2022 Food Waste Solutions Summit
May 10-12, 2022 | Minneapolis, MN
Minnie Ringland
Climate Analyst
ReFED
Bio:
Minnie Ringland is a Climate Analyst with ReFED, a national nonprofit dedicated to ending food loss and waste across the food system by advancing data-driven solutions. ReFED provides the most comprehensive insights on where and why food waste takes place, and connects organizations working to address these problems. Minnie's role at ReFED includes studying the emissions factors used to link food waste to climate change, translating these findings to support ReFED's partners and solution providers, and generally working to improve our understanding of food waste's impact. Minnie has followed an interest in food systems since college, where she led the Food Action student club, working on food waste and nutrition issues, and helped organize the annual Yale Food Systems Symposium in 2015. She recently graduated from the Bren School of Environmental Science & Management, where she worked on a master’s capstone project studying emissions and carbon sequestration associated with Santa Barbara County's agricultural lands.
Schedule
Wednesday, May 20
1:30pm - 2:30pm
"The Full Footprint: The Real Climate Cost of Food Waste and How to Talk About It"
Breakout
Food waste is a climate problem—but not just in the ways most people think. Its full environmental toll touches some of the most potent forces driving climate change. Methane and nitrous oxide, both superpollutants with warming potential far exceeding that of CO2, are released throughout the food waste lifecycle. Refrigerants used across the cold chain rank among the most harmful greenhouse gases on the planet. Synthetic fertilizers used to grow food that is never eaten carry their own enormous emissions footprint. And that's before accounting for the staggering volumes of water embedded in discarded food, or the social cost of carbon—a measure of the true economic harm of emissions. This session is designed to give attendees both the scientific grounding to understand these impacts and the messaging tools to communicate them in ways that are honest, accessible, and built to bring more people to the table.
Thursday, May 21
10:45am - 11:45am
"The Missing Piece: Building the Data Foundation for Food Waste Solutions in Manufacturing"
Breakout
Manufacturing is one of the largest blind spots in food waste research—poorly understood and quantified, yet responsible for substantial losses and cascading effects across the supply chain. But that's changing. Over the past year, LIDD partnered with ReFED on a first-of-its-kind research effort to quantify and characterize food waste across diverse manufacturing settings and food types—findings that will power critical updates to ReFED's Insights Engine and its ongoing analyses. This session's panelists will explore what that data reveals: which solutions are most promising in manufacturing and what it takes to act on them. Speakers will zero in on two high-opportunity approaches—modified atmosphere packaging (MAP) and upcycling—examining their potential to prevent and divert significant volumes of waste while generating benefits that ripple across the supply chain. The session will be a case study in what's possible when rigorous research and cross-sector collaboration point the way toward solutions that are actionable and built to scale.