2022 Food Waste Solutions Summit
May 10-12, 2022 | Minneapolis, MN
Leah Lizarondo
CEO and Co-Founder,
412 Food Rescue
Bio:
Leah is the CEO and co-founder of 412 Food Rescue, a social enterprise with a technology, logistics and civic engagement model that aims to fight hunger and promote sustainability by preventing perfectly good food from entering the waste stream and directly distributing to organizations that benefit those who are food insecure. Founded in 2015, 412 Food Rescue is one of the fastest-growing food recovery organizations in the U.S. Creating the infrastructure for national retailers, 412 Food Rescue has prevented over 7 million pounds of food from going to waste via technology that mobilizes over 8,000 drivers in 5 cities --food rescue heroes--the largest volunteer food transport network. 412 Food Rescue's innovative distribution model bridges the last mile and significantly impacts access and food security as well as mitigates food waste’s impact on the environment. By redirecting surplus food about to go to waste, 412 Food Rescue responds to SDG Target 12.3 - to halve per capita food waste by 2030, as well as redirects perfectly good food to organizations that serve those who are food insecure, responding to SDG 2. Food waste is one of the major sources of carbon emissions and wastes significant natural resources. By redirecting food from going to landfill, the organization also helps mitigate climate change, responding to SDG 13.
Set to expand globally, Leah’s work at 412 Food Rescue has been featured in national media including NPR, Fast Company, FoodTank, Martha Stewart Living, Food & Wine, Saveur, Organic Life, Bust Magazine, Redbook, Success Magazine and Civil Eats. In April 2014, she gave the TEDx Talk “Why the Farm Is Not Getting to the Table.” Leah was named in FoodTank‘s “17 Food Heroes to Inspire Us in 2017" and in 2018 she was named "Pittsburgher of the Year" by Pittsburgh City Paper. Additionally, 412 Food Rescue was recognized as Pittsburgh Tech 50's "StartUp of the Year" in 2018 and received the Carnegie Science Award for Information Technology in 2019 - making it the first social enterprise to receive both awards.
Leah received her graduate degree in Public Policy & Technology from Carnegie Mellon University. She serves as Entrepreneur in Residence at the Block Center for Technology & Society at Heinz College of Information Systems and Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon University. She was born and raised in the Philippines and currently lives in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Interview
Can you highlight a few of these new innovations?
There are interesting new solutions being developed across the food recovery hierarchy of prevention, recovery, and recycling. For an example on the prevention side, look at LeanPath. They recognize that by consistently tracking wasted food, organizations can better measure and analyze it and make the changes that they need to prevent it from occurring. They have developed hardware and software solutions that they provide to culinary institutions, such as foodservice and restaurants, to do exactly that.
As you are tracking these new solutions and innovators, how are you measuring impact and what sort of impacts are you already seeing?
We are tracking impact across the space, starting with food waste generation from food businesses. I would say that one of the findings we recently had was that food waste represents an $18B annual cost to the grocery retail sector in the US.
Where is investment capital most needed to shift the food system towards reducing waste and designing for a circular economy?
We’ve identified an $18B need for new financing to achieve a 20% reduction in food waste over the next decade. We track both philanthropic funding coming into the space and the private capital funding. On the philanthropic side, the need that we’ve identified is about $300M annually in both philanthropic and impact investment. However, based on our last baseline analysis, we estimate that between 2012 to 2014 only about $5M per year in philanthropic funding was delivered which demonstrates a huge funding gap from this form of capital. This summer we will be releasing an updated philanthropic investment report that will provide more specifics on the progress made to date, however a gap (and therefore opportunity) still remains.