Fork it Over! to reduce hunger and waste
Garbage and recycling › Green on the job › Fork It Over!
Join the many area grocers, restaurants, caterers and food service companies that are helping get good food to hungry people and keep it out of the landfill.
Composting is great, but donating food is even better for your community and the environment. It's safe, simple and the right thing to do.
The Fork it Over! program can help your business:
- connect quickly with the food rescue agency that best suits your needs
- understand the Good Samaritan Laws
- know the benefits of donation for your business and the community
- learn more about hunger and food waste in the region
- follow a typical donation and learn about the process
- learn more about food rescue agencies and who they serve
- make volunteer connections.
Donate the best, compost the rest!
Your surplus food can be a resource for the community rather than a waste product you have to manage.
The Portland metropolitan region throws away over 200,000 tons of food every year. Waste disposal fees are based on weight, and some of the heaviest materials you dispose are food products. It costs over $18 million to truck our discarded food to the landfill and bury it, where it creates harmful greenhouse gas emissions. Not only do you pay to purchase the food in the first place, but you pay again to throw it out.
Even if only 10 percent of what we tossed was edible, at a dollar value to food banks of $1.67 per pound, the Portland metropolitan region threw away an estimated $67 million worth of good food in 2009. Nationally, 40 percent of food in the United States today goes uneaten. This means Americans are throwing out the equivalent of $165 billion each year – rescuing just 15 percent of this food would feed 25 million people every year.