Wishing You A Waste-Free Holiday: A Message From Dana Gunders

As I look back on 2025, it's been so exciting to see the work being done and the progress being made—all of it driven by your passion for ending food waste.

Momentum in the food waste space only continued to grow this year. In 2025, we saw for the first time bipartisan support for the Food Date Labeling Act in both the U.S. House and Senate and promising results from commercial food waste diversion legislation in Massachusetts. West Coast retailers maintained their gains, reporting unsold food rates that were 30% lower than five years prior, and we established first-ever national baselines for both retail and foodservice. Public awareness of food waste also continued to climb, with a 36% increase in the number of people reached through media mentions of “food waste” as compared with last year. As we enter 2026, we see these and other promising trends continue.

At ReFED, we’ve seen extraordinary growth and engagement. Our 2025 Food Waste Solutions Summit in Seattle saw the highest attendance yet—in fact, tickets sold out for the first time. ReFED also published its inaugural “U.S. Food Waste Report,” a yearly report that provides an up-to-date snapshot on the progress, trends, and challenges in reducing food waste in the U.S. To date, our Catalytic Grant Fund has diverted more than 1.1 million pounds of food from landfills, and grantees have raised over $35M in follow-on funding. We also launched our next open call focused on Minimizing Methane and have been thrilled to see the applications pouring in. Along with our partner WWF, we welcomed 14 new signatories to the U.S. Food Waste Pact, including our first signatories from the new sectors of hospitality (American Hotel & Lodging Association and Hilton) and producer (Western Growers Association and International Fresh Produce Association). And we’ve added the social cost of carbon to our Insights Engine, an economic measure that estimates the monetary value of the damages caused by greenhouse gases, giving users more insights into the effects of food waste on our economy.

These milestones are worthy of celebration—but there is still work to be done. Solutions adoption and scaling continues to lag across the food system, and we are still not on track to meet the national and international goal to reduce food waste by 50% by 2030. Still, momentum around national legislation, increased consumer awareness around the problem, and unexpected drivers like AI, inflation, and GLP-1 drugs are creating real opportunities to make more progress. The “big tent” of the food waste community continues to grow, and together, we can solve this problem.

I want to thank you again for your commitment to this cause, and I want to wish you and yours a warm, wonderful, and waste-free holiday season. We’ll see you in the new year—let’s make it the most impactful one yet.

P.S. — The work we do runs on the generosity of donors like you. As you participate in end-of-year giving, consider donating to ReFED.