Food Waste Prevention Week in Portland

This year Food Waste Prevention Week is from Monday, April 7 to Sunday, April 13. The point of this week is to bring awareness about food waste, encourage ways to prevent it, and to show you how to do so. The organizers consider this week to be not just an event, but a community-driven movement. This article is our contribution to that effort.

How Food Waste Prevention Week Started

In 2018, California launched their inaugural Food Waste Prevention Week, which focused on “raising awareness about the need for us all to get on board with changing the behaviors that lead to squandered food.” In 2020, environmental educator Elaine Fiore and her team in Florida met with those California founders and launched Florida Food Waste Prevention Week in 2021. And in 2022, it went national—including in Oregon.

According to the Food Waste Prevention Week website, in 2024 the campaign had more than 790 partners across 49 U.S. states and 22 countries, “who have joined forces to educate and inspire real cultural change on food waste!”

And How It’s Going

This year in Oregon there are 51 partners participating, including the Cities of Portland and Gresham, Zero Waste McMinville, Lloyd Eco District, DEQ, and more.

If you’d like to see the events happening in the area during Food Waste Prevention Week—and the month of April—you can check their Events page. Also, the aforementioned Lloyd Eco District is keeping their own list of events throughout the week (there is some overlap with the FWPW calendar).

Some Basic Ways To Cut Down on Food Waste

I know it’s easy to waste food; I am not immune from that behavior and can definitely do better. Here are some ways you can cut down on food waste starting today, according to the folks behind Food Waste Prevention Week:

• Plan your meals.
• Go to the grocery with a list.
• Avoid impulse buys.
• Use leftovers soon instead of tossing them in the trash. Or, freeze them if you can’t eat them right away.
• Implement proper food storage to help extend an ingredient’s shelf life.
• Compost! Either at home of through the city of Portland’s program.

All of this not only combats food waste, but keeps it out of the landfill. And this resource (PBS) from a reader, Why Food Date Labels Don’t Mean What You Think, is worth a read to understand those date labels, and hopefully avoid throwing out perfectly good food.

Of Note: Salt & Straw and Food Waste

On Friday, April 4 I learned that Salt & Straw has devoted their April to their Upcycled Food Series. “It all started when THOUSANDS OF POUNDS of perfectly tasty ingredients that would have otherwise gone to waste got scooped up and rushed to the Salt & Straw kitchen. Enter our R&D team who turned these incredible foods into some provocatively delicious flavors (… the rebrand of the century).”

The flavors are Chocolate Malted Potato Chip Cupcake (contains gluten), Coffee and Stone Fruit Marmalade, Salted Grapefruit Coconut Julep, Banana Parsnip Sherbet and Sourdough and Olive Oil Chocolate (v, contains gluten). You can get them at scoop shops, and online for local delivery and nationwide shipping

Additional Resources for Food Waste Prevention Week

I wanted to include some local organizations and resources which, thorough their work, help keep food waste at bay and remedy food insecurity. Here’s a perhaps somewhat unorthodox list of ideas/options. Note: This is not a comprehensive list, but perhaps we will make it one at some point.

Falling Fruit

This site is basically a map of locations where you can find the “overlooked culinary bounty of our city streets.” This ongoing project was built for and by foragers, and information on it is crowdsourced by people like you and me. It’s very easy to use and there is a surprising number of publicly accessible fruits, nuts, herbs, and more in our city. Pick it before it goes to waste! They also have an app you can find in the App Store or Google Play.

World Dumpster Map

AKA a Freegan Map, this is part of the Falling Fruit project, but about dumpsters and the potential bounty within. There is a shocking amount of food that is wasted in these dumpsters.

Portland’s Free Fridges

Portland, like a number of other cities, has a series of refrigerators and pantries around town that are open to anyone who is hungry. I have donated food to a few of them, thereby combatting food waste and feeding people. The fridges are very democratic; anyone can eat out of them. Here’s a map of where to find them.

Portland Community Cider Project/Fruit Forward

We’ve written about this project a few times. Basically if you are growing apples and pears in your backyard, and the fruit is in good shape (it doesn’t have to look perfect), you can donate it to this effort toward creating a community cider by the Portland Cider Co. Proceeds from the sale of the cider go to local nonprofits. Collection usually starts late summer/early fall.

They point out why donating fruit to their cider project combats food waste, plus some statistics: “Food loss and waste in the U.S. produces more greenhouse gas emissions annually than 42 coal-fired power plants, uses enough water and energy to supply more than 50 million homes, and requires an area of agricultural land equal to California and New York. By donating unused apples and pears, you are helping reduce food waste, which in turn will help reduce your carbon footprint!”

Portland Fruit Tree Project

The Portland Fruit Tree Project (PFTP) is a gleaning organization. They focus on helping Portlanders share the bounty of their urban trees instead of just letting the fruit drop and go to waste. Their mission is “to increase equitable access to healthful food and strengthen communities by empowering neighbors to share in the harvest and care of city-grown produce.”

You can have them come to your home and help you harvest your fruit—volunteers will come by, pick and collect the excess fruit, and donate it to organizations that feed the hungry. There will be a fee involved. More details can be found here on this harvesting option.

Or, you can pick it yourself and drop it off at one of PFTP’s public fridges. More details can be found here on the DIY option.

Also, did you know they support three public orchards in Portland? Gabriel Community Orchard in Southwest Portland; Parkrose Community Orchard in East Portland; Sabin Community Orchard in Northeast Portland. The volunteers care for the orchard and harvest its bounty, and even do some preserving of the fruit.

Too Good To Go

Too Good To Go is an app that alerts you to restaurants that have extras at the end of the day and would rather sell them at a deeply discounted price rather than let them go to waste. In my experience, there are a lot of bagels and donuts, but I have found produce there at times, too. It benefits businesses and consumers alike.

Urban Gleaners

As they say on their website, “At Urban Gleaners we collect delicious, fresh food before it can go to waste. And we get it to people who need it. Pure and simple.” They are a nonprofit based in Portland.

They are the recipients of food from grocery stores, corporate kitchens, university kitchens, and local farms. Then they sort the food and send it to their Free Food Markets in Multnomah and Washington counties. At the final point in the process, they bring food to places like schools, low-income housing, parks, and community centers, where the need is greatest. This is a very organized way of combatting food waste.

Food Preservation

Preserving food is another tried and true way of preventing food waste, and allows you enjoy produce picked at the height of its ripeness (e.g., canned tomatoes in February) at a later date. There are a variety of options: canning (water bath and pressure canning), freezing, drying, pickling, smoking, and fermenting.

To learn more about food preservation, here’s a helpful guide from OSU on preserving food. Kitchen Culture in SE Portland holds canning classes; Sarah Marshall is running a series of preservation classes this spring. And for those wanting to immerse themselves in the world of fermentation, the Portland Fermentation Festival in the fall is the place to be.

As someone who has done a bit of preserving, things I’ve had good luck with are canned crushed tomatoes, strawberry and raspberry jams, lacto-fermented kraut, and refrigerator pickles.

Here’s to combatting food waste—during Food Waste Prevention Week, and all year long!

Food Waste Prevention Week
Monday, April 7 to Sunday, April 13
Food Waste Prevention Week website | Instagram | Facebook

Updated April 4, 2025.