SARATOGA SPRINGS — Hannaford Supermarkets announced that each of its 183 stores donates or diverts all food at risk of going to waste, sending no food at all to landfills.
The accomplishment, which is the culmination of a decade-long effort, makes Hannaford the first large-scale grocery retailer across its New England and New York market to meet this goal. The accomplishment also highlights that Hannaford is an industry leader in managing food waste and in working to address climate change.
Hannaford achieved the milestone with a multi-pronged approach focused on first preventing food waste through strategic product ordering and management at the store level. Hannaford associates are trained on how to responsibility handle food to avoid damage and exposure to temperature variation.
Each Hannaford store also strictly follows the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Food Recovery Hierarchy, which prioritizes the rescue of surplus product for donation to food insecure individuals – generating millions of meals donated annually. Other key elements of Hannaford’s food waste diversion program include donations to local farmers for animal feed and food-to-energy conversion efforts.
Hannaford’s adherence to this process kept 65 million pounds of food waste from reaching landfills in 2020.
The Environmental Protection Agency estimates that as much as 40 percent of all food in the U.S. is wasted along its journey from farm to table, eventually ending up in landfills and generating harmful greenhouse gases. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the U.S. per capita waste has increased by 50 percent since 1974 and the average person throws away 250 pounds of food per year.
For more information about Hannaford’s sustainability efforts, visit the website hannaford.com/about-us/sustainability
