US Cold
Fighting Food Waste in Partnership, with Purpose
The Situation
In 2024, United States Cold Storage (US Cold) – one of the nation’s largest cold storage and logistics providers – cast a vision for all food products passing through its facilities to either be consumed or beneficially used, preventing waste whenever possible.
Despite an abundance of products, food insecurity continues to pose major challenges in 2026, with many communities struggling to access adequate nutrition. For a country estimated to waste billions of pounds of food annually with proportionately massive associated costs, the need for awareness and action has never been more pronounced.
As key links in the U.S. cold chain, food warehousers and distributors are uniquely positioned to facilitate tangible solutions that minimize waste at multiple stages of a product’s life cycle. Storing and transporting both ingredients and finished goods, US Cold can mitigate losses before and after production in partnership with its customers, even salvaging value from ‘in-transit’ goods rejected from retailers.
The Solution
Following the EPA’s best practice hierarchy of food waste solutions, US Cold facilities coast to coast embraced multi-disciplinary efforts to find optimal solutions for their customers and communities; “Our program identifies uses for food and recyclable materials that would otherwise be landfilled. If not sold or donated, organic matter can be converted into animal feed, soil additives, and compost that supports America’s food systems, while the renewable natural gas generated during anaerobic digestion powers local electricity grids.” says Henry Lewis, US Cold Sustainability Specialist.
US Cold’s top priority is to help ensure safe food goes to feed people first, leveraging its expertise and assets to support key food donation partners, as seen in these two examples:
- In Texas, the food rescue organization Operation BBQ Relief (OBR) contacted one of our trade groups – the Global Cold Chain Alliance (GCCA) – to help store 150 pallets of frozen pork before it went to waste. Immediately, the GCCA reached out to its members in the region around Dallas, Texas to see who could help. Several companies answered the late afternoon call and ultimately it was Keith Mowery, Senior Vice President, Logistics at US Cold who ensured all the product could be properly stored at its local facility so that OBR could use it over the next few months to feed people in need.[1] OBR shared that the frozen pork donation represented approximately 500,000 meals to serve people affected by the 2023 Winter Storm Mara.
- In the Northeast, when a leading food bank serving the Philadelphia and Delaware Valley regions (Philabundance) reached capacity and could no longer accept donations, they reached out to US Cold. We quickly connected them with the leadership and logistics team at our Quakertown East Facility, as well as our community partners at Share Food Program. Together, we arranged for delivery of the food to Share Food Program food pantries, ensuring that nutritious food reached neighbors experiencing food insecurity.
Elsewhere, US Cold is teaming up with Sharing Excess to complete large-scale donations across the country. Near its head office in Camden, NJ, dozens of US Cold volunteers have put in shifts sorting unsold produce and supporting free pop-up giveaways to help nourish local communities.
When donation is not possible, US Cold leverages a national network of waste experts to facilitate cost-effective, non-landfill food disposals for its customers across the country. Its key partnerships include:
- Animal feed production with 101 Solutions
- Industrial scale composting with The Organic Recycler
- Biogas generation via anaerobic digesters with Divert, Inc.
- Broad geographic and solutions coverage with Waste Management
[1] https://www.gcca.org/magazine-article/food-rescue-in-the-cold-chain/
“US Cold has embedded food rescue and waste diversion into its operations, working alongside customers to prevent unsellable food from ending up in landfills. By partnering with a national network of food rescue and waste diversion organizations, we deliver sustainable cold chain logistics that prioritize rescuing food, reducing waste, and protecting the planet.” Dave Butterfield, Executive Vice President
The Impact
US Cold’s donation commitments continue to expand, providing the equivalent of 450,000+ meals in 2025 alone. Its teams work closely with national and local organizations to connect customers willing to participate in food donation efforts with communities in need.
As for waste, since the start of 2024 US Cold has diverted an estimated 25 million pounds of food products from landfills. That’s enough to cover a football field with over 12,000 pallets, stacked 3-high, or about 18 feet in the air.
Most importantly, US Cold is helping to build a web of solutions that ensure food goes where it should. This initiative reinforces the commercial viability of its partners’ operations and proves that high-impact work can be cost-effective and often cost-saving when there is ample infrastructure and policy direction; the program’s most flexible pricing structure is in California, where the state’s Senate Bill 1383 has fostered a business environment that makes organic processing sites common and necessary.
Much work remains to address the global challenge of food waste. Doing so bolsters communities while advancing the climate ambitions of both US Cold and its customers.
“US Cold has embedded food rescue and waste diversion into its operations, working alongside customers to prevent unsellable food from ending up in landfills. By partnering with a national network of food rescue and waste diversion organizations, we deliver sustainable cold chain logistics that prioritize rescuing food, reducing waste, and protecting the planet.” Dave Butterfield, Executive Vice President