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Meal-recovery groups, food-rescue app tout prevention and donation strategies to capture prepared food surplus
Summary
Nonprofits and private platforms told legislators that a large share of New Jersey’s surplus prepared meals can be captured through donation, markdown sales and coordinated county planning; Meal Recovery Coalition aims to scale recovery and pushed for date-label reform and tax incentives.
Representatives of food-rescue groups, a multinational surplus-food marketplace and corporate donors told the joint environment committees that capturing edible surplus prepared food is a cost-effective way to reduce waste and feed people.
Karen Lemon, board chair of Share My Meals, described the nonprofit’s model of collecting prepared meals from corporations, universities and hospitals and distributing them via volunteers and a tracking system that uses reusable trays and barcodes to ensure safety and traceability. Lemon said prepared-food surplus represents a significant share of the state’s generated waste and cited a ReFED-derived estimate discussed at the hearing that about 45,000 tons of food waste in New Jersey are meals — “almost 75,000,000 meals a year” — and that Share My Meals planned to scale recovery toward a multi-million-meal goal with partners.
Zach Shaben of Too Good To Go described the company’s business-to-consumer marketplace where participating stores sell a “surprise bag” of surplus food at roughly one-third of retail price; he said nearly 1,700 New Jersey stores had partnered with the platform and that they had helped recoup approximately $3.7 million in revenue for New Jersey businesses. Shaben urged policies that “prioritize prevention” and recommended standardizing date labels to reduce consumer confusion.
Meal Recovery Coalition leaders said they are developing statewide guidelines for meal recovery and training materials and that the coalition includes corporate members, hospitals and food-service companies; they urged passage of S2426, the county food-recovery planning bill, and discussed S200 (date-labeling) and S3889 (campus food-waste reduction). Speakers also suggested state tax incentives for food donation and recovery, noting 12 states already use tax incentives to support donation.
Committee members invited written testimony and copies of materials. No formal votes were taken during the hearing; witnesses asked legislators to consider both prevention-focused incentives and clarified donation guidance to remove barriers for schools and municipal programs.
