Dole Food Company recently recognized Evan Ehlers, the founder and CEO of Sharing Excess, a nonprofit focused on food recovery.
Dole says its “Spirit of Ohana” honor recognizes groups or individuals who best demonstrate the hospitality and community service themes of the Hawaiian concept of extended family. Its Spirit of Ohana honorees will receive a one-year supply of Dole Tropical Gold pineapples in honor of International Stitch Day on June 26 and International Pineapple Day on June 27.
“And I had no idea my life would turn into this, but this is like the best outcome that I ever could have imagined,” Ehlers says.
Ehlers started his organization by donating excess food from his college meal plan, and it quickly grew into a grassroots organization designed to help solve logistical barriers with food donation and recovery.
To date, Ehlers says Sharing Excess has distributed more than 140 million pounds of food across 35 states and has physical bases of operation in Philadelphia, New York and Detroit.
“We have a mix of solutions for the food industry, just based on what point in the supply chain the excess is happening,” he says. “Where we’ve really started to focus our time, effort and energy is on the major produce distributors and wholesalers in the country.”
This includes partnerships with the Philadelphia Wholesale Produce Market and Katzman Produce in the Hunts Point Produce Market.
Ehlers says the Philadelphia Wholesale Produce Market on average, disposed of about 10 million pounds of produce. Both Katzman Produce and the Philadelphia Wholesale Produce Market provide Sharing Excess with space at the warehouse, which allows the organization to sort through donated produce and quickly distribute the edible produce to food pantries and food banks and divert the produce unfit for consumption to composting or animal feed.
“Now, we’re a dedicated source,” he says. “It’s a super easy lift for them. We track everything, we sort through it, we deal with it, and they can move on and focus on their sales and maximizing their margins.”
Sharing Excess has worked hard to get state tax credits for reductions in food waste within the state of Pennsylvania for the organizations that donate, Ehlers says.
“We’ve been able to cut the organic waste of the Philadelphia wholesale produce market by over 70% in the last four years,” he says. “We’ve helped them save well over $1.5 million dollars in waste costs. We’ve gotten them over $4 million in state tax credits. And we’ve also been able to turn this building into the single largest source of fresh food donations in Philadelphia.
Ehlers says Sharing Excess has rescued and diverted more than 20 million pounds of food from Hunts Point.
“We’re kind of like this rose growing out of the crack in the concrete to figure out a way to grow this beautiful program, and what that’s resulted in is an enormous amount of fresh food supply for the community,” he says. “These are organizations that otherwise would not have been able to tap into these resources, they’re pantries and shelters and schools that are focused on their job of supporting the community, and now we can be a consistent supply of fresh and healthy produce for their operations.”
Ehlers says it’s a tough time for those organizations in the charitable food network and for those in need with the potential cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) as well as federal funding to local food purchasing programs.
“If these proposed SNAP cuts go through, you’re going to see a higher reliance on the charitable food network, because there are not SNAP dollars to be able to supplement food purchasing budgets. I think we all need to be paying very close attention to and advocating against as much as humanly possible, because the amount of food that would be needed to make up for that gap would require an enormous amount of progress on food rescue and redistribution.”
Ehlers says these potential cuts haven’t changed Sharing Excess’ mission.
“We plan on being and are stepping in as a resilient and sustainable source of food during this time for as many organizations as we possibly can that are impacted by these cuts,” he says. “But we can’t do it alone. We need help. We need partnership, and that’s why we’re trying to scale our model as quickly as possible.”
Ehlers says these cuts are counterintuitive as every dollar invested in SNAP gets approximately $1.50 in return.
“This all comes back to support farmers, to support growers,” he says, “In an effort to try to save money in the short term, or on a budget or a bill, you are ignoring the long-term effects of the impact it will have on the food industry, and I’m sure it will have a far greater loss in financial benefit, if you consider what it will do to the communities and food industry that relies on these factors.”
