Second Harvest Not Only Serves Up Hope—It Helps the Environment

Right after Thanksgiving, most of us are staring at fridges full of leftovers.

Others are staring into empty cupboards.

On a personal scale, it’s hard to connect the two—to match one household’s over-abundance with another’s needs.

But on a big scale, that’s just what Second Harvest Food Bank of Santa Clara and San Mateo Counties does.

When you get right down to it, being green is about making wise use of available resources. Here, Second Harvest shines in three areas: preventing food waste, efficient distribution and use of people power.

Rescuing Good Food

Much of the food that Second Harvest saves from going to waste also happens to be the healthiest, such as the 20 million-plus pounds of fresh produce distributed last year. Instead of plowing under perfectly good fruits and vegetables that local groceries don’t want, regional farmers in the Farm to Family program donate them. For pennies a pound, food banks cover just the cost to package and truck the produce in reusable containers.

Retail food items need rescuing sometimes, too. In addition to manufacturer seconds, food banks can accept products being pulled off shelves as their “sell by” dates approach and put them to immediate use. Much of the nearly 1 million pounds rescued in this way are items that are high in protein and the most expensive to purchase.

Smart Distribution Systems

Distributing 45 million pounds of food each year to a network of more than 300 partner nonprofit agencies operating at more than 650 different food distribution sites requires huge amounts of energy for refrigeration and trucking.

Organizing the system to bring food to more than 240,000 recipients per month in an easy way is the first key to conservation. On the Peninsula, the needy receive meals or grocery bags through nearly 200 partners in their neighborhoods. Those organizations include:

• Programs for kids, such as Boys and Girls Clubs in Half Moon Bay, Redwood City, Menlo Park, San Mateo, South San Francisco, Daly City and East Palo Alto;
• Senior centers in Daly City, East Palo Alto, Half Moon Bay, Menlo Park, Millbrae, Pacifica, Redwood City, San Carlos and San Mateo;
• Neighborhood Service Centers in San Bruno, South San Francisco and other cities; and
• Church- and synagogue-run programs in nearly every town and city on the Peninsula.

The second conservation tool is technology. For instance, staff use handheld devices to track physical location and poundage of food. Drivers operate one of the greenest truck fleets in the country, with refrigerated trailers that use plug-in power to reduce fuel consumption while off-road, high-efficiency cooling in all units and one of the first hybrid trucks available.

Reinvesting to Save More Green

Reducing fuel use and emissions also saves money, which can be invested into green initiatives that save more operating funds and, in essence, allow Secord Harvest to provide more service.

For instance, with the help of local businesses and foundations, Second Harvest was able to install 322 kilowatts of solar electric panels on the roof of its San Jose distribution center. In the first six months alone, power bills dropped 83 percent, saving Second Harvest more than $10,000 each month.

But the biggest investment in making sure that everyone in our community can put food on the table is not clever logistics or even technology. It's people.

When you add up the time that thousands of volunteers donate, their 297,755 hours of service save Second Harvest more than $5.7 million in equivalent personnel costs.

Renewable energy may cut the bills, but people power makes the whole system sustainable.

A mild-mannered civil servant by day, Mary Bell Austin uses her time away from her environmental work for, well, environmental play. Her adventures in healthy eating and her explorations into the wider green world can be found at Bite-size Green. Her column appears biweekly on Saturdays.