Reducing and recovering food waste has major social and environmental benefits for our communities. It's also central to our mission of nourishing people, animals and the planet. Through our active membership in ReFED and the World Wildlife Fund's U.S. Food Waste Pact, we've solidified our commitment to an ambitious goal: reducing our food waste by 50% by 2030.
Our strategy to combat food waste is threefold: decrease, donate, divert.
Decrease
Decreasing our food waste starts with precise inventory control and smart ordering practices. When produce doesn’t meet our display standards, we repurpose it into prepared foods. And we continue to explore innovative ways to keep unsold food out of landfills and expand access to quality food, including through programs such as Too Good To Go opens in a new tab.
Buying imperfect produce from suppliers.
We help our suppliers prevent food waste by buying perfectly imperfect produce and incorporating it into some of our prepared foods, and juice and smoothie bars.
Putting our seafood to good use.
Fillets of fish are often cut to order, leaving portions unused. We’ll put these flavor-packed bits to good use in seafood soups, candied smoked salmon other delicious offerings in our Seafood department.
Repurposing our own produce.
When produce becomes damaged or bruised, the flavor is still as great as always. Our Prepared Foods and store Bakery departments prevent waste by using these items in prepared dishes and baked goods.
Donate
When preventing food waste in our stores isn’t possible, our team members prioritize donating leftover food to communities in need. We take great care to maintain quality and assure that donated food is safe to consume.
Food Donation Connection
By partnering with Food Donation Connection, we donate millions of pounds of safe perishable and nonperishable food to local food banks and food rescue agencies across the United States annually. In 2024 alone, we donated over 34.5 million meals to food rescue and redistribution programs. Through these donations, we supported over 1,000 unique food rescue and redistribution programs.
Nourishing our Neighborhoods
When Whole Foods Market launched Nourishing Our Neighborhoods in September 2020, we donated refrigerated vans to community-based food rescue and redistribution programs to transport food to communities across the United States and Canada. With 54 vans donated as of the end of 2024, Nourishing Our Neighborhoods represents one of Whole Foods Market’s greatest commitments with a significant, long-term impact. Each week, 20,000 pounds of food can be rescued per vehicle and 242,666,6667 meals can be shared over the 10-year expected lifetime of each van.
Divert
When unsold food can’t be consumed or donated, we work to keep it out of landfills through robust organic diversion programs such as composting, providing it to farmers for animal feed, or diverting it to anaerobic digestion facilities.
Anaerobic digestion is the process by which organic matter such as food waste breaks down to produce renewable energy or ‘biogas.’ By working with anaerobic digestion facilities opens in a new tab, we’re helping to turn food waste into renewable energy and generate economic and environmental benefits. We use the Grind2Energy system opens in a new tab, a customized, industrial-strength food service grinder, to cleanly capture our food waste before it’s transported to an anaerobic digester.
How We Stay On Track
We often work with our trash haulers to ensure that food waste is diverted properly and does not wrongfully end up in the trash. We ask our haulers to audit our trash loads and let us know when something is there that shouldn’t be there, such as plastic that could be recycled or food waste that could be composted.
