Hannah Koski, August 23, 2021

An estimated 35% of food in the United States goes unsold or uneaten, the vast majority of which becomes food waste at significant environmental cost, while at the same time as many as 42 million people experience hunger. The potential environmental and social impacts of tackling food loss and waste are myriad, but for the business and sustainability leaders looking to take it on, the how-to isn’t always simple. Here’s how we at Blue Apron got started:

Approximately 35% of the food produced in the U.S. -- or 62 million tons -- goes to waste every year. And 40% of that food waste comes from consumer-facing businesses, including independent food retailers. By reducing food waste by just 20% over the next decade, the U.S. could prevent nearly 18 million tons of greenhouse gas emissions each year.

By now you have probably seen the headlines from the leaked upcoming IPCC report: “Crushing climate impacts to hit sooner than feared”. It might sound like something out of a Hollywood sci fi film, but as those who are living today with the record-setting heat waves, drought and fires in the West and the flooding in the South know all too well, it is anything but futuristic fiction.

We are taking stock of climate action in 2020 and what's ahead for the industry through a series of interviews with the 2020 National Co+op Grocers Climate Collaborative Awards winners. Erin Callahan sat down with Charlie Tilt, Co-Owner & CEO, and Stacy Kraker, Director of Marketing and Sales, at Hummingbird Wholesale, winner of the 2020 Outstanding Value Chain Engagement Award. (View our previous interviews with Numi Organic Tea, Outpost Natural Foods, Stonyfield Organic, and Imlak'esh Organics).

We are taking stock of climate action in 2020 and what's ahead for the industry through a series of interviews with the 2020 National Co+op Grocers Climate Collaborative Awards winners. This week we sat down with Britt Lundgren, Director of Organic & Sustainable Agriculture at Stonyfield, winner of the 2020 Outstanding Company Award. (View our previous interviews with Numi Organic Tea and Outpost Natural Foods).

We are taking stock of climate action in 2020 and what's ahead for the industry through a series of interviews with the 2020 National Co+op Grocers Climate Collaborative Awards winners. This week we sat down with Kurt Baehmann, Sustainability Manager at Outpost Natural Foods, winner of the 2020 Outstanding Company Award. (View our previous interview with Numi Organic Tea).

The CC's Erin Callahan sat down with Numi Tea co-founders Ahmed Rahim and Reem Hassani, winners of the 2020 National Co+op Grocers Climate Collaborative Influencer Award, to talk through the last year in climate action and what's ahead for the industry--including how we bring last year's racial justice movement into our climate work. They also shared some secrets of their decades' long experience driving collaborative action across the natural products industry.

In 2018, we shared details on Happy Family Organics’ regenerative agriculture farmer training pilot (see the full blog here). The program set out to provide free technical support and guidance to farmers in Happy Family Organics’ supply chain on how they could shift to practices that can help store more carbon in the soil, improve watershed health, support biodiversity while also improving overall soil health and land productivity. The project fit into the brand’s larger ambition to help reverse the climate crisis through supply chain reductions and on-farm carbon sequestration.

Two years later, they've completed a second pilot and have now launched a Regenerative Farmer Fund to provide ongoing support to farmers in their supply chain. We sat down with their Sustainability Director, Katie Clark, to learn more.

Mary Jane Melendez Chief Sustainability and Social Impact Officer,  General Mills

Our Director Erin Callahan caught up with Mary Jane Melendez from General Mills about their regenerative agriculture work and their plans for the future! Read their conversation below.

Nutiva was one of the first companies to join the Climate Collaborative in 2017 and has made five climate action commitments, to: Regenerative Agriculture, Energy Efficiency, Food Waste, Packaging, and Transportation. They are also a champion-level donor, helping catalyze action and resource provision to our network of 660 companies. We sat down with them to check in on their climate action, detailed in their new 2019 Impact Report.