Boston could be the first municipality to institute a food recovery program, said Councilors Gabriela Coletta and Ricardo Arroyo, who filed an ordinance Monday proposing the plan.

If approved, the program would require certain food vendors — grocery stores, restaurants, and food-producing hotels — to give any safe-to-eat leftovers to local non-profits for human consumption. The ordinance would also formally establish the city’s first ever Office of Food Justice.A hearing for the ordinance will take place during the regularly scheduled City Council meeting Wednesday.

Coletta said this is an important step for the city because so many people lack access to food, and this program would “put foods in the hands of our most vulnerable at the end of the day.”

Food insecurity in Massachusetts doubled during the pandemic, shooting up from 8.2% to 19.6%, according to Project Bread, a food service program and hotline.As part of the City of Boston Food Recovery Program, food generators would need to start compiling their edible leftovers. Then, the goal is to have already established non-profits in the mix to help distribute to those who need it.

In 2014, Massachusetts started a similar program — the Commercial Food Material Disposal Ban — that diverted leftover food to recycling. Last year, it lowered the threshold for participating sites to those that produced more than one-half ton of food waste per week.

If you're interested in learning more, here is the full story.

OMG, this is fantastic!

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So many municipalities are afraid to try anything new but happy to be copycats. This could be the start of something big!

Don't tons of store and restaurants in Europe do this?

This could either be good, or it could be costly and open the businesses up to legal liability.

If the government makes it a law, it's almost certainly going to be the latter.

You do realize that you cannot be sued over any food donation made in good faith, right?

I've worked with the homeless for 7 years in the Merrimack Valley and many, many restaurants and hotels refuse to give leftover food to the homeless because of fear of legal action. The company I work at has a large cafeteria and homeless camping just off property and the company/cafe refuses to donate leftovers because of fear of legal action. If they can't be sued then that word needs to get out.

Generally the act of donating food is protected by Good Samaritan laws, of which I believe Massachusetts has one of the most comprehensive

Telling me that and downvoting me won't convince the lawyers of those companies or prevent frivolous lawsuits and legal fishing attempts.

Besides, even with that in mind, there's still other health code issues to resolve.

Here’s a brief on the issue from Harvard Law and the MA state government.

Sounds great, as a technical question though, Are the businesses having non-profits come to them for food pick-up? Or are businesses being required to go to the non-profits for food drop-off?

Still doesn't address what I said. We've got plenty of laws, including some pretty big federal ones, about what you can and can't sue for, but it still happens anyway. And sometimes successfully, no less.

Like I said, this could be good if they do it right, but I've been around long enough to see how government usually does things.

That’s just what they tell you. They don’t want the trouble of lifting a finger to help

I hope the city goes through with this. When I worked in food service it pained me that our policy was to throw everything out at the end of the day. Perfectly good food.

What infrastructure is there currently to collect and divert this food and would the restaurant / store be required to distribute it? Or would they simply have to hold it aside if an agency or organization was available and willing to collect and distribute it? What if there were no available agency, would the restaurant be required to perform outreach?

It's not a steady souce, but food rescue can feed so many people. Just for the cost of moving the food from where it is to where it's needed.

Where I volunteer, we get good deal of the meal we serve on Fridays via Loving Spoonfuls, who get food rescued from places like Whole Foods and Trader Joes.

Hey, you can say “you do realize” which is condescending,

or…

You could state your point of view without that phrase, which is a lot nicer.

You can be sued over anything by anyone. You would have a lower chance of losing, but not 100% impossible.

I used to work for a grocery store and we would box up all the dented cans, or broken boxes of food for the food pantry. We ended up throwing it out because they couldn’t be bothered to come and get it.

Should be coordinated through the new office of food justice, lessen the burden on both parties

We throw away sooo much food where I work perfectly good food it’s so sad and if employees take it it’s stealing lol. Hopefully this goes through and from whatever’s leftover we can do compost 🙏🏾

Been saying this for years and never knew why most restraints never did. When I worked for Darden back in 2004-2007 we used to donate the leftover food to food pantries and churches.

I am just now realizing that is the real reason.

This would be great! Back in the day in Cambridge, Food Not Bombs picked up and distributed leftover food from restaurants. It made so much sense. We would package it up and have it ready for the driver. I’ve never lived anywhere since Where this is allowed. The closest I’ve ever come to that since is packaging up leftovers and leaving them out front after closing

Oh wow! We finally came to our senses! It’s fucking embarrassing that anyone throws away perfectly good food honestly

“Hey we can’t figure out the food shortage/homeless crisis ourselves, can you do it for us?”

I think plenty of stores and restaurants do it in the states too, the government is now enforcing it as policy though.

It's sad that Boston is the first. This should be the law everywhere.

I don’t know if requiring it is a good idea, but it’s certainly better to not prevent it.

What neighborhood?