The 411 on the 530 Food Rescue Coalition

530 Food Rescue Coalition isn’t your typical search and rescue operation.

Instead of navigating treacherous terrain to save people, they work behind the scenes five days a week in Butte County cities to rescue perfectly edible food from being wasted and deliver it to people facing the often unseen but equally urgent crisis of hunger.

When Sheila McQuaid, 530 Food Rescue Coalition project director, talks about food waste and hunger, the numbers are staggering: 31% of all food produced in the United States goes to waste; food waste accounts for 24% of what’s collected at landfills; food loss and waste account for 8-10% of global greenhouse gas emissions annually; and 1 in 5 Californians, including in Butte County, are food insecure, meaning they don’t have reliable access to a sufficient q