Meal Recovery Coalition will scale statewide, reducing environmental impact of food waste and leveraging surplus meals available for donation.
New Jersey, July 22, 2024 – Share My Meals is proud to announce that they have received a $125,000 sponsorship from the New Jersey Economic Development Authority (NJEDA) to expand their ongoing meal recovery efforts and establish a statewide Meal Recovery Coalition. While food insecurity impacts approximately 10 percent of New Jersey residents, 40 percent of food goes unsold or uneaten and only one percent of this food surplus is recovered for donation. Each year, in the food service sector alone, an estimated five million prepared meals are being wasted in New Jersey.
Working with large employers across New Jersey, the Meal Recovery Coalition strives to recover all available nutritious, prepared meals from large cafeterias and other food services, preventing unnecessary landfills, as well as influence specific regulatory enablers of meal recovery and make meal recovery the norm in New Jersey. Share My Meals fights both food insecurity and the environmental impact of food waste by recovering and delivering healthy meals to local communities.
In 2023, Share My Meals recovered and served 62,000 prepared meals from 52 food donors and, working with their 25 nonprofit partners, distributed them to 1,500 food insecure individuals throughout New Jersey. As a result, 220,000 pounds of CO2 equivalent were saved from food waste diverted from landfills. The NJEDA sponsorship will equip Share My Meals to recover and distribute more meals and will support the founding of a statewide Meal Recovery Coalition to empower other organizations to undertake meal recovery.
“Share My Meals is grateful for the NJEDA’s sponsorship of the Meal Recovery Coalition which will make a substantial difference in fighting food insecurity and food waste in the local community. This support exemplifies Governor Murphy’s commitment to creating a stronger, fairer New Jersey, where every individual has access to nutritious food and no meal goes to waste,” explains Hélène Lanctuit, CEO of Share My Meals. “We look forward to announcing the members of the MRC in the fall.”
The Meal Recovery Coalition, convened by Share My Meals, will bring together organizations across the state that wish to take a leadership role in addressing food insecurity and climate change. The goal of the Coalition will be to make meal recovery the norm for food service across the Garden State, making New Jersey a national leader in strengthening food security. Members will include corporations with cafeterias, food service providers, hospitals, and educational institutions. The Coalition will partner with nonprofit organizations and state and local governments.
“Under Governor Murphy’s leadership, NJEDA is committed to supporting and scaling creative approaches to combating food insecurity. By employing meal recovery as a source of quality food for those in need, Share My Meals is demonstrating an innovative, cost effective, and environmentally friendly path forward,” said NJEDA’s Chief Executive Officer Tim Sullivan. “The NJEDA is dedicated to investing in initiatives that will improve food access for New Jersey residents, and that have the potential to serve as a replicable model for the rest of the nation.”
Share My Meals is implementing an innovative and robust approach, backed by technology, to recover meals and serve them to food-insecure families and individuals directly and through nonprofit partners safely and efficiently.
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Contact
Share My Meals | Assetou Gaudissard | Development and Communication Director
Phone: 347 820 4709 | Email: [email protected]
About the NJEDA: The New Jersey Economic Development Authority (NJEDA) serves as the State’s principal agency for driving economic growth. The NJEDA is committed to making New Jersey a national model for inclusive and sustainable economic development by focusing on key strategies to help build strong and dynamic communities, create good jobs for New Jersey residents, and provide pathways to a stronger and fairer economy. Through partnerships with a diverse range of stakeholders, the NJEDA creates and implements initiatives to enhance the economic vitality and quality of life in the State and strengthen New Jersey’s long-term economic competitiveness.
About Share My Meals: Founded in January 2020, Share My Meals is a nonprofit organization based in Princeton, New Jersey, and active across central and southern New Jersey, dedicated to addressing food insecurity and the environmental impact of food waste by recovering and delivering healthy prepared meals to local communities.
