Food waste is responsible for 8-10% of annual global greenhouse gas emissions. Food insecurity, meanwhile, affects 47 million Americans, particularly those from marginalized communities. Food rescue is a promising solution that addresses these grand challenges simultaneously.
In collaboration with Feeding America, this project aims to improve MealConnect, Feeding America’s food rescue app, using artificial intelligence, data science, and optimization. The goal is to significantly reduce the amount of donated food that goes to waste, make allocation more equitable across receiving agencies, and automate decision-making to enable future scale-up.