Food banks are unsung heroes in fight against climate change, world hunger

CHICAGO (WLS) — A sense of urgency can be felt on the floors of the Northern Illinois Food Bank in Geneva.

Volunteers vigorously work to sort and box up food for donation. But despite their best efforts, hunger and food waste rage on.

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“If food waste were a country, it would be the third largest emitter of greenhouse gas emissions worldwide,” Lisa Moon said.

Moon heads the Chicago-based Global FoodBanking Network. The GFN connects to food banks in more than 50 countries.

“It really is a great irony that we as a world are really fantastic at producing enough food for everyone to have enough,” Moon said. “But we have a major logistics issue. And because of this, about a third of all the food that is produced annually never makes it to people’s plates.”

That’s where local food banks step in.

“They have some of the most sophisticated supply chains in the world. And so our network takes advantage of that knowledge and can implement it in a way that makes sense for their communities around the world,” Moon said.

The Northern Illinois Food Bank helps provide 250,000 meals to its neighbors each day. One way it works to reduce food waste is through its retail recovery program: “rescuing” food before it gets sent to the landfill.

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Julie Yurko is the president and CEO of the Northern Illinois Food Bank

“We have 450 retail stores across our 13 counties in northern Illinois through which we are picking up food out of the back of their stores,” Yurko said. “We have 200 food banks helping us do that every day except for Sunday.”

The food banks are also making sure people are receiving healthy, nutritious food.

“We have specially trained volunteers. They’ve been doing it for years. They come in, and they’re going to sort through the food, and they’re going to rebox it and make sure that only the best food that is safe for consumption is going to go out to our network,” Yurko said.

And as all that food reaches people who need it most, food banks are hoping to break the cycle of hunger and waste.

“We care so deeply about people and serving and loving people, but we also love our planet, and it is one of our core tenets: How can we help nourish people while also saving our planet for generations to come?” Yurko said.

The Northern Illinois Food Bank said the food that does need to get tossed gets composted into natural fertilizer. Last year, more than 238,000 tons of food waste were composted.

This story is part of our Climate Ready series – a collaboration between ABC News and the ABC Owned Television Stations focused on providing practical solutions to help you and your family adapt to extreme weather events and the current challenges of climate change.