Celebrating Earth Day Today and All Year

Last year, Lena Hart-Bundy - now Program Manager – shared the many ways Ballard Food Bank works to be a good steward of the land and improve sustainability in this post.

Since that time, we’ve made several updates that help us prevent even more food waste and increase sustainability both for the earth and our budget.

Expanded Food Recovery

Weekend Food Recovery Coordinator Mark unloads food donations.

In October 2023, we hired two part-time staff to lead food recovery alongside a small volunteer team on Saturday and Sunday, allowing us to pick up donations from grocery and retail partners seven days a week. We now do 77 total weekly pick-ups from 27 different partners, and we are assessing our capacity to add additional weekend partners. Each weekend, our team collects an average of 600 pounds of donations!

Lena manages the food recovery program and shares that “Food recovery programs allow us to address food insecurity in a really elegant way – in its simplest form it’s a redistribution of resources, bringing food that’s considered excess to those who really need it. Collecting these donations not only provides variety and choice for our shoppers, but also reduces food waste in the community.”

Reducing Waste from Recovered Food

Prepared foods such as sandwiches and deli salads from grocery recovery are often a big hit with our food bank shoppers. Since we’re closed from Thursday evening until Monday morning, a lot of these options that come in ready-to-eat won’t be fresh enough when we open back up after the weekend. We have a couple of different ways to ensure this food gets to people who can use it. Staff members walk some of it over to Raven Village next door for residents. The remainder is picked up by the Community Fridge program. We love how the different connections and partnerships in our community allow us to feed more of our neighbors while further reducing food waste.

Cedar Grove Compostables in Kindness Café

Cafe volunteers pack the daily menu offerings into compostable containers. - photo by Alabastro Photography

From opening day in 2021, the Kindness Café has prioritized sustainable packaging for the food and beverages we share with our neighbors. After comparing different distributors and options, Café Manager Natalie Schwartz began purchasing compostable cups and food containers directly from Cedar Grove. This reduced the cost to us and also means we know exactly what we’re getting, since larger distributors may substitute products with less sustainable options.

These are just a few of the ways Ballard Food Bank staff and volunteers work to minimize our environmental footprint and promote sustainability. If you haven’t read last year’s roundup, it’s worth exploring, and we hope you’ll join us today and every day in celebrating Earth Day and working for a sustainable future!