NEW YORK—Every day, bakeries, grocery stores, and restaurants take food products off their shelves to make room for new and fresh goods. Although these products are no longer deemed suitable for sale, they are not necessarily inedible.
Corporate policies for disposing of food vary from store to store, and laws vary from state to state.
Whole Foods spokesperson, Michael Sinatra, reported that New York City locations donate food, use old-but-still-edible food from their shelves in soups and other dishes in their restaurant, and compost the rest. Its Bowery store gave 55,000 pounds of food to the Bowery Mission last year.
Pret A Manger gives its leftovers to City Harvest, an organization that picks up scraps from all segments of the food industry in the city to feed to those in need. City Harvest will collect approximately 30 million pounds of excess food this year, which will find its way to 600 community groups.
