By Heather Stewart, Kentucky Harvest

In the kitchen of your favorite restaurant, there’s a shelf full of canned tomatoes, crackers, or even fresh vegetables that will never make it to your plate. The manager ordered too much, the chef expected more interest in a particular dish or someone misread the expiration date. Whatever the reason, food meant for people to eat ends up in landfills… unless we demand a change.
The current amount of food waste in Kentuckiana is unimaginable. According to the most recent study from the Louisville Waste Management District, 83 percent of waste in Jefferson County could be recovered, much of which is food waste. In 2015 alone, 592,000 tons of recoverable food and other items were sent to landfills. That would be the same weight as 2,368,000 full bourbon barrels. We would never let that much bourbon go down the drain, so why are we letting nutritious food go to waste?
That’s enough weight to fill about 7,000 18-wheeler trucks, which would line the roads from downtown Louisville all the way to Lexington, stretching about 100 miles.
The environmental impact of wasted food
The wasted foods in our landfills break down quickly, generating harmful greenhouse gas emissions. According to the EPA, wasted food is responsible for 58% of methane emissions from municipal solid waste landfills. While you can’t see or smell methane, you can feel its impact. It changes the earth’s temperature and climate, at a rate 28 times stronger than carbon dioxide.
We must save food to save our planet.
The human impact of wasted food
With rising prices at the grocery store and unemployment nearing a pandemic high in the Louisville Metro, Feeding America found that 1 in 5 children in Kentuckiana experience food insecurity. That means they don’t have access to sufficient food to meet their basic needs.
When perfectly good food goes to waste, we squander an opportunity to feed children in our community.
We must act now
Food rescue is a complex but important process that Kentucky Harvest has streamlined so that you can maximize your impact. Through our volunteers, donors, and corporate partners, Kentucky Harvest rescues excess food and moves it to those who need it. Each year, our volunteers rescue more than 2 million pounds of food and deliver it to churches, shelters, food pantries and children’s centers. As a result, our nonprofit partners save $4 million annually that they can use to make their programs stronger.
Volunteer – Start the new year off right. Download the Kentucky Harvest app and get notified when a food rescue is available.
Donate food – Be locally and globally responsible. To donate excess nutritional, edible food complete the form linked here.
Donate funds – Make an immediate difference. Contribute $24 to feed two people, every day, for a week. Give more to maximize your impact.

Heather Stewart is the Executive Director of Kentucky Harvest, a non-profit organization moving to eliminate hunger by engaging volunteers to rescue excess food and move it from those who have it to those who need it. A Louisville native and Western Kentucky University graduate, Stewart has dedicated her career to strengthening the region’s non-profit and community services.