VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. — More than a third of all food produced in the United States is thrown out, but millions of people still face food insecurity, according to a recent EPA study.
Driven to make a change, Virginia Beach high school students drafted legislation to fight food waste in Virginia. So far, it’s soaring through with unanimous approval.
"I used to get to the supermarket around the time that their pizza kitchen and bakery would be throwing out trashcans full of edible food, and I thought, 'This is insane,'" said Natalia de los Rios, a high school junior and part of the Environmental Studies Program through Virginia Beach City Public Schools.
Since the start of the pandemic, de los Rios said she's been enveloped in the world of food insecurity, food sustainability, and food waste. She founded a chapter of the non-profit Food Rescue U.S. and went out to stores, companies, and restaurants asking for food donations, but there was a common issue.
People and businesses were hesitant to donate any food near or past its "best-by" or "sell-by" date, even though those types of labels don’t correlate with health and safety.
"I couldn’t say, 'Yeah, you’re protected,' because I didn’t want them to have any risk of liability," de los Rios said. "They want to make sure their food is going to people and not to a landfill, they just need clarification and reassurance that they'll be protected because they're businesses at their core."
She cited national studies that estimate hundreds of millions of pounds of food are wasted each year due to labeling issues.
So, de los Rios -- along with students Ure Emejuru, Cayden Braswell, and Matthews Stanley -- crafted a bill exempting donations of this kind from liability.
House Bill 1249 received unanimous approval from the House of Delegates in February and recently passed through a Senate subcommittee with a 15-0 vote, indicating its well on its way to becoming law.
“You have a bunch of people who don’t necessarily get to see, aside from their own children, what these young people are doing," said Chris Freeman, coordinator of the Environmental Studies Program. "When do you get 100 people in a room to agree on anything?"
Freeman said the student-led initiative shows their innovation and passion for building a sustainable future.
"They're helping to create access for nutritional needs across Hampton Roads and really across all of Virginia," he said.
The law change could help reduce the amount of food sent to landfills each year, too, which would help reduce negative environmental effects.
“Right now, that food is going to the landfill where it emits methane gas, and that contributes to climate issues, too, so our whole future is a chain effect with the unsustainable system that we have right now, it’s a global change we need to be making," de los Rios said.
The bill does require that all parties are informed about the status of donated food, and clarifies that immunity from liability should not apply in "instances of gross negligence or intentional misconduct."
"There are immediate solutions and long-term solutions and we need both, we're working toward that and making sure people right now have access to food," de los Rios said. "But also people in the future we won’t have that issue of certain communities that are disproportionately affected by food insecurity."