Since the very first trip of CCNB’s Edible Food Recovery Program, which is made possible by a refrigerated truck purchased with a grant from Zero Waste Sonoma, we have helped divert thousands of pounds of food from landfills and onto the tables of people surviving food insecurity. The exponential growth represents an invaluable service to our communities and corpsmembers alike.
Just in the last two fiscal quarters (January to June), Zero Waste crews have recovered over 100,000 pounds of food! From packaged food, meat fish and poultry, to baked goods, beverages and desserts, this impressive number of recovered foods also represents valuable training hours in food handling for corpsmembers—another skill they can add to their tool belt.
Most of the food comes from Tier 1 generators—large grocery stores such as Whole Foods, Safeway, Nugget Markets—and is distributed locally within Sonoma County. Some of our partners include Redwood Empire Food Bank, ExtraFood, Farm to Pantry, and Una Vida. CCNB connects the dots; we handle and distribute the food collected during 4 to 5 collection routes weekly. Contingent on continued funding, the Zero Waste Department is looking to expand services to local school districts to repurpose edible food from lunch programs.
The Edible Food Recovery program is an exciting addition to Zero Waste’s efforts to divert materials from the landfill, and at the same time assist in the fight against food insecurity in our communities and help corpsmembers grow a variety of skills for their future.