Advocacy in the Food Rescue Space

Staff Spotlight: Jennifer England, VP of External Affairs

Q: Tell us about how you got started with 412 Food Rescue!

A: Leah [Lizarorndo] and I were friends, having served on the Grow Pittsburgh Board together. During a coffee date in 2014 she told me about the problem of food waste and the solution that food recovery presented. As someone who had worked in community organizing and big picture system change for a long time, I loved how Food Rescue was BOTH a big picture system change AND an amelioration of the immediate issue of food insecurity. I had envisioned being on the marketing and awareness raising end but solving the logistics challenge proved to be something I was both good at and excited by. If you’ve ever spent 5 minutes in person with me, you know I love complex strategy boardgames. To me the logistics of food recovery tickles the same part of my brain but the results are so much more satisfying. Building the 412 Food Rescue operations was one of the most challenging and satisfying puzzles of my life.

Q: What role does advocacy play in the food rescue space?

A: When you look at advocacy around food security it’s almost entirely around SNAP, WIC and similar programs. And, even where there is attention to food recovery, the creation of policy infrastructure to support and encourage growth has been uneven and insufficient, largely because food rescue IS a system change. It doesn’t help that there hasn’t been a unified voice to advocate for that policy, either. We need to educate policy makers and agencies about the opportunity that a full and robust policy framework for food recovery would provide.

Q: You recently spoke at ReFED’s Food Waste Summit in Seattle – what were you hoping to accomplish?

A: For the past 2 years I’ve been working with a group of other food recovery industry professionals to identify a path for working together to advocate for food recovery policy, infrastructure and best practices. We settled on creating a new organization that operates similar to a trade group, the National Food Recovery Association. I was excited to launch that into the world at ReFED this year! I envision the NFRA as an organization that can serve to advise lawmakers on food recovery and food waste policy, help provide food donors with confidence in food recovery as a solution to their sustainability goals and advocate for the necessary policy framework required to grow food recovery as a solution to both food waste and food insecurity.

Q: Tell us more about your role in founding the National Food Recovery Association. What does this coalition hope to accomplish?

A: In 2022 at White House Conference on Hunger and Nutrition they specifically called out food rescue as a tactic for addressing food security, but not one single food recovery organization was at the table to talk about it. About 6 months later in 2023 I was on a panel at Waste Expo with some other organizations that, similarly to our Food Rescue Hero platform, provide services TO food recovery organizations and to the system. At that time, we all kind of regarded each other with the wariness of competitors. By the end of the session, it was clear that we in fact were on the “same side” so to speak and the pieces began to fall into place. If we worked together, we could be strong advocates for food recovery both with policy makers and beyond. Creating a coalition of food recovery organizations could BE the voice missing from conversations like the 2022 White House conference. I immediately went home and emailed everyone that was on the panel, or in the room, and a few other friends in the industry and said “let’s talk.” It’s taken 2 years to get to the point where we are filing incorporation papers and that is at least in part intentional. I had a vision, but I didn’t want to create something that was “mine” or that reflected only the vision of one person or one organization. I thought it was important to find consensus and buy in amongst a larger group of organizations. And again, while I thought it important to ensure the power was in the hands of coalition members, one can’t dictate the creation of a democratic body. Our goals similarly will be determined by the body of food recovery organizations, not by one director or one organization. We are hoping to take a few early steps to strengthen and unite the food recovery industry, including:

creating a robust and up to date data base of food recovery organizations to provide a one stop shop for donors;
Identify and standardize metric and reporting protocol to avoid double counting while still reflecting the many hands it takes to recover surplus
Create standards and SOPs to for safe but scalable food recovery
Build an organization that is driven by and operating for food recovery organization.

Q: Something that impacts Pittsburghers directly is PA HB620 currently in front of the House. How would this impact our community in Western Pennsylvania, and how can our audience participate in moving it to be passed?

A: This is so exciting! HB620 would raise Act 101 tipping fees (the fee waste haulers pay to dump their loads in a landfill area) for the first time since they were introduced in 1988. That is not as boring as it sounds! The Act 101 recycling fee is what supports recycling and compost programs and the Food Rescue Infrastructure Grants! The fee currently is $2 per ton, which when it was introduced in 1988 was the equivalent of about $5.37 today. HB620 would raise that fee to $5, not quite returning it to its original level. This would provide a MUCH needed influx of funding for programs to keep food out of landfills. We desperately need better compost infrastructure in the state as well as support for the growing food rescue movement. There are still a number of our larger cities that do not have food recovery organizations and this could help grow both. This would be foundational legislation that could help Pennsylvania grow and scale food recovery across the Commonwealth.

→ 412 Food Rescue Education & Advocacy