Regina Harmon - Why 235 Million Tons of Food Goes to Waste While 47 Million Go Hungry

In 2023 alone, 235 million tons of food went uneaten or unsold in the United States. The number one item clogging landfills is not furniture, not plastic, not diapers. It is food. And 47 million Americans are food insecure at the same time. Regina Harmon, CEO of Food Recovery Network, returns to break down exactly how that happens, what her organization is doing about it, and how college students across 46 states are at the center of the solution.Food waste is not mainly a story about bad choices or careless people. Regina is clear on that. It is a story about a system configured to throw food away. Contracts with waste haulers already in place. Missed delivery windows that send entire tractor trailers of perfectly good cabbage back to the landfill. Date labels so inconsistent and confusing that 80% of households throw food away unnecessarily just to be safe. The infrastructure for waste is smooth and familiar. The infrastructure for recovery is not, yet. That is the gap Food Recovery Network exists to close.What Regina has built over ten years is a national organization with a genuinely local solution. Over 215 student chapters, trained in food safety, showing up in dining halls with gloves and aluminum trays, packaging surplus food and walking, biking, or driving it to the shelter, soup kitchen, or campus food pantry closest to them. She also walks Dominique and Christy through the Food Date Labeling Act, a piece of legislation FRN has championed for years that would federally standardize date labels and immediately open up millions of tons of surplus food to donation. No federal funding required. Industry already on board. The only thing missing is the political will, and Regina has thoughts on exactly how listeners can help change that.Episode in a glance00:10 Introducing the Food Recovery Network03:28 How students recover surplus food across 215 college chapters07:54 The scale of food waste and why so much surplus ends up in landfills10:41 The barriers preventing food donation and the laws that protect donors13:45 The Food Date Labeling Act and how you can advocate with elected officials20:20 Regina's leadership vision and how to support the Food Recovery NetworkAbout Regina HarmonRegina Harmon is the CEO of Food Recovery Network, a national nonprofit and the largest student-led movement fighting food waste and hunger in the United States. With a background in English literature and literary and cultural studies, Regina brings a deeply human-centered lens to anti-poverty work and food access advocacy. Under her leadership, FRN has grown to over 215 chapters across 46 states, doubled its student network to 8,000 members, and expanded its reach to over 400 locations where surplus food is actively recovered and redistributed.Connect with Regina Harmon and her workRegina Harmon on LinkedIn → https://www.linkedin.com/in/reginadmanderson/Food Recovery Network → foodrecoverynetwork.orgInstagram → https://www.instagram.com/foodrecovery/Send us a message!