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Food waste is a big problem. The U.S. Department of Agriculture says up to 40% of the food supply ends up in landfills every year. Redirecting excess food to people who need it can get complicated, but an Uber-style app is helping make it easier for a nonprofit in Cincinnati. Becca Costello from member station WVXU reports.
BECCA COSTELLO, BYLINE: Several days a week, the Cincinnati nonprofit Last Mile Food Rescue has volunteers go out to rescue food.
CRYSTAL COTTRILL: Excess food from a lot of our different food donors.
COSTELLO: Crystal Cottrill is a manager for the organization.
COTTRILL: And then they deliver them directly to our partner agencies, like soup kitchens, after-school programs, food pantries. And that's where they're able to serve the folks that need it the most.
COSTELLO: Last Mile Food Rescue has about 700 volunteers who do pickups. Patty Goddard is one of them. She pulls up the Last Mile app on her phone. It makes it easy to find a pickup location nearby.
PATTY GODDARD: Got our directions. We're arrived at pickup. So we just click here and see. And that's if you need to call ahead, but I come here all the time...
COSTELLO: OK.
GODDARD: ...So it's - you know, it's - they know me. I see the guy who always does it, and we click eyes. Oh, OK, I'll get it. I'll get it.
COSTELLO: (Laughter).
Goddard has done hundreds of these rescues twice a week at this United Dairy Farmers gas station. Employees roll out today's pickup and load it into Goddard's trunk.
GODDARD: So we have 44 boxes of doughnuts, eight gallons of milk and 10 of other items.
COSTELLO: That's 10 crates full of loaves of bread, bottles of iced tea and prepared foods and snacks, like sandwiches. This is all food that would otherwise end up in a landfill, rotting and releasing climate-damaging methane. Valerie Berner is a spokesperson for the UDF gas station chain.
VALERIE BERNER: Unfortunately, sometimes with ordering, you get shortcutted items - items that there's not enough time to send to the store for them to be able to sell it. We want to keep it on our shelf as long as we possibly can, but we also want to make sure we can get it to people to consume before it's too late.
COSTELLO: With the car loaded and the pickup complete, it's back to the app.
GODDARD: You just push next, and it's sending the picture. And then it will tell us where we're going to go.
Thanks.
AUTOMATED VOICE: At the light, turn left onto Jefferson Avenue. Then your destination will be on the left.
COSTELLO: Goddard is taking all the food to St. John United Church of Christ for their weekly food pantry. It's less than a mile away - just a few minutes' drive.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: You're welcome to come down and see what...
COSTELLO: At the church, people help unpack Goddard's carload onto several long tables in the basement.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Everything on the table...
GODDARD: OK.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: ...'Cause we'll sort it out. Some stuff goes in the refrigerator. Some of it goes in the freezer.
COSTELLO: Every Thursday, up to a hundred people walk through the basement and pick out the groceries they need. Deacon Kathy Culver helps run the pantry.
KATHY CULVER: We offer dog and cat food, vegetables, fruit, peanut butter.
COSTELLO: Most of the food comes from Patty Goddard's weekly delivery of donations from the gas station. With the delivery complete, she picks up her phone to go back to the app.
GODDARD: And that shows that we completed it. We close it, and we give it a rating. I'd say this is a pretty good rescue today.
COSTELLO: A rescue that adds to Last Mile Food Rescue's numbers. It says it's been able to divert an estimated 10 million pounds of food from the landfill since 2020, in part by connecting volunteers with new technology. For NPR News, I'm Becca Costello in Cincinnati.
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