Environmental Responsibility

At Second Helpings, we’re constantly evaluating and finding new ways to lessen our impact on the environment.

Food Rescue
Environmental Responsibility is at the core of our mission to reduce waste.

We take resources that nobody wanted to fulfill the most fundamental needs that people can’t live without – to be nourished with healthy food and to find self-sufficiency through a career. Since 1998, we've rescued over 15,000,000 pounds of food.

It's estimated that every man, woman and child in the U.S. wastes up to a pound of food every single day. In Indianapolis alone, that's almost 1,000,000 pounds of perfectly good food headed to the landfill every day. We work with our partners in the food service industry—distributors, caterers, restaurants, grocers, and others—to safely and efficiently collect surplus and perishable food that was headed for the landfill. Every year Second Helpings rescues over 1,500,000 pounds of nutritous food and uses that food to transform lives through our Hunger Relief and Culinary Job Training.

Recycling
Often when Second Helpings takes in food, we also take in a great deal of packaging. It would be incompatible with our mission to merely throw away this extra packaging. Here at Second Helpings, we recycle all cardboard, crates, plastic and bottles that hold our food. We also recycle all of our office paper and packaging as well.

Garden
This summer, Second Helpings partnered with Keep Indianapolis Beautiful to build a water-friendly herb garden at Second Helpings. Volunteers worked hard to erect the structure, grade the land, and plant all the herbs. Now, the garden is providing the kitchens here at Second Helpings with fresh basil, parsley, mint, and oregano. These herbs will season Second Helpings’ food long into the winter.

Composting
Sometimes there is food that we simply can’t use at Second Helpings. Pepper seeds, coffee grounds, shrimp shells, and many other foods can’t be used in our Hunger Relief kitchen or our Culinary Job Training kitchen. But instead of simply throwing them away, we’ve partnered with Big City Farms to compost this food in an effort to reduce our waste.