Blog Feature: Preventing Food Waste from Summer Meals Programs

In my role as a Program Specialist at the Office of the State Superintendent of Education, I developed and led a project to reduce food waste in the USDA Summer Food Service Program (SFSP) in Washington, DC. After discovering that over 19,000 meals were being discarded each summer, I partnered with Food Rescue US and the Department of Parks and Recreation to pilot a food recovery initiative. As a result, we successfully diverted over 3,000 surplus meals to local hunger relief organizations, significantly reducing waste and positively impacting both the community and environment.