Jonathan Bloom’s book American Wasteland, which focuses attention on the issue of food waste and its impacts, is published.

The first pilots of the EPA’s “Food: Too Good To Waste” program, which offers a toolkit designed to help households cut their waste, take place.

“The Dating Game: How Confusing Food Date Labels Lead to Food Waste in America,” a first-of-its-kind legal analysis of federal and state laws related to date labels by NRDC and the Harvard Law School Food Law and Policy Clinic, recommends a new system for food date labeling; more than a decade later in 2025, a new study from ReFED, Harvard, and the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health shows that consumer confusion over date labels has grown.

“Feeding the 5,000” events, one-day food festivals led by the London-based organization Feedback and offering free meals to 5,000 people, take place in Washington, DC, and other U.S. cities, elevating the conversation around food and sustainability policy.

Further With Food, the largest public-private partnership on food waste to that date, is convened by the USDA.

ReFED’s first digital tools—the Innovator Database, a precursor to our current Solution Provider Directory, and the Policy Finder, developed in partnership with the Harvard Law School Food Law and Policy Clinic—are launched.

ReFED signs a tri-agency MOU with USDA, EPA, and FDA to build connections between each organization’s respective networks, advance data collection and measurement, identify new cross-sector collaboration opportunities, and more.

ReFED launches its Nonprofit Food Recovery Accelerator, which helps equip 10 nonprofit cohort members with the knowledge, network, and capital they need to scale their impact.

NRDC launches its Food Matters Regional Initiative, where city representatives network with one another, NRDC, and local partner organizations to set goals, develop programs, and identify regional strategies to cut waste.

The first cohort of the ReFED Catalytic Grant Fund is announced. Since then, more than 20 businesses have received funding, leveraging the Fund’s dollars for follow-on funding worth nearly 12 times what has been granted.

A bipartisan group of senators and representatives introduces companion bills, “No Time to Waste,” in the U.S. House and Senate; the bills aim to strengthen government coordination, support research and new technology, foster public-private partnerships, and start a public education campaign to reduce food loss and waste.

WWF launches the Global Farm Loss Tool in collaboration with the Consumer Goods Forum to provide a user-friendly and simplified approach to help farmers and their buyers identify and address the cause of their on-farm food loss and its associated impacts, including Scope 3 emissions.

ReFED publishes its first annual U.S. Food Waste Report, detailing the progress, trends, and remaining challenges in the fight against food waste. It's a must-read look at how far we've all come and what lies ahead.

ReFED introduces the next generation of food waste tools with the release of its AI-powered food waste information resource.