2025 ReFED Food Waste Solutions Summit
June 23-25, 2025 | Seattle, WA
Hyatt Regency Seattle
Dana Gunders
President
ReFED
Bio:
Deemed "the woman who helped start the waste-free movement" by Consumer Reports, Dana Gunders is a national expert who has dedicated her career to helping industry, policymakers, and consumers activate solutions to reduce food waste. Her landmark 2012 report "Wasted: How America is Losing Up to 40% of Its Food from Farm to Fork to Landfill" sparked a national dialogue about the consequences of food waste, and since then, she has continued to bring the issue to a wider audience through testimony before Congress, her Waste-Free Kitchen Handbook, and appearances in media such as The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, Time magazine, Fox News, Teen Vogue, PBS Newshour, and hundreds of other outlets. Before joining ReFED in 2019, she served as a founding Board member for the organization. When not worrying about it professionally, Dana spends far too much time convincing her two young kids to eat broccoli stalks and reinventing their uneaten lunches as family dinner.
Schedule
Tuesday, June 24
9:00am - 10:30am
[Mainstage Session I] Now Trending: Celebrating Recent Wins and Preparing for What’s Next
From the first national strategy to reduce food loss and waste and West Coast retailers reporting a 25% decline in unsold food to more than $900 million invested in food waste solutions, the past year saw some big wins for food waste reduction. As we look ahead, a combination of factors have the potential to shape how we eat and in turn, how much we waste. Our first mainstage session celebrates key accomplishments from the last year and dives into trends in consumer consumption and diets that will impact food loss and waste.
Tuesday, June 24
4:00pm - 5:15pm
[Mainstage Session II] Setting the Table: The Realities Shaping Our Work
We can’t address food waste without understanding the broader food system and the world in which that system operates. This session takes a step back to help frame up the context in which we accomplish our work—the policies, trends, technologies, and environmental issues that shape the system that produces (and wastes) our food.
Wednesday, June 25
12:00pm - 1:00pm
[Mainstage Session IV] No Time to Waste: Accelerating Progress to 2030
We’re just five years away from 2030, the target year for cutting food waste in half both in the U.S. and internationally—and while we have a lot to celebrate, we’ve still got a long way to go. There’s a wide range of solutions driving food waste reductions across the supply chain, but unlocking their potential at scale will require accelerated action from all food system actors. Our closing mainstage session features seasoned funders exploring the investment and funding landscape for food waste solutions, including what’s worked in the past and what needs to change for the future.