Earlier this year, ReFED made big improvements to the Impact Calculator in our Insights Engine to enhance usability and add new metrics, including analysis of methane emissions. If you haven’t used it, the Impact Calculator is an interactive resource that quantifies the greenhouse gas emissions reduction, water savings, and donated meal recovery potential of different surplus food management scenarios in the U.S. by sector and food type.

To learn more about these upgrades, we caught up with ReFED’s Senior Frontend Software Engineer Erik Mudrak and Climate & Insights Manager Minnie Ringland.

Who is the Impact Calculator for?

We like to say that the Impact Calculator is for anyone who’s considering taking action on the food that goes unsold or uneaten, what we call surplus food. From a funder assessing the potential of a solution provider to a policymaker estimating the savings from an organic waste ban to a food business comparing waste management pathways—this tool helps you understand and compare your options in tangible, real world scenarios.

“Impact” can mean a lot of things—in this context we’re focused on environmental impact, which we quantify in terms of greenhouse gases emitted and water consumed, and social impact, which we quantify in terms of meal potential. Avoiding Excel-based tools or complex software programs, the Impact Calculator is intended to be user-friendly and broadly accessible, so that this information can easily be incorporated into your strategic planning.

How would someone use the Impact Calculator? Can you provide an example scenario?

First, you can estimate the impact of the current or baseline scenario. Plug in the current destinations of the material you’re working with, and you’ll see the emissions footprint, water footprint, and meals recovered, if any food is being donated. It’s important to point out that the emissions considered are full lifecycle, so they capture all emissions associated with producing that food, transporting it, preparing it, etc.—in addition to emissions that are generated at the final destination. We provide the total emissions in terms of carbon dioxide equivalent, and we also break out just methane emissions for users who are interested in targeting this particular potent greenhouse gas. Emissions and water footprints are also converted into equivalencies that put the estimates into easy-to-understand terms, like miles driven in a car or showers taken.

After you’ve assessed your current scenario, you can experiment with alternative scenarios where that surplus food is prevented, sent to donation, or diverted to a recycling destination.

So for example, let’s say you’re a grocery store. Every year, you send 50 tons of surplus food (a standard mix) to landfill. That results in the emissions equivalent of driving 50 gasoline-powered, passenger vehicles for one year. If we just look at methane, that’s more than 3,650 propane tanks used for home barbecues!

Now, you’re like, “Wow, that’s terrible, what can I do about that?!” So you look at an alternative scenario where 30 tons of surplus food goes to landfill, but 10 tons is sent to food donation and 10 tons is sent to composting. The Impact Calculator shows you that you’ve reduced the carbon dioxide equivalent of nine gasoline-powered passenger vehicles or 927 propane tanks! You’re doing better—and that’s just a start!

Why was the Impact Calculator due for an update?

We started this project because Global Methane Hub awarded us a grant to improve the Impact Calculator—both to add methane emissions metrics to it (which we did first) and to enhance the flow and experience of using it. Food loss and waste is a significant contributor to methane emissions, and the grant enabled us to highlight the waste hotspots and key solutions that can help reduce emissions of methane in the United States.

In addition to adding methane metrics, we conducted user research and found two main areas to focus on to improve usability:

1. Because so many groups of people use the tool (or want to) for different purposes (say a food rescue nonprofit that wants to use statistics in a grant application or a food business looking into solutions for their surplus food), we could do more to guide users through the tool.

2. The original Impact Calculator operated under the assumption that you know a lot about the food system, food loss and waste, greenhouse gas emissions, etc. Even some of our own staff weren’t confident in using the Impact Calculator! We needed to help users understand each step of the calculations and what assumptions are being made along the way.

What’s different about it now? How is it new and improved?

This is where it gets exciting! We have added:

• A guided “getting started” workflow that walks you through selecting your sector, the type of surplus food you’re measuring, and choosing final destinations for that food. It also provides clearer guidance on the tool’s functionality.

• In-context definitions, methodology, and other helpful explanations for users, including detailed information on global warming potentials and time horizons, and other more complex climate topics.

• A breakout tab for methane with the ability to adjust the time horizon for methane-to-carbon dioxide equivalency calculations.

• Six new equivalency metrics, helping you wrap your head around the impacts in terms you understand.

• A refreshed look and feel, with graphs to help visualize impact.

• The ability to download your results based on the information you input, in addition to the base data used in the calculations.

• A hierarchy for destinations based on the U.S. EPA’s Wasted Food Scale, rating from most to least preferred.

Regardless of who you are, the new Impact Calculator should get you the results you need.

It’s the week of Earth Day, and I’m curious, why does ReFED host the Impact Calculator and how can it help raise awareness about the impacts of reducing wasted food?

We host this tool so that people can see for themselves the real-world impact of their food loss and waste and then use the insights to take action. The equivalencies provided by the calculator help put these impacts into context, since food waste often doesn’t enter the public imagination of sustainability practices the same way that driving less and taking shorter showers do. We hope that users are empowered by the tool and the insights it provides to take action, seeing the fight against food waste as a tangible and meaningful strategy to be better stewards of our planet.

Anything else you’d like to share?

We’re currently working to update the factors that are used to estimate the water consumption of wasted food, and are also exploring ways to connect to land use change and biodiversity. Please reach out if you’re interested in collaborating on upcoming research!

Stay in-the-know on updates related to all of ReFED's resources by signing up for our mailing list.