Sustainability

At Second Helpings, we’re constantly evaluating and finding new ways to lessen our impact on the environment.

Food Rescue

Environmental responsibility is at the core of our mission to reduce waste. We take food resources that no one else wants or needs to fulfill the most fundamental needs that people can’t live without — nourishing food and careers that lead to self-sufficiency.

It’s estimated that every person in the U.S. wastes up to a pound of food every single day. In Indianapolis alone, that’s almost 1,000,000 pounds of perfectly good food headed to the landfill every day. We work with our partners in the food service industry—distributors, caterers, restaurants, grocers, and others—to safely and efficiently collect surplus and perishable food that was headed for the landfill. Every year Second Helpings rescues more than 3 million pounds of nutritious food and uses that food to fight hunger from all angles, through our Hunger Relief and Culinary Job Training programs.

Since Second Helpings was founded in 1998, we have rescued over 50 million pounds of food, preventing 850 metric tons of methane, equivalent to almost 24,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide, from entering the atmosphere (calculation done using Quantifying Methane Emissions from Landfilled Food Waste). We’ve rescued meat, dairy, bread, produce, and many other foods that would have generated huge amounts of methane (a gas 28 times more powerful than carbon dioxide) had they been sent to a landfill (EPA, 2024).  Diverting food from going to waste not only prevents methane emissions from being produced, but also ensures that the carbon emissions created by agriculture, production, and transportation of food aren’t put to waste.

Curious about your  own environmental impact? Check out the Global Footprint Network’s Ecological Footprint Calculator or the EPA’s Greenhouse Gas Equivalencies Calculator

Recycling

We don’t just promote sustainability through our Food Rescue program – we strive do do all our work sustainably.

Often when Second Helpings takes in food, we also take in a great deal of packaging. It would be incompatible with our mission to throw away this extra packaging. Second Helpings recycles aluminum cans, crates, bottles, and nearly all types of plastic through our partnership with RecycleForce. Once these materials are received, sorted, and processed at RecycleForce, they are sent to Brightmark to be turned into reusable fuel, new plastics, and wax, through a  process called pyrolysis.

We also recycle all of our office paper, cardboard, and packaging through GHW Waste Services, who send it to ReWorld, to be used for energy.

Interested in seeing how recycling saves energy? Check out the EPA’s Save Energy By Recycling Calculator

Composting

Composting unusable food emits up to 84% fewer greenhouse gases than throwing that food away (Nature, 2023). Second Helpings composts fruit and vegetable scraps, bread and grains, coffee and tea grounds, and coffee filters with Green with Indy Compost Services, preventing these materials from entering the waste stream. We composted 42,122 pounds of unusable food in just the first six months of 2024.

Our sustainable programs also contribute to the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals. Our Food Rescue program tackles Goal 2, ending hunger and promoting food security in central Indiana. Our Culinary Job Training program addresses Goal 8 of promoting decent work, productive employment, and sustainable and inclusive economic growth. We also work towards Goal 12, ensuring sustainable consumption and production patterns, by recycling and composting waste in our facility.