City reports strong results from food‑recovery grants and a neighborhood food‑waste prevention campaign

San Francisco’s Department of the Environment updated the Commission on the Environment on Aug. 26 about edible‑food recovery grants and a household food‑waste prevention campaign that targeted two neighborhoods.

Alexa Kelty, residential zero‑waste senior coordinator, summarized CalRecycle grant work (previous grant rounds of roughly $500,000 and $212,000 were cited) and said the department recently received $2,100,000 to expand citywide food recovery and compliance with state law (SB 1383). She described grant uses including transport funding, software that connects donors to recovery organizations, and support to food recovery groups to build fee‑for‑service models.

Kelty said the program’s two earlier grant rounds expected to move 129,000 pounds of food over two years and instead recorded more than 800,000 pounds delivered through partnerships with groups such as Extra Food, White Pony Express and local grocers. "Since the beginning of the grants, those 2 rounds of grants, we've done [about] 3,500,000" (presenter’s remark used currency/units interchangeably), Kelty said.

Shraddha Mehta, community partnerships and engagement manager, presented a household prevention campaign (February–June 2024) with a $400,000 budget. Campaign tactics included transit shelter and Muni bus ads, geo‑targeted out‑of‑home media in the Excelsior and Bayview Hunters Point, shelf talkers at 17 participating small grocers, multilingual URLs (English, Chinese, Spanish) and community engagement at 18 events.

Key campaign metrics presented included nearly 3.8 million online ad impressions, 31,000 clicks, 4,410 manual URL visits, 220 randomized post‑campaign interviews, and about 3,000 residents engaged through events. "Our total campaign budget was $400,000 over the 3 year period," Mehta said; she noted results exceeded some campaign benchmarks and that Chinese‑language creative had the highest click‑through rate among in‑language assets.

Commissioners asked about geographic expansion and additional language inclusion; staff said future neighborhoods will be selected using post‑campaign research and Office of Civic Engagement and Immigrant Affairs data to tailor language and creative. They also discussed coordinating prevention and recovery efforts and potential partnerships with Recology to drive residents to resources.

What’s next: Staff plan to use post‑campaign research to pick additional target neighborhoods, expand culturally relevant creative and languages as appropriate, and provide grants to community‑based organizations for prevention work; no formal vote was taken.

Provenance: Presentations and Q&A at the Commission meeting (topic introduction SEG 1267; campaign presentation and Q&A concluding SEG 1768).