of this paper is to provide a perspective on why and how food rescue occurs in Australia. It also examines food rescue as a potential evolution within the emergency food setting. Design/methodology/approach – A descriptive study of SecondBite, an Australian food rescue organisation, was conducted. Documents were reviewed, 14 weeks of participant observation occurred, and two focus group discussions were held. Framing analysis was used to design the research questions (why rescue food? and how?). The description of the organisation was then examined against critical literature to establish how food rescue conforms to and/or challenges the traditional limitations of emergency food. Findings – Food rescue requires multiple resources within the emergency food space including surplus food, funding and labour. The frames used to justify this work provide an insight into the “problem” of food poverty in Australia and the “solution” of food rescue. The script for “people in need” requiring “fresh food” is well developed by SecondBite, with some tension around food waste reduction as a competing and yet complementary mission. Originality/value – In light of the growing role of the not for profit sector in a “big society” political order, the rescuing of nutritious food for emergency parcels and meals, may provide some benefits for people already using emergency food. The opportunity for food rescue organisations to play a role in food poverty prevention requires further attention.

Cutting edge technologies to end food waste

Food waste is a challenge to the sustainability of global food systems and to the environment and demonstrates a dire need for solutions in which the food produced for human consumption actually feeds people. Food rescue practices respond to this challenge through the redistribution of food waste materials, working towards a circular economic system. Through analysis of two food rescue organisations, this article maps the food waste network and the actors engaged in practices of transforming discarded food waste materials back into an edible food resource. Despite their best intentions to uphold the fundamental goal of saving food, 'food heroes' face logistical, financial, and ethical hurdles as they implement their food rescue practices. Operating within the globalised food system, which prioritises profit and productivity, is a major challenge to food rescue organisations. This article demonstrates the fragile intricacies of the food waste network and compares how food rescue operates within different levels of the food supply chain.

Measuring the impact of food rescue: A social return on investment analysis

Food recovery groups and networks are springing up all over the world, building on increased concerns over the impact of waste on people and the environment. Food rescue efforts offer prosocial visibility, and thus are increasingly key to the public relations efforts of corporations and nonprofits. Although sometimes seen as the best solution to the food waste problem (Gregson and Alexander 2016), food rescue and donation maintain inequities in the food system and need more critical attention, particularly with regard to food and environmental justice issues. What are the broader forces, social and economic, that make food rescue such a popular option for those concerned about food waste, and how are those forces maintained or perpetuated in our everyday discourse and actions regarding food recovery and donation? This article looks at the discursive and performative forces that link food justice and food rescue inter/nationally, paying particular attention to the value given to saving food from waste. Specifically, after discussing the representation of food waste as a problem in large-scale governmental efforts, I then turn to analysis of ethnographic data and interviews with food recovery networks in rural and urban areas of the midwestern and northeastern United States. I look at who is saving food and their motivations for doing so. Last, I address these acts of rescuing food in light of larger questions about hunger, sustainability, and social justice: the issues linked to food waste and to efforts to reduce it.

Reducing our waste size

Food waste and insecurity are two societal challenges that coexist in many parts of the world. A prominent force to combat these issues, food rescue platforms match food donations to organizations that serve underprivileged communities, and then rely on external volunteers to transport the food. Previous work has developed machine learning models for food rescue volunteer engagement. However, having long worked with domain practitioners to deploy AI tools to help with food rescues, we understand that there are four main pain points that keep such a machine learning model from being actually useful in practice: small data, data collected only under the default intervention, unmodeled objectives due to communication gap, and unforeseen consequences of the intervention. In this paper, we introduce bandit data-driven optimization which not only helps address these pain points in food rescue, but also is applicable to other nonprofit domains that share similar challenges. Bandit data-driven optimization combines the advantages of online bandit learning and offline predictive analytics in an integrated framework. We propose PROOF, a novel algorithm for this framework and formally prove that it has no-regret. We show that PROOF performs better than existing baseline on food rescue volunteer recommendation.

“Maybe it’s still good?” A qualitative study of factors influencing food waste and application of the E.P.A. Food recovery hierarchy in U.S. supermarkets