New Database of Federal Grants for Meals Waste

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ReFED and NRDC partnered to create a database of federal grants that would be used to fund meals waste discount work.

Roughly 38% of meals in our nation goes unsold or uneaten, and most of this finally ends up as waste in landfills or incinerators. The excellent news is there are numerous waste discount options that span the meals provide chain. The catch is that making many of those adjustments will take funding. ReFED’s evaluation exhibits that an annual funding of $18 billion can cut back meals waste throughout the meals system by greater than 21 million tons every year and generate $78 billion in annual web monetary profit. Capital from public, personal, and philanthropic sources is required. The federal authorities has lengthy funded meals loss and waste options, and over the previous 12 months it has made unprecedented investments within the house. To assist potential candidates discover and perceive these essential federal grant alternatives, ReFED and NRDC partnered to create a database of grants that could possibly be used to fund meals waste discount work.

Waste is basically dealt with on the native stage in our nation, so funding from the federal authorities helps assist states and municipalities create or broaden infrastructure and schooling to handle their waste streams extra sustainably. Strategic approaches to deal with meals waste span a number of sectors, and subsequently, federal businesses. The U.S. Environmental Safety Company (EPA), the U.S. Division of Agriculture (USDA), and the Meals and Drug Administration (FDA) all cowl totally different components of the meals provide chain, and every could be a supply of funding or present different sources to states, tribes, and native governments.

For instance, USDA’s Compost and Meals Waste Discount Cooperative Agreements particularly fund meals waste discount tasks. Over the previous three years, this grant program has funded over 75 tasks. Moreover, two EPA grant packages, the Stable Waste Infrastructure for Recycling Grants and the Recycling Schooling and Outreach Grants, supplied $44 million to assist 33 tasks to forestall and recycle wasted meals in 2023.

It may be onerous to trace and discover grants and funding from totally different federal businesses, so our new federal grants database gives a centralized checklist of all grants from throughout the federal authorities that would doubtlessly fund meals waste discount tasks. The database has a row for every related grant that features a description, eligibility, and hyperlink to the grant on the federal authorities’s web site. Our aim is to speed up progress in the direction of our nationwide aim and be sure that good meals makes it to individuals’s plates. If you realize of a federal grant alternative that isn’t listed within the database please tell us by emailing grantsdatabase@refed.com.

Initially printed on NRDC.org weblog.

By Nina Sevilla, Program Advocate, Meals Waste & Meals Programs, Folks & Communities Program