Hunger is often described as one of the dumbest problems in the world, especially when you consider all the food that goes to waste. But now one man’s effort is creating change in the Delaware Valley and beyond.
The Philadelphia Wholesale Produce Market in southwest Philly is one of the largest produce markets in the Mid-Atlantic region. It is essentially a refrigerator the size of 14 football fields, where mainly restaurants and supermarkets buy their fruits and vegetables. But every day Evan Ehlers is there to collect donations.
“Every day we rescue between 30,000 and 50,000 pounds of food just from this one building,” Ehlers said. “We take all the food they can’t sell, and we redistribute it to the community before that food goes to waste.”
That is the mission of his nonprofit organization Sharing Excess. Headquartered at the market, Sharing Excess volunteers save the products that sellers cannot sell and would otherwise be thrown away due to imperfections, or simply because of an excess supply.
“It’s hearty, it’s great, I would eat this right now, I’m going to keep it,” says volunteer Abbe Stern.
Stern knows the value of this product. She is also a Food Pharmacy Manager at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. She will use the money she saves at Sharing Excess to feed patients in need.
“I’ll be able to keep all the good, throw away all the bad, and all that good food will find its way back into the community,” she said.
Sharing Excess rescues and distributes free food to hundreds of nonprofits in the Philadelphia region, feeding hundreds of thousands of people.
“This is something I felt good about doing and something I thought was a good thing to do with leftover food that I had on my food bill,” Ehlers recalls.
CBS News Philadelphia was there in 2019 when Ehler got Sharing Excess just getting off the ground at Drexel University. At that time he was used to that donate extra food from his meal plan. Now the nonprofit is located in 33 states and has made its first international mission in Guatemala.
On this day, Ehlers showed CBS News Philadelphia crates of green bananas that would otherwise have been thrown away without Sharing Excess.
“It’s one of the dumbest problems in the world,” he says. “We still have food waste and there are people going hungry.”
To date, Sharing Excess has saved more than 85 million pounds of food.
The impact on the environment is also significant. Food waste contributes to global greenhouse gases. Ehlers said Sharing Excess has reduced organic waste at the Philadelphia Wholesale Produce Market by 60%. Additionally, he says the nonprofit’s work has saved sellers there more than a million dollars in disposal costs.
But Ehlers said it will take a lot of volunteers to get the job done. Food insecurity becomes even worse around the holidays, and Thanksgiving is just two weeks away. Ehlers said Sharing Excess needs more volunteers to help rescue and sort food.
