Most James Beard Awards are given out for food. This one was given out for food waste. 

This year, ReFED — the food waste nonprofit started by seasonal Vineyarders Jesse and Betsy Fink — won the James Beard Impact Award, a relatively new award given through the James Beard Foundation to organizations working to create more sustainable and equitable food systems. 

According the United States Department of Agriculture, a third of all food in the country is wasted. 

ReFED, which stands for Rethinking Food Waste Through Economics and Data, is a national nonprofit helping to build a movement to solve that problem. It takes an umbrella approach, providing funding, data and solutions all across the food system, from groceries stores to nonprofits, researchers and farms. 

“Food waste is one of these issues that touches so many different sectors and so many different players,” said Nate Clark, senior communications manager at ReFED. “It really...occurs across the whole entire food system, from the farm to the fork.” 

The organization convenes and connects these different sectors, all across the United States. 

“The things that could be solved by themselves are getting solved,” said Mr. Fink. “It’s when there’s different benefactors — and that’s actually one of the things that ReFED is discovering — that sometimes there’s misaligned incentives.”

“It’s just appropriate that it’s [addressing] food systems with a systems approach,” he said. 

The Finks began looking into food waste 12 years ago while running their organic farm in Connecticut. When delivering to the farmers’ market, Ms. Fink realized the amount of food that was “going out the back door,” ending up in the landfill and contributing to climate change.  

“Once you grow food, you realize how much goes into it, and you’re like, nothing should be wasted,” she said. “It looked like a huge problem to me.” 

Ms. Fink left out bins for organics at the market and brought back scraps to feed their chickens and pigs, and add to their compost pile. 

But the Finks also wanted to study the problem, so they created the country’s first comprehensive, consolidated report on food waste, detailing the problems and outlining the inputs — or investments — across the whole chain needed to solve the problems. 

There were people helping to prevent food waste, to recover food for pantries and banks, and to compost and recycle organics, but they weren’t talking to each other. 

“Nobody had ever put it all together, or even come up with a glossary and a terminology and consistency of the metrics to know what’s going on — the interaction between those three different…silos,” said Mr. Fink. 

Once the report was released, people from government organizations, for-profit businesses and nonprofit businesses wanted to know what to do next, said Mr. Fink. And thus ReFED was born. 

In its past 10 years, ReFED has grown to include many different programs. Underpinning the initiatives are trusted, reliable data and reports, informing solutions both targeted and zoomed out. 

ReFED has a catalytic grant fund that provides seed funding for innovative food waste solutions. For many of the projects they have funded — targeting restaurant food waste, farm produce surplus and methane reduction — ReFED’s initial investment helps innovators attract more funding and eventual scale solutions, according to Mr. Clark. 

“There are really some simple solutions that don’t require policy, don’t require a whole lot of change in behavior,” said Mr. Fink. “You just make it easier for people to do the right thing.” 

While the Finks’ initial report looked at food waste on a national level, every regional food system is different. The Finks have personally invested in the food system on the Island to support local food waste reduction efforts, particularly at Island Grown Initiative (IGI). 

IGI has used ReFED’s data and information for many of its programs. The local nonprofit uses ReFED’s website to inform food waste education in Island schools, and relied on the organization to shape their roadmap for a 70 per cent reduction of food waste on Island by 2035, according to Noli Taylor, co-executive director of IGI. 

A big piece of that road map includes building an on-Island commercial composting facility, a solution where IGI has hit roadblocks. At the annual ReFED Food Waste Solutions Summit — which brings together national players from across the food system — Ms. Taylor and Sophie Mazza, community food waste director at IGI, connected with another organization that is now helping them move forward with commercial composting. 

“It’s always so inspiring,” said Ms. Taylor, reflecting on the summit. “We come away with so many ideas.” 

“I describe food waste often as an octopus with tentacles and so many different issues,” said Mr. Clark. “You have hunger, you have business operations, you have food recovery, you have composting, you have agriculture. The ReFED Summit is one place where there’s content and conversation between all of those different players.”

After 10 years — and now with a James Beard award — ReFED is looking to transition from experimentation to implementation, said Mr. Fink. The organization is partnering with the James Beard Foundation to educate chefs on food waste and use them as megaphones to advance consumer awareness about food waste. 

“What needs to happen now is a broader acceptance of food waste, and getting consumers to even take it up to another level,” he said. “Chefs play an important role. People listen to chefs.” 

Food waste is one of the number one issues chefs think about, said Anne McBride, vice president of impact at the James Beard Foundation. 

“How do you minimize it from an environmental perspective and then from a cost control perspective also?” she said, reflecting on the organization’s recent award. “ReFED felt very natural from that perspective, considering their incredible leadership in the space, the fact that they are so impactful, they are so focused.”

The two organizations will work together to design research and applications that will best fit independent restaurants, a highly unpredictable business. 

In the past year, ReFED partnered with a consumer research firm and George Washington University to make a business case for restaurants that can offer customizable portions, directly targeting plate-based waste in the food service business. Sixty per cent of consumers and 75 per cent of GLP-1 users would prioritize such a restaurant according to their research, said Mr. Clark. 

“We’re out trying to actively promote that as a food waste solution,” said Mr. Clark. 

ReFED is also expanding its impact in policy making, he said. The organization is currently supporting a federal bill to standardize expiration dates. Fifty per cent of all food waste happens in the home, often because of misleading “sell by” and “best by” dates.   

This is an exciting time for food waste solutions, said Mr. Clark. With shrinking landfill space, growing insecurity and sky-high food prices, national and international organizations are targeting food waste as a tangible solution. 

“The thing about food waste is it’s solvable,” said Mr. Clark. “In times of chaos, as cheesy as it sounds…there’s power around the plate.”