The December webinar of the Consumer Food Waste Webinar Series was held on Monday, 12/16/24. This webinar was on food donations and featured two speakers: Heather Latino, Attorney and Clinical Instructor from Harvard Law School’s Food Law & Policy Clinic and Hélène Lanctuit, CEO of Share My Meals.

Heather Latino kicked off the webinar by explaining that the Food Law and Policy Clinic at Harvard Law School is tasked with educating their students on the role that law and policy plays in the food system, while also providing legal and policy advice to various organizations. She discussed their Zero Food Waste Coalition, which serves as a centralized source of information and resources related to food waste law and policies. Four major resources that are especially helpful when engaging in food donation were presented: Food Waste Legislative Tracker, ReFED Policy Finder, Achieving Zero Food Waste: A State Policy Toolkit, and Climate Pollution Reduction Grant Tracker.

Hélène Lanctuit then introduced her organization, Share My Meals, and explained how Share My Meals regularly utilizes the resources that Heather Latino presented to facilitate food recovery. Helene discussed how Share My Meals connects donors’ surplus prepared meals to nonprofits where the meals are distributed to those in need. She explained their unique way of using sustainable packaging, volunteers, and reliable tracking to ensure food safety throughout their processes. She spoke about their organization's current impact and recovery potential through initiatives like their Meal Recovery Coalition, an alliance that aims to bring NJ organizations and stakeholders together to make meal recovery the norm throughout the state.

Recording of the December Webinar can be found here: https://go.rutgers.edu/7e0ph7bx

The next webinar of this series will be on Food Safety on 1/13/24 at 12:30pm. We will feature Dr. Ellen Shumaker, Director of Outreach for the Safe Plates program at NC State University, and Rachael Jackson, founder of EatOrToss.com. We hope to see you then!

Register for the 1/13 Webinar here: https://go.rutgers.edu/5fehkcx7

Join the Consumer Food Waste Community of Practice page here: https://go.rutgers.edu/ijs0jpsn