Providing 150,000 hot meals per year to food insecure New Yorkers comes at a cost of 2,060 pounds of plastic waste each year from disposable cutlery.
Leader
Tyler Hefferon
Location
201 Allen Street New York, NY 10002
While food banks like ours greatly reduce CO2 emissions by taking significant steps to reduce food waste, the most difficult and costly barriers of creating a fully sustainable operation is the amount of "to go" supplies needed by our food distributions around New York City. Our budget has not allowed the shift to non-PLA compostable forks and spoons, but the increase in cost would allow us to reduce our annual plastic waste by just over 2,000 pounds. We hope to provide the dozens of distributions we provide good to around New York City with compostable cutlery in an effort to increase the sustainability of our operation.
We plan on switching over to fully compostable serviceware by May 1st, 2024, and will be providing these to all of our food distributions around the five boroughs.
The destruction of our environment is expected to increase food insecurity by vast numbers in the next twenty years. By taking these steps now, we are investing in the success of food programs much like our own that will be run by future generations.
