24 MONTEREY COUNTY WEEKLY APRIL 9-15, 2026 www.montereycountynow.com for ReGen Monterey, a regional waste management district headquartered in Marina. In this language, food generators represent any entity that might dispose of edible food, such as grocery stores, restaurants and farms. Food recovery organizations are those capable of storing and distributing it to those in need—food banks, shelters, churches and so on. It’s important to distinguish layers of food loss. Rotting occurs naturally, as does spoilage from mold or bacteria. Insects and animals can take their toll. When high winds caused power outages on the Peninsula lasting up to a week in 2024, some restaurants were forced to toss more than $7,000 worth of food. But recovery efforts focus on more preventable actions, such as ordering more than is needed or the routine discarding of blemished produce or beef turning brown. Mendoza sees parallels in retail, where items that are no longer in season or have had changes in packaging are put on clearance, pointing out that the product is still as good as new. “I go to farmers markets—if the fruit is blemished, we’re going to use it,” he says. “We’re not looking for perfect. We want usability, we want it to taste good.” Shoats credits California Senate Bill 1383, which became law in 2020 and went into full effect two years ago, as well as an app designed to more efficiently link food generators with organizations, for motivating businesses into action on food waste reduction. “The generators were probably just trashing a lot of it. It depended if they cared,” Shoats observes. “SB 1383 is changing the game considerably.” California is one of the few states with donation mandates. Only 12 states have implemented organic waste restrictions. SB 1383 requires local governments to slash the amount of edible food dumped into landfills by 20 percent, redirecting the recovered food to those in need. It also calls for increased storage to extend the life of perishable items. All parties involved in the process must keep records of such efforts. Concerned that the outreach requirements of the bill were beyond staffing limits, ReGen and Salinas Valley Recycles, the solid waste authority serving Salinas and South County, purchased an app called Careit on behalf of the food recovery organizations they serve. They then teamed with Monterey-based company Blue Strike Environmental to introduce the app—there are currently 184 organizations in Monterey County registered on Careit and some 4,500 statewide. Careit connects food generators with food recovery organizations in real time. A store or restaurant is able to upload what they have available and an organization like a food bank or homeless shelter can claim what they need. “What we’ve heard is that Careit has been very helpful in tracking [data],” Shoats says. “It’s making a complex law easy for them to administer.” Unlike consumer-facing apps, SB 1383 mandates that food recovery organizations and services maintain detailed records of donations. The scale varies greatly. Gathering for Women in Monterey has the capacity to store 2,000 pounds of food each month. CSU Monterey Bay’s Basic Needs program, which operates a free store on campus called The Hub, can handle 40,000 pounds per month. Since ReGen and Salinas Valley Recycles launched the Careit app in 2022, 923,009 pounds of edible food has been recovered from the landfill pipeline in Monterey County. According to calculations from the app, that amounts to an equivalent of close to 1,440 tons of greenhouse gas emissions that did not seep into the atmosphere. “We just signed another term with Careit,” Shoats reports. “We’ve realized the long-term benefits of this.” ••• There are other apps joining in the fight to reduce food waste. Olio is a gateway for people to share items that are sitting unopened or unused in their pantries or refrigerators. Cookbrite suggests recipes to use what you have. But many are useful only if others in the area have downloaded the app. “I came across Too Good To Go and thought it was perfect for bread,” Mendoza says. He has been listing loaves for two years and reports that the app accounts for about 10-15 loaves left over at the end of the previous day. “Our bread is good for five or six days,” he adds. Apps are just one aspect of food recovery, of course. The requirement in SB 1383 that organizations increase storage capacity is forcing some nonprofits to purchase more equipment or expand their facilities. ReGen has given more than $475,000 in grants toward that end. Another state measure, Assembly Bill 660, will go into effect in July. It makes California the first state to address confusion over food labels. According to a 2025 Harris Poll, 43 percent of Americans toss items when they reach or pass dates stamped on labels, whether it reads “sell by” or “use by.” About the same number believe—incorrectly—that the federal government regulates expiration dates. The new measure, which passed in 2024, will require two labels. “Best if used by” is an indication of quality. “Use by” will be a safety feature. As Cohn says, “Food is still going to waste.” ReFed reports that produce accounts for almost 44 percent of what ends up in landfills. Prepared foods— which includes restaurant meals— make up just over 20 percent. In all, Americans discard 73.9 million tons of food, or 442 pounds, per capita. For Mendoza, apps like Too Good To Go do well at making a dent. “Hopefully it opens thinking, not to be wasteful,” he says. “It doesn’t have to be perfect.” SURPLUS FOOD GENERATES 230 million metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions 2.7 million metric tons of methane emissions SURPLUS FOOD USES 16.2 trillion gallons of water 16 percent of cropland SURPLUS FOOD ACCOUNTS FOR 1.4 percent of U.S. GDP $1,140 per capita Source: ReFed 2025 Report “OUR BIGGEST COMPETITION IS HOW EASY IT IS TO THROW SOMETHING AWAY.”
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