Food Recovery Initiative

The Office of Food Justice commissioned a Food Recovery Assessment to evaluate the food recovery landscape in Boston and help identify interventions to the City’s food recovery ecosystem to improve effectiveness, responsiveness to community needs and reduce wastage of surplus food. The assessment centered community engagement and stakeholder input, which were essential in shaping the report’s findings and recommendations. The report focuses on strategies the City can pursue to enhance food recovery efforts, ensuring surplus, safe-to-eat, and nutritious food is redistributed rather than entering the waste stream. The project plays a significant role in identifying how OFJ-along with our partners- move forward with the office’s strategies to expand the City’s work on food recovery over the coming years.

• View full report
• View webinar of assessment findings and recommendations in English
• View webinar of assessment findings and recommendations in Spanish

The Office of Food Justice opened a Healthy Food Access through Cold Storage grant in September/October 2024 for funding to enable the storage and distribution of perishable food, including recovered and donated food. Cold storage has emerged as a lynchpin to increasing access to fresh foods, especially fruits and vegetables. Lack of refrigeration is a key roadblock to increasing access to recovered food that safely meets the health code and extends shelf life. Funding cold storage will help increase the volume of food that is eaten instead of wasted, will help reduce greenhouse gas emissions from food going to landfills or incinerated and will also better the availability of culturally relevant foods. The grant's purpose is to fund strategies that expand refrigeration and freezer space throughout the cold chain to ensure food is fresh, safe and available to residents.

• View full grant information