Wasted food is a major drain on business and on the planet. Shelf Engine, a perishable food forecasting specialist, estimates that supermarkets alone discard more than 43 billion pounds of food each year and that excessive food waste costs the grocery industry more than $50 billion in lost profits annually. Project Drawdown, a nonprofit dedicated to climate change reduction, also estimates that 8% of human-cause greenhouse gas emissions come from food loss and waste and 28% of agricultural land goes to grow food that is never eaten.
These facts and figures led social entrepreneurs-activists Ben Gray and Turner Wyatt to found the Upcycled Foods Association (UFA) in 2020. In just three years, UFA has enlisted as many as 230 members worldwide and says it has diverted an estimated 840 million pounds of food waste from landfills. Along the way, it created a third-party validation process and has officially certified as many as 236 upcycled food products and ingredients.