America trashes 40% of its food. A Colorado startup is connecting the discards to dinner tables.

While the USPS has seen a drastic decline in revenues and capacity in recent years due to growing competition from the private sector and social changes, First Class Meal is reimagining the role that this institution has to play: improving national access to healthy food. Using the existing USPS app to connect organizations and food banks that struggle to distribute donations, postal drivers out on their normal routes would pick up donations, deliver to food banks or pantries, and store food in post offices with excess capacity.

Improving community nutrition requires making healthy food accessible and affordable. In Westlake, California, LaRayia’s Bodega provides healthy food at a convenience store price point of five dollars or less. Donations of misshapen fruit help to reduce costs. The bodega operates as part of the Love Without Reason nonprofit, which operates a meal program.

A startup in Germany created an online platform, Cirplus, that connects recycling companies with manufacturers and distributors in the plastic industry. The site encourages the move towards a circular economy by improving transparency for buyers and sellers.

Pittsburgh-based nonprofit 412 Food Rescue is saving food from landfills and feeding those in need by getting produce, with minor bruises or almost past sell-by dates, into the hands of food insecure people. The organization, which partners with government housing authorities and other sites like daycares, uses its Food Rescue Hero app to connect volunteer drivers with grocery stores and restaurants who have excess food to donate.

After realizing the rate that which food gets thrown away at grocery stores due to approaching expiration dates, one man in Nigeria decided to do something about it. Oscar Ekponimo created a web-based app that lets grocery store retailers know if something is near expiration. Once notified, the retailers mark down the item; this allows non-governmental organizations to purchase and sell to people that are food insecure.

Since its 2015 Expo, Milan has continued to foster a number of unique initiatives to combat food waste, promote healthy and sustainable food systems, and ensure that its people never go hungry. Through projects such as collecting unsold food at the end of market day for distribution in soup kitchens, using apps to redirect food waste, implementing new laws to ease the process of food donation, as well as fostering collaboration between cities, Milan is leading the efforts to prioritize food on the New Urban Agenda.

We Don’t Waste serves more than 100 hunger relief organizations across the city and has saved and redistributed 220 million servings of food to date. The team of staff and volunteers who recover and distribute food to the community has not only helped prevent food waste, but also greenhouse gas emissions and other environmental consequences, all while feeding locals in need.

The RVA Community Fridges addresses the issue of food insecurity by setting up household or industrial refrigerators outside of a host business, like a restaurant, non-profit or church. Anyone can swing by a fridge and take whatever they need or leave whatever they can. To fill the fridges, community members, local businesses, and other organizations donate purchased or cooked food.

When the economy came to a sudden halt with the onset of a global pandemic, farmers were left with produce meant for the restaurant industry while families who lost incomes struggled to put food on their tables. For one good samaritan “it was just a matter of connecting the dots.” George Ahearn's idea to crowdsource transportation from farms to food banks led to the creation of EastWest Food Rescue, a nonprofit that has delivered 2.4 million pounds of crops to 160 food banks.

To reduce food waste, a pilot project in Connecticut organized by a professor aims to deliver the still-viable thrown-out products to a local food pantry. With the help of her students, the project has successfully helped to consistently divert perfectly edible produce to "people who don’t care whether an onion isn’t in season or if an avocado is too soft."