 All right. Hello everyone and good afternoon. My name is Charlie Severance here at Livewell, Colorado, and I will be moderating today's webinar. I have a few housekeeping items to cover before we get started today. First, we will be recording this webinar and sending a link to the webinar video and PowerPoint presentation via email to all webinar registrants. The webinar will also be posted on the Livewell, Colorado website. Second, we will have some time for questions at the end of the webinar. If possible, please let us know who your question is directed to when you ask it. And to ask a question, you can simply type it into the questions tab on your on-screen control panel. And now I am going to hand it off to Wendy. Good afternoon everyone. This is Wendy Peters-Mosketti, Director of Food Systems at Livewell, Colorado. And I want to welcome you to today's webinar, which is State and Community Models for Rescue and Redistribution of Fresh Produce. Here is our contact information. We will also be providing all of the presenters contact information once again at the very end of the presentation. Next slide, please. So just so you know what to expect today, this is our welcome right now. And we're going to have, we're going to hear from three different presenters today. One of the topics they will address will be emerging issues and opportunities to address food waste. So we will just sort of set the context a little bit about why we're talking about food waste and food rescue today. As many of you probably know, this is a pretty hot topic right now, actually internationally. So we'll set the stage a little bit by looking at what are we knowing and learning about food waste and recovery. Then we will have a presentation talking about the specific role of hunger relief organizations, and then some lessons learned from border food rescue. We'll try to leave at least ten if not more minutes for Q&A and discussion at the end. So our presenters today include these three lovely ladies. First off, we will hear from Dr. Dawn Billney McFadden, who has been a professor of agribusiness and agribusiness extension economists at CFU since 1997. There she specializes in analyzing markets and consumer behavior regarding local, organic, and other value-added food markets. She has served on a variety of boards and commissions throughout her career, which also include sharing the Colorado Food Systems Advisory Council, which we will mention a bit today. She also is a part of the leadership team of the CSU Extension Food Systems Work Team. After Dawn, we'll hear from Karen McManus, who is the food resource coordinator at Food Bank of the Rockies, the largest hunger relief organization in the state of Colorado. It also serves all the entire state of Wyoming, I believe. Her role is to source food, including fresh produce from retailers, distribution centers, farmers, ranchers, and more for distribution throughout the entire Food Bank of the Rockies service territory. Prior to that, prior to working in sort of food bank hunger relief work, it is important to mention that Colorado, Karen, was a Colorado Organic Vegetable Farmer for 20 years. And then finally, we'll hear from Hannah Dansky, who is the co-founder and executive director of Boulder Food Rescue. Boulder Food Rescue is a fairly new, thought four-year-old nonprofit in Boulder that works to redistribute healthy produce to low-income people. They do this through a participatory approach by working with low-income residents at housing sites to bring them in and make sure their voices are really integrated throughout their distribution and nutrition education program. She's also part of Boulder County's Healthy Eating Active Living Team, a team that came out of their county's public health improvement planning process. So without further ado, I am going to pass the baton to Dawn to kick us off. Thank you, Dawn. Thank you, Wendy. And I have to start today's webinar, at least my part of it, by admitting this is a relatively new topic for me. We had it brought to us as an emerging issue at the Colorado Food Systems Advisory Council, and so it certainly intrigued me to learn more since it was on the radar of so many people. But what we're really going to try to focus on today is what we've learned putting that issue brief together, including some information, iClean, that has been done in research at the national level. Next slide, please. So as many of you know, one of the big debates out there is, can we feed the world? And some people have kind of turned that question onto its ear and said, well, before we worry about growing any more food, should we be taking a look back at the food we waste that already is produced? And so the USDA Economic Research Service did a study that's actually pretty recent that we drew some of these slides from, and we give the link at the bottom of the slide if you want to go read the full report. But what was pretty shocking, at least to me, and you've probably all heard the statistic by now, is that the estimate is that we're wasting close to a third of the food that we do produce in the United States right now. And that translates to about 133 billion pounds of available U.S. food supply that makes it either to the retail level or to consumers' households that is not actually consumed by, consumed or purchased at those stores. And if you look even further into the statistics that are provided in that study, if you go look at it, the three major categories that the estimates show the ways it comes from are from the meat, poultry and fish parts of the store and household refrigerators, vegetables, and then dairy products. So I think what we found was the interesting interface here where those are all some of the more healthful foods. We also would agree we might want more of in the diet. It's not surprising they're the most wasted because they're also oftentimes the most perishable products. And because in some of the conversations we had with retailers, the inventory management of those products is sometimes quite challenging and labor-intensive, so it makes it costly for them. So the Economic Research Service went on in that same study to estimate that the value of that food, that was lost and not consumed, if you put a market price on it was $161.6 billion if you used retail prices. But again, more importantly for some people who are worried about food security, the idea that that's a whole lot of food that could be used to nourish households who are going food insecure that is instead going to no marketable use at all. So next slide, please. An interesting way to look at this, and I'm an economist so we do it this way, is also looking at some of the challenges just in the food system all together. Although this graphic, which was also drawn from a USDA publication, shows you the different stages of the food supply chain and how all of those activities that happen between a farm gate and a retailer make it so that a smaller and smaller share of the food dollar is going to farmers, you could use this exact same graphic to look at how the food system has evolved over the last century and so forth, where again, farmers used to do the sales directly themselves to get 100% of the revenue whereas as now, as we have had those sophisticated supply chains happen so that we can feed urban areas and so forth, more and more of those activities are done by middlemen and happen away from the farm and so a smaller share of the food dollar gets back to the farmer, but if you translate it to the same discussion we're having today, that's all different stages where food loss or food waste could happen as well. So I thought that was an interesting way to look at it. Next slide, please. And so in some of the literature that's out there and instead of just defining the problem, looking at ways that we might be able to address this problem with the systems approach, this food recovery hierarchy has been kind of developed and put forth by quite a few groups. And of course, the top parts of this hierarchy then are the things that are really the most preferable and so what you'll see in those top two hierarchies are some of the things we are going to hear about innovations then. So the most preferred is of course source reduction that we just don't have surplus food generated. It might be a more coordinated food policy for the country which you've probably heard as being lifted up by some people or simply some better planning paradigms where our supply chains are more coordinated to begin with. But second of all, it also means that we could do some diversions where some food that might otherwise go unused can get diverted to people who do have food security issues which we're going to hear about today. But even beyond some of the innovations we hear about today, there's also been some creative things done in our local food systems where some of this is now being used as animal feed to actually help create some proteins with food sources that otherwise would be composted. But as you see as we move down the hierarchy, what the real goal of is with most of the food waste recovery programs right now is to make it so that most of what is poorly planned and is produced in surplus and not consumed by U.S. consumers is going to at least some market use or some use that helps with the food security issue. Next slide please. So these same statistics and reports are outlined in the Colorado Food Systems Advisory Council issue brief on this topic and we have a link for you to go visit that site. Just to put out a little plug as Colorado State University took over some of the leadership with that council in coordination with Livewell and lots of other agencies. We've decided to put that issue brief series into our fact sheet series here at Colorado State University. But with that I'm going to turn this over to Wendy who's going to talk a little bit about how the rest of the webinar connects to some of the issues and innovations we raise in that issue brief. Thanks. Great. Thank you Don. This is Wendy again. And just to tag on to what Don was saying a little bit that the Colorado Food Systems Advisory Council is a governor appointed, state created advisory body and this is just one example that obviously is very relevant to today's webinar. The council has now issued five different issue briefs that are called advancing food systems issue briefs. And so as a follow up to this webinar we will send out links to all the issue briefs that the Food Systems Council has created. And the setup or the structure for the issue brief is pretty much the same in every one. And that each issue brief no matter the topic is really set up to provide sort of an overview and a landscape of the issue at hand and what does this look like in Colorado? So what is the state of the state of the issue that is being discussed? And then to kind of move into then what is the role for the state of Colorado and then what are some recommendations for the state of Colorado and its partners to advance this issue? So that's sort of what you can expect when you go to this issue brief. So next slide please as some specific examples. One area that is highlighted in that issue brief and we will hear a little bit more about today is this terrible crop donation act. So this is an area that we are really hoping to sort of learn from honestly when we talk about food rescue and redistribution and generally how to increase the availability of fresh produce in community food assistance sites is we want to learn from the charitable crop donation act which was state legislation passed in 2014 began implementation early in January actually in 2015 began implementation and the basic goal of it is to just incentivize farmers to more directly provide produce in a way that is financially beneficial to them to food banks and to food companies that work with food banks. So it allows producers to receive a 25% tax credit of the wholesale value of the food that they grow themselves and then donate to Colorado food banks in their pantry. So we provided a link here to the brochure where you can go for more information. I know Karen McManus will talk a little bit more but it is an example of something that at Livewell Colorado and many of our partners many many of our Livewell communities are really working to understand the benefits and the outcomes of this kind of policy and then what we could do to enhance this kind of policy and educate more around this kind of policy. Next slide please. So just as another example of what you will find in the state council's issue brief are as I mentioned sort of a series of recommendations or more considerations or potential projects that partners in Colorado could consider. So here we list just a few examples of those. Some of the things that we highlight include ways to work with food retail partners to have more imperfect produce campaigns. A lot of these mostly have come out of international work actually most imperfect produce campaigns that we've seen thus far have been out of Europe but there's some really very appealing and exciting examples out there of how to market a campaign and to showcase imperfect produce. So the ugly carrots and the sad lemon or produce that maybe doesn't look so great but it's still actually just as healthy and just as edible. There could be some pilot projects done with retailers to potential new incentives for healthy food recovery. So we're also trying to work to understand that is there other work we could do sort of at the store level that would incentivize and make it easier to do more redistribution. And you'll hear more about our food recovery obviously from Hannah later today. And then also there's some thoughts and ideas in the issue brief about could we even tackle some federal level policy and that the federal tax deduction, a lot of this is really decided at the federal level and right now the way it's set up is the federal tax deduction for food donations really incentivizes the donation of really what's just called edible food, wholesome and edible food which honestly can mean pretty much anything. So if you can eat it it's wholesome and edible. So we explore some ideas there about how could we expand that perhaps to change that incentive to be directed more to fresh product or what we consider possibly healthier food items. So just wanted to flag a few of the issues that you might see highlighted if you want to go read the issue brief in more depth. And I'm going to pass the baton now to Karen McManus. Thank you Wendy. Good afternoon. I first want to thank LiveWell for the opportunity to participate in today's webinar. As Wendy and Dawn know I love talking about this subject. I've spent a good portion of my adult life working with food first as a farmer growing it and now as a food banker asking for it back. So with that let's get started. These are some brief facts about Food Bank of the Rockies. As you can see we have a very large service territory. While our main location is in Denver Colorado we covered 30 counties in the state of Colorado and the entire state of Wyoming. We have three facilities and about 600 partnering agencies. We pick up from about 230 retail pickup locations. And last year in our fiscal year 2015 we distributed just under 54 million pounds of food, 16% of which was fresh produce. We serve about 400,000 individuals with the help of our agency partners and half of those individuals are children under the age of 18 who have no idea where their next meal might be coming from. Some of our current fiscal year goals as it relates to this webinar. We hope to increase the amount of fresh produce distributed from 16 to 21%. We plan to purchase produce from Colorado farmers in addition to receiving donations. We have designated a portion of each agency delivery as fresh produce which we call our push model. We distribute more produce through mobile pantries now and we have increased participation in the agency retail partner program. Our fiscal year runs from July 1 through June 30 and as you can see produce plays a very large part in our goals moving forward. The first step to achieving our goal is to increase the amount and the types of retail donations coming into the food bank and our agency partners. As it relates to working with retail partners we have a store donation coordinator on staff that spends 100% of her time on grocery rescue with a minimum of 80% of her time physically in the stores. Most retailers that we work with have corporate guidelines with Feeding America who is our parent organization. There are about 206 Feeding America food banks across the country. These guidelines, while different from one retail chain to the next, spell out what can and can't be donated. Even though the guidelines are generated at the corporate level for each retailer we find that many employees at the store level are either unaware of the guidelines or the specifics within them. Not only do we educate them on their guidelines but we also spend time educating them on why donating is the proper thing to do. We view this as a partnership and express our appreciation and gratitude with each and every visit as well as through year-end certificates, thank-you cards and appreciation events. The power of a simple thank-you cannot be overstated. In my experience gratitude truly equals success. When our retail partners are shown appreciation we see an increase in involvement, embracement of the donation program and ultimately increased donations. And finally the receding process is very important to our donors as this is what they use for their tax credits. A receipt is generated for each and every pickup and sent to the store as well as to their corporate headquarters and Feeding America. Something that is fairly new at Food Bank of the Rockies is placing our agency partners directly into our stores for the retail donation program. This has been a win-win for everyone. Upon identifying agencies that are located near a retail partner and have the capacity to pick up donations and to store products at their facilities we then assign them to a particular store and make those introductions. Having agency partners pick up directly from the stores instead of our Food Bank alleviates the amount of times the donation needs to be handled. Because agency partners are able to service the stores more often than our FDR drivers we see the donations increase. The stores love this concept because they know their donations are staying right in the community where their stores are located. We provide equipment to the agencies for safe transport and handling as well as weighing of donation items. And additionally we have agency capacity for those agencies needing infrastructure upgrades such as larger coolers and freezers. This slide shows our 3-year goal to invest in our agency partners and their needs at their facilities. In the first year it will be just over $100,000 and moving up to about $300,000 in fiscal year 2018. Food Bank of the Rockies recognizes that we play a very large part in the overall success of our agencies. Aside from the partnerships with retail stores we source produce from a variety of other entities. As Wendy referred to in the beginning of the webinar the Colorado Charitable Crop Donation Act went into effect in January of this year. Farmers are very generous people and it's our hope that this tax credit is a way for us to give back and of course to say thank you. The five Feeding America food banks across the state work together under the name of Feeding Colorado in a variety of ways. With the hope that we can share products both donated and purchased with our sister food banks collectively we distribute well over 100 million pounds of food throughout Colorado each year. We meet regularly to discuss our efforts give each other support and make future plans. A fairly new concept and one that I am extremely excited about is partnering with our extension agents and agricultural researchers across the state to capture the harvest so to speak that is being generated from their fields. We have already seen great donations of peaches, apples and potatoes coming our way. There will be a lot more to come from this project which is currently in the infancy stage so please stay tuned. Attending winter agricultural conferences is a way for us to get the word out about the work we do and the amount of people that are being helped across the state when it comes to hunger relief. As we continue to increase the amount of fresh fruits and vegetables in our distribution these conferences provide us with a captive audience and allow us to help those conversations with the farmers and ranchers directly. And finally plan growing is similar to the concept of grow a row. We ask producers to consider planting extra acreage whenever possible without spending excess funds to do so. The best practices for harvesting such acreage involve cleaning groups who are willing to go in and harvest for the food banks. This is a great volunteer opportunity for all ages and a wonderful way to get children involved and to teach them not only where their food comes from but also the importance of community service. While other food banks across the state have had a produce budget in place for years Food Bank of the Rockies only implemented the current budget in the beginning of this fiscal year which was July of 2015. Prior to this date we relied primarily on donations and since the implementation we have been able to purchase produce from a variety of growers across the state giving them yet another avenue in which to sell their product. This speaks directly to the producer triple bottom line, profit, people and planet. I'm pleased to say that since August 24th of this year we have distributed 485,484 pounds of fresh produce to our agency partners and that's just in a matter of a few months. So here are a few ways that you can help the cause. Ask your local retailer if they're donating and thank them for that. Support your local food pantry by giving food, funds and time and participate in gleaning activities in farmers' fields. Finally, I've used the word partnership many times today as it relates to our agencies our volunteers and our donors. Food Bank of the Rockies could not do the work we do each and every day so it's a great partnership. As often is the case for me after listening to O'Avonar, I have questions I'd like more information about. If this is the case with any of you listening today please reach out to me. I'd love to talk to you and thank you so much. Great. Thank you, Karen. This is Wendy again before I pass off to Hannah. I just want to do a quick reminder too that if anyone does have questions for any of us please feel free to think of them. They will roll in and then we will handle them and then direct them to the correct person at the end. So as you think of them feel free to type in your questions or even just comment for discussion. That's all fair game as well. So now I'm going to pass it over to you, Hannah, with Boulder Food Rescue. Great. Thanks for having me on the webinar. I'm basically going to tell you a little bit about Boulder Food Rescue how we work with donors and recipients and our Food Rescue Alliance Network in the next 15 minutes. And I'll pretty much tell this story kind of by telling our story. Like Wendy said earlier we're four years old. So we're a very new organization and we've been operating in a pretty grass-root kind of way very much based off of like evidence-based practices. We started when we were a group of people basically that were learning about food ways talking to grocery stores talking to our local food bank community food share and trying to understand why there are gaps in food redistribution in Boulder. Through those conversations and some research that we put together with community food share we found that some of the gaps were times that the food bank could operate the time that it takes for the food to go back to the food bank and then back out to recipient agencies certain things like this. And so basically our idea was let's come up with a model that fills the gap kind of left behind here in Boulder and try to work really closely with grocery stores and we created this model to go directly from a grocery store through a recipient agency to have produce that's more damaged, that's more perishable get there something that can't survive three days can get there in 30 minutes and be put out on the shelves right away. And so that's kind of how we started very contrary to the 54 million pounds of food that we just ate a million pounds so we're operating on a much smaller scale but we're a volunteer run organization that does our food redistribution by bicycle. Cool, so next slide. So instead of little I figured I'd put some squished up pictures in here working with retail stores. So the way that we started was talking to one store and I think a couple little points to put in here on what it's like to work with retail stores is that it takes a lot of persistence and it takes a lot of calling back and really working with a manager to find a system that works best. So similar to what Karen would say we have a staff member that this is their sole responsibility. This is huge for doing food redistribution. We also have a staff member that's consistently working with our local grocery stores. So managers at the store our experience has been very busy and coming in and saying hey we want you to do more work in order to get this food out to the community it can very easily be put aside and so really our experience has been like once we have that meeting and we've been successful at convincing them why this is important and really trying to make it as easy as possible for the grocery stores to want to donate. So it's like we're focused on specifically on produce on more perishable items will come every day and the way that we work with them is that we have grocery stores put all of their produce that they're calling aside and they will sort through it and so the picture on the right here is like a good example of one of our stores that has just like put it all out for us and we're in the process of sorting through that for them and so that way they're not picking through every banana in the banana bunch and our volunteers are responsible for doing that. Another piece that we've found is that working with somebody in the store that knows what's going in and out so the receiver for example is a good contact so once our relationship is set up then we have a main contact in the store either the receiver or produce manager who is really irresponsible for making sure that both Boulder Food Rescue and Community Food Share in our case are receiving the appropriate foods that should be going to each of us and are kind of our main contact. Another kind of thing that Boulder Food Rescue does that's a little unique is that we're a little bit more I guess flexible in that if a grocery store has something happen they can call us and we'll show up. It's not the easiest thing to do and it's definitely a logistics thing that we're trying to figure out all the time but we want to be on chance so that say like a cooler breaks or it's holiday or something goes wrong and they know that they can call us and we're going to figure something out to try to rescue that extra food that might have come up all of a sudden. So we specifically focus on produce and that really enables us to work within a food safe manner on cut fruits and vegetables that don't have like a lot of strict regulations or technical things that we have to do. If we are working on prepared foods and it gets a lot more complicated so it's been really easy for us to specifically focus on uncut produce and like I said we are consistently working with a grocery store to kind of make this as smooth as possible and when things aren't going well they know that if we call us we can make sure our volunteers are showing up we're also going in and doing training with the stores and making sure that they know that we're here and where to put food and what to do on the daily. Another kind of interesting thing that we're getting involved in is that we were contracted out by the city of Boulder to do a food waste audit and so we're part way through this food waste audit it should be wrapped up from December to give you, I can't put the food waste audit up yet because it's not published yet but a little sneak peek some of the things that we found is that education is huge there's a lot of lack of education within grocery stores around food safety, the Bill Emerson Good Samaritan Act and liability around the tax incentives that they can be offered if they don't have food another thing is that there's a large discrepancy between managers and employees in their perceptions of how much food is going to waste so there's differences from the people on the ground and the people that are trying to manage on the inside of what's actually happening and so all of those things are going to lead us to like going in and having consistent contact and doing more education at the stores is an important thing of course so next slide on the recipient set of things we are doing some unique things as well in order we donate about half or so of what we pick up to kind of those organizations that are traditionally thought of as agencies redistributing food food pantries organizations that serve the homeless community et cetera so that's part of what we do is we're trying to supply produce to organizations to minimize their budget and increase their access to fruits and vegetables the other kind of part of what we do what we call the grocery program is we work directly with organizations that serve low income people but aren't necessarily serving them food so we started by reaching out to organizations like the Boulder Housing Partners or Family Learning Center, people that can work with these communities that aren't focused on food or for the summer income housing for example and through these connections that we made with these organizations we really come to make relationships with residents at these low income housing units so now we take directly to low income housing units and then the residents at these units are basically involved in the program by taking the food redistributing that food out to their neighbors and being a part of that process so we work really closely with the individuals that are receiving the fruits and vegetables that we're donating. This is an example, this picture is an example of one of our sites that people kind of looking through as soon as a lot of produce got put onto one of the tables what's cool about this model is that we're working with individuals that like building trust with individuals in order for them to really have a trust in how we do things. Many of them call us and let us know about systems and what food works and what food doesn't and all sorts of things and each site looks really different because it's run by the leaders in these communities and so some of them we drop off food, they do all of the work and we leave and that's the relationship in which they wanted to I guess establish and then there's other sites where the individuals are we have like really close relationships and they call us and host meals and tell our volunteers to come in and so an example of that would be like the low income senior sites that we work with and now we have about a meal a month at a senior site and the individuals there have told us like just how cool it is that we have this intergenerational bonding that's happening and we're really like building community around it. So it's kind of a participatory approach where we're really working with the individuals and trying to provide support on the back ends if that fits their needs. Next slide. So this is a picture I just re-emphasized that it kind of looks different at different sites. This is an individual that basically stores all the food for people first and then has people come down and shop. So I thought that was kind of a cool picture to show. So next slide. Food Rescue Alliance program. We kind of when we started this organization we were like let's you know this is food waste is an issue everywhere for the securities is an issue everywhere. Boulder is a very unique place where we have a lot of community support and bike lanes and we're going to like implement this model here in Boulder but how can we help other people implement similar food rescue models in their cities if they're interested in doing that. And so throughout their last four years we've kind of come to grow this program that we now call Food Rescue Alliance where we work with other individual leaders in their communities to develop programs that are similar and have similar values but look very different in different cities because food waste is happening in every city and food insecurity is happening in every city it doesn't look the same in every city and there's different communities that have different relationships to food and so what we do is really work with individuals that care about redistributing healthy food, that care about participatory approaches to to doing food rescue and that care about like really researching their city and finding like what's best in working with those communities and then we share next and best practices and so we have a network of food rescue organizations all that have similar values and similar approaches but look very different from one another and in that I think like the diversity of our models is encouraged in a way so that you know when people contact us from a city like Chicago then it's not us here in Boulder saying like oh yeah you should do it exactly like we do in Boulder because Chicago looks so different but if they're running up against similar problems then maybe let's say Denver Food Rescue is happening then we can connect those people and individuals and organizations that to basically share practices so we have workshops that we host every other week or every other month and then we have conference calls that we host and we can see you know what comes up and what people are kind of facing and come up with ways that we can brainstorm solutions to that as a network we're currently working with cities in color spring December, Comer City, Jackson Hole, Seattle, Managua, Nicaragua Ontario, Charlotte and a group in the Philippines now so it's kind of worldwide but it's a way in which that we can kind of best support each other and all and we're all learning from each other it's like different organizations basically having their niches and the things that they excel at and they're willing to teach each other what they excel at and so it's anything from participatory structures to fundraising tactics to volunteer, engagement and retention and so it's been a critical process of really trying to help organizations or individuals that are passionate about figuring out a solution and doing research in their city to really understand what's going on and helping them move from that understanding to creating solutions and implementing new models for community redistribution. Next slide. So depending on what you want to do next put some options for you if you're interested in starting here on FoodFU you just want to know more about what the FoodFU Alliance is doing you can contact Helen Catech who is our FoodFU Alliance coordinator she's the co-founder of FoodFU in Seattle FoodFU and is an incredible resource for really doing this initial work of doing research in your community figuring out what's going on and trying to figure out what the best kind of solutions are for you whether that's starting on FoodFU or help another organization do FoodFU maybe support a food pantry in doing their own FoodFU whatever that looks like. We also have a Start Your Own FoodFU guide that we put together a while ago that is in this link here I mean, as an individual when you can just talk to your local grocery store and see what they're doing they may say that they're already donating and that could be sure or not but really starting that conversation and as a as a concerned customer is really going to help bring awareness to the issues at the grocery stores and also talking to nonprofits in the area figuring out what their needs and desires are for redistributing healthy produce to their community. I think that's the key to really trying to do this good work is really figure out what's going on and really how you can be the best collaborator in your community. Finding leaders in the community that want to do food redistribution so those are kind of the start of developing some type of program and like I said maybe what comes up is something like helping secure donations for food pantries. We're like starting this agency empowerment program and that's like a really amazing way in which we can get like produce to people as quick as possible really like helping support all of the nonprofits that are doing a lot of work and maybe it's like helping stores reduce their food waste through other tactics and so there's a variety of things that you can do as an individual and if you're interested in starting food if you're just learning more about food redistribution in general the ins and outs of logistics what it's like to as volunteers to bike food around anything around those lines you can definitely contact me as well. I think I'm done. Great, thank you so much Hanna. Also I'll put in a little plug for how I can help food rescue as well. I've only done this once but this summer I did do a run. I did a distribution on a bike with my two year old daughter in Boulder. We actually went to two different sites so now that we have really active food rescues in Denver and Potter Springs in Boulder you can also just go out and get on a bike and try it out as volunteers as well. Totally. It was fun. So I am going to open it up now to see if there are any questions. I haven't seen any questions come in thus far and we have plenty of time to address any questions or comments or discussion items you have so if you have questions please type them in now so we can see them come in and while we're waiting for some questions to come in I actually have a question back for you Hanna is that I'm sure you get this question a lot through food rescue alliance as well. Obviously starting in Boulder you have access to an incredible volunteer pool because you have the largest state university in the state right there so you have a lot of young and eager students so I'm just wondering in terms of volunteer pool either in Boulder or elsewhere but where have you had luck finding non-students? If you're of a non-university city where else have folks found luck in really accessing and creating a large volunteer pool? That's a good question it would be cool to have the other food rescue leaders on the line to kind of see what they've done. Having a university is a blessing in a personal way. We get a lot of volunteers that way but also a volunteer engagement this seasonal in the summers and over breaks we have it drop off. We found a lot of volunteers in the community that lives here really a big part of them have been through getting some media attention from the very beginning when we first started this people caught on to it and they're like I love biking so they've contracted us and stayed with us from the beginning. The part about biking really came from this environmental perspective and we're already kind of bike advocates but we definitely appeal to a very specific community of people that are very much bike commuters and bike advocates so a lot of our volunteers just want to stick around for that reason other ways that we've gotten volunteers and also part of that too is that we're very showy in that way. People see us we're biking down the street when you bike right through downtown and we have 200 pounds of food on your trailer people see that and are like what is that and so we've been found a lot just because we're out and about and there's a huge community of people that are spreading the word and come to us through word of mouth so Boulder is definitely kind of a unique place in that way. I think working with other organizations and trying to best fit volunteers for kind of what they want to do has been really helpful so if we have volunteers for example that want to come in and do like a big day where they bring in a big group we don't really have the infrastructure to set that up so we refer them to Community Food Share and they can go in there and really work in a warehouse and put in a lot of time and so I think building more collaborations with other organizations that kind of fit volunteers to the things that they want to do. Community Cycles or Local Bike Co-op also is another resource for us to share volunteers and help promote each other and so I think that's kind of been the biggest way that we've found volunteers is really just through building collaborations in the community. Great, thanks and we have a lot of great questions coming in. I'm excited to try to get to all of them and Nohanna, one quick question right back to you before I move to our next question is will everyone be able to get a copy of the food waste audit? Will not be made public when it's available? Yeah, so we will publish that and make it public and I can send it to you and me and you can send it out if people are interested. Perfect. So that can be not an immediate follow but we can send that out through all of our networks and through webinar participants as well. So we had a question coming in about a comment too about that there are huge environmental issues around food waste and then a question are environmental organizations potential allies to help expand this work? So one quick comment that we did imply that we can certainly follow up with resources is that nationally, federally this leadership is coming out of the EPA, out of the environmental protection agency so they have been doing increasing amount of work getting the federal government to make pledges to decrease food waste and pushing a lot of resources in the national and the regional EPA level about how we all can sort of address food waste issues ourselves, not just organizationally but residential as well so we can certainly share some of those resources as a follow up today but then also back up to our presenters do you, Karen, do you have any thoughts or experience on that in partnership with environmental organizations? Thank you Wendy, yes. I have people call me regularly that are working with those types of organizations and mostly what we discuss is composting and what we can do because even at food bank the Rockies we have food waste and while it is very minimal at our food bank it is about 2 to 3% of the overall amount that we bring in and we struggle with what to do with that composting is very expensive so we have had most recently people that are doing studies in the environmental arena to find out what other creative ways we can use this food waste whether that be for animal feed a variety of different ways so yes, I think that they are great allies to our cause and I would encourage more of them to reach out to us. And Don, is there anyone else or any other agency or partnerships that we failed to mention on the environmental side? I was trying to think if I have seen anything pop up but I actually was surprised that EPA was the one who I have seen be the most visible here but I don't believe that I have seen this become a new push for the Natural Resource Defense Council or anything so if I find something I will make sure we get it in our CSU Food Systems Letter but I actually have not seen I definitely think the question is framed right I think we should be developing allies in that sense but I don't see that it has happened yet You actually did remind me that NRDC actually did come out with a study in a publication looking at some data on food waste a couple of years ago I don't know if that has been updated but we can certainly send that out as well So I just wanted to acknowledge a comment that came in that sounds fabulous so there is an emerging partnership between Groundwork Denver and Denver Food Rescue working on a phone application for people who have extra produce so kudos to that new partnership it sounds fabulous and then a follow-up question was how can we increase public access by jamming jarring and generally preserving local food for the winter so you probably all have answers to that but Karen I'll start with you what you've seen Well I would say that one of the great leaders in the Denver community is produce for pantries Dana Miller's organization and I would encourage this person to reach out to produce for pantries not only are they doing great work sourcing and rescuing food and everything else but they are just a great resource overall and I bet that they have some good answers to this and Hannah have you do you have local partners that you have worked with that are focusing on for the food preservation training and capacity building for residents not on a large scale we've done like a couple you know food preservation workshops here and there over the last couple years but no way that I know of in Boulder is doing a lot of education around this in particular Yep and I had one other comment on that our Palisade location which is on the western slope near Grand Junction we purposely looked for a facility in Palisade to take advantage of all the fruit that has grown there we were awarded a grant to purchase three very large industrial food dehydrators and we have a full-time employee with volunteers that are using that 40 hours a week to dehydrate fruit that we bring in from our western slope growers and pack those into our kids tote program so if anyone wants more information on that I know we recently hosted a live well group and we've had a lot of excitement and energy from that tour that we had I am happy to supply any information Great and we will also in a follow-up we'll send out links to produce for pantry which Karen mentioned we can send some links out to some canning preservation sort of capacity building classes that we know about Dawn do you have any other thoughts about public access for canning and jarring and food preservation resources? Well two things on that regard you know first that's kind of why I brought up some of the ways this overlays with the fact that if we start thinking of food systems as being under a more planned or coordinated systems where you know we do have an emerging set of produce producers who are hoping to scale up to being wholesale but you know we we love to see this kind of frame the conversation too about you know before those people plant any of their acreage them kind of knowing there are eventual market outlook so they literally just don't have this surplus happening you know but I think one of the models people have been talking about is if you know you could talk to some of the wholesale accounts from the schools obviously the most common one where they can't afford the price points of some of what's being marketed directly in our state but if there was a pre-negotiated kind of situation where if there was surplus or some of these seconds that they know they could pre-negotiate a more competitive price on you know that would again divert this out of the waste stream you know and the second is I think we are starting to see a lot more openness across the state of having some of these already existing commercial kitchens find creative ways to open up their space to be able to be used by people who otherwise wouldn't have commercial kitchen space and with the idea that there needs to be new innovative models of how rather than paying for some of those facilities in the more typical commercial way with rent they can maybe pay with some of their their products or the labor that's been to put that up but I think we're only seeing the tip of the iceberg where people are experimenting with this but I think it would be a very cool notion for there to be more pilots on and more good case studies and examples that people could try to grow from great thank you a note we're good one logistical question that came in just to clarify if we will be sending around as a follow to all registrants a link to this webinar we'll put it on the website we'll send up all these resources that we're mentioning as well there was one question directed to Karen about how local food pantries can reach out to food bank to find out if we can work directly with grocery rescue at the local store yeah Michael you can my contact information is at the end of my slides feel free to reach out to me directly if you are with an agency that is an agency partner of food bank of the Rockies you can also reach out to our agency relations department who you probably already know and we have a few truncated and they got cut off questions and comments that came in so I apologize if there are folks who are sending comments or questions they were not fully addressing specifically to Becky Alexander and Ruben years all got cut off but I'll try my best to address them I think there was one comment that came in stressing there's an active sort of local and federal agency partnerships going on to address food waste that looks like it's included in the USDA and EPA and the state department of public health and county and state offices looks like there was even a food waste focus meeting just this morning so whoever submitted this comment if you could please send us some more information if that's something we could share back out to the group about how our state and federal agencies are already pro-actually mobilizing around this that would be great so please send us more information I'm trying to see if there are any other unique questions that have come in I think we have addressed most of them if we've missed your question please feel free to type it in right now again as I said some of them got truncated I apologize is that the right words they got cut off there was one question that came in I think someone was trying to ask a question about their town as a recipient of Food Bank of the Rockies mobile pantry and then we lost the rest of that question but I know Karen if you wanted to comment at all on the mobile pantry work that you are doing yeah Alessandra I'm sorry I don't know what the rest of your question was however I will say that with our new produce budget at Food Bank of the Rockies our mobile pantries will be seeing more and more fresh produce on those pantries I know that historically in the past there have not maybe been enough fresh fruits and vegetables but now we are able to get that good food out so thank you fabulous so if you have any last minute questions or ones you want to enhance or add actually we just got another one coming in if we have time could we please explain the regulations what regulations exist on getting food from the local grocery store and if they could donate food that has already expired what a very great question and a lot of national-international discussion on this right now Karen do you want to tackle that again? Sure each grocery retailer who has donation guidelines with Feeding America it's all written a little bit differently however most of the grocery stores say that they are not able to donate once we get past that sell-by-date and I know nationally we are looking at that sell-by-date versus use-by-date food banks and food pantries actually have several extra days depending on what product it is to redistribute that product out however we do need to honor the guidelines for the grocery stores and the other part of that question once again local grocery stores if they are having have corporate guidelines with Feeding America they are only allowed to work with Feeding America food banks or Feeding America agency partners of food banks unless it comes to breads and baked goods only so there are definitely some strict requirements there however we have a lot of agency partners and as HANA's organization as well they are able to pick up that great product as well from the grocery stores also I will mention and we can send out information about this afterwards is there is a potential national piece of legislation that has not been formally introduced yet representative Henry has drafted some language to introduce a federal piece of legislation around food waste that actually would sort of address this issue around the sell-by-date and would sort of allow some more flexibility around that about what we can actually sell and donate and use and just clarifying some public education about truly what is safe and edible and what isn't what sell-by-dates really mean and what they don't so anyway that has not been formally introduced yet but we can send out information about that for anyone who wants to kind of track potential federal legislation and then we did get a bit of an update about there is a forming in an open group that really wants to work on local and regional action on reducing food waste that includes both it sounds like public and private partners and they talked about sort of the USDA new sort of food waste production goals and also they just sound like they discussed fingers and bills so EPA is currently hosting the meetings for that and it sounds like a lot of folks that we talked about around the call today have been a part of that and we will be following up with more information about that and then we can move on to the next slide please if there are any last comments or questions roll in with them or requests we can still see them as I'm wrapping up here there is our contact information I apologize we could have been floating that so that's our contact information again you will receive this power point as a follow up please feel free to contact any of us with questions and then the last slide is just a call out to our next webinar so for those of you who I assume you did receive the invitation for our three webinar series so this past Tuesday Liv O'Connor hosted a webinar that lists more connections between healthcare industry and food systems and specifically showcase the models they're doing a fruit and vegetable prescription program so that was our Tuesday webinar we can send out a link to that webinar again when we follow up from this webinar and then the third in our food systems sort of our late fall early winter food systems webinar series will be a January webinar we'll give you all a holiday break that will feature Don Dillney McFadden again and Shannon Spurlock from Denver Urban Gardens they will be showcasing another issue that has been highlighted in one of the state food systems advisory council issue briefs which we will also send a link to and this is specifically on water so January's webinar will be preparing for food security in an age of limited natural resources a focus on water and they will highlight some emerging opportunities to look at the re-use of reclaimed water and using reclaimed water for use on edible crops so please register for that webinar join us in January have great holidays until then and we will follow up very soon with so many resources thank you all for participating good afternoon