Bending the Arc

The FEED MKE Pilot Project, led by the city of Milwaukee’s Environmental Collaboration Office, launched in 2024 to reduce food waste and improve community food security. Funded by a U.S. Department of Agriculture Composting and Food Waste Reduction grant and private partnerships, FEED MKE and its allies are redistributing surplus food, diverting waste through composting and fostering systems-wide solutions.  

To support FEED MKE goals, WasteCap Resource Solutions performed a Milwaukee Food Waste & Recovery Study to ask:  

• How much food waste is being produced in Milwaukee?
• What infrastructure, action and collaboration would be needed to get to zero food waste in Milwaukee?
• Where are the best areas of the county to site that infrastructure?

Key statistics from the study show that Milwaukee County landfills an average of 142,000 tons of edible food, spoilage and food scraps each year.

Better uses for landfilled wasted food would do the following:

• Satisfy the remaining food insecurity in Milwaukee (a $94.5 million value) by sending 11,550 tons of wasted edible food to redistribution centers.
• Restore 470 acres of degraded farmland per year (or stop degradation on 6,350 acres) by sending 17,640 tons of food waste and the yard waste currently sent to landfills to composters.
• Produce 0.3% of Milwaukee’s natural gas demand by sending 112,735 tons of food waste to biodigestion facilities.
• Reduce Milwaukee’s greenhouse gas emissions by 1% and increase our local landfill operating life by 7.5%.
• Create more than 40 full-time jobs.

Access study information and the Milwaukee’s Path to Zero Food Waste: An Actionable Roadmap Webinar on the Milwaukee Food Waste Assessment website.