Guide to Gleaning
So you want to be a gleaner
Perhaps you’ve heard that American consumers, businesses, and farms spend $218 billion a year, or 1.3% of GDP, growing, processing, transporting, and disposing food that is never eaten. That’s 52 million tons of food sent to landfills annually, plus another 10 million tons that is discarded or left unharvested on farms. Meanwhile, one in seven Americans is food insecure.
We understand the desire to do something about that—in fact, that heartfelt desire is behind everything we do, and we’re so excited that more individuals and organizations are interested in reducing waste and want in their communities. At Urban Gleaners, we collect that delicious, fresh food before it can go to waste and we get it to people who need it. This guide serves as a starting point on your gleaning adventure to help you do the same—we’ll share where we began, how we grew, and what it takes to collect and redistribute over 60,000 pounds of food every month as a full-scale gleaning organization.
We know that gleaning alone is not going to solve our hunger problem. There are serious systemic issues facing us: widespread poverty, social injustice, and income inequality are just the start of it. But we know that individuals can make a difference. Whether you’re one person with a car and a dream or a full team ready to mobilize an army of hunger and food waste fighting volunteers, making a difference in your community is just a matter of getting started. We’ll show you how:
