Every Wednesday, Carly Perkins and intern Adam Kaszas leave the Radix Center's colorful mural-adorned walls to drive through Albany on a truly stinky but noble mission. He's on an eBike, pedaling hard to keep the battery going while hauling a metal wagon. She's in an SUV with the windows down and the AC blasting.

"It's not good for the carbon footprint but on hot summer days, the rotten fruit and vegetable scraps just sort of melt into a stinky soup and the smell from the bins, oh, it's just terrible, overwhelming," Perkins said, laughing.

She picks up bins of food garbage at 33 homes and Kaszas hits 23 more, then they empty the bins into the Radix chicken pen. While the chickens feast, Perkins and teenage summer employees use "grabbers" to remove non-edibles like tea bags with staples.

"Finally, we scoop up the uneaten scraps and chicken manure, mix it with grass and wood chips then add it to the compost pile by our greenhouses," said Perkins, who is the community compost initiative coordinator for the Radix Ecological Sustainability Center. The mission of the nonprofit is to promote ecological literacy and environmental stewardship through educational programs based around demonstrations of sustainable technologies.

The Radix approach may seem labor intensive and too sweetly old school to combat New York's mammoth food waste problem, where 40 percent of the food on shelves and in freezers in stores, restaurants and caterers is never eaten. Food garbage is 18 percent of New York's municipal solid waste, according to the National Resources Defense Council.

The NRDC estimates that in the state of New York (excluding the New York City), 1,700 "waste generators"— big box grocers, hospitals, prisons, stadiums/ arenas and colleges — each dump two tons of excess food weekly, resulting in overflowing landfills releasing methane greenhouse gas into the air. Much of this food is edible, nutritious yet never makes it to anyone's plate.

In addition to major waste generators, think of all the food wasted in homes, delis and mom-and-pop restaurants. New York's food waste war is epic with complex logistics. Leftover perishable food must be rapidly, correctly transported from farms and grocery chains to pantries and shelters before it rots. Food gone bad needs to be taken to compost sites or fed to goats, pigs and chickens rather than burned in an incinerator that pollutes the air or dumped in a festering landfill. The battle seems more urgent as Capital Region's landfills will eventually reach capacity.

For now, the movement to fight hunger and end food waste is mostly splintered into grassroots efforts relying heavily on volunteers who tackle tasks from Biblical-style farm field gleaning to designing apps.

The good news is, for the first time, technology plus an existing law, a proposed law and consensus between consumers and the food industry's major players mean this war could be won.

Showing off fruits and veggies

NRDC attorney Margaret Brown asks people to envision what they first see when they walk in a grocery store. Usually, it's big vistas of oranges, lemons, limes, pyramids of purple and red berries and melons, eggplants and onions displayed in bins like gems in a jewelry store.

"Jewelry display, that's exactly the look grocers want to market the produce but it requires them to buy a lot more produce than shoppers can buy within a few days," Brown said. "Nobody gets excited by a table with a few carrots and turnips on it, so grocery chains know they will have to discard a certain amount of produce."

Brown suggests shoppers let their grocers know that they would be satisfied with smaller displays. Brown noted that Walmart has set the goal of zero waste by 2025 in response to eco-conscious consumers.

Two years ago, Gov. Andrew Cuomo proposed the Food Recovery and Recycling Act that would have required the two ton per week generators of food waste to donate edible food and send the rest to compost facilities. (The act applied to areas in the state outside New York City, which already has a similar law in place). Cuomo's act never became law.

New York State Restaurant Association spokesman Kevin Dugan says his members had some objections to the act but support the goals. Restauranteurs have told him customers embrace restaurants that decrease food waste and donate to the needy.

"From everything I hear, the restaurant industry believes a compromise (law) is possible," Dugan said, then, noting the nationwide trucker shortage, added: "The main concern our members had is the delivery infrastructure, the trucks that would get the leftovers from the restaurants to the food pantries, doesn't exist yet."

More Information Easy ways to curb food waste The Regional Food Bank of Northeastern New York is always looking for volunteers. Sign up on the website or call 518-786-3691 for more information. Anyone can drop off donations in person at 965 Albany-Shaker Road in Latham. Donations of personal hygiene items, toilet paper and toys are also welcome; the needy can not buy such items via SNAP. The RFB trucks plan their routes for large donors like big box stores and farms. Small bakeries, markets, delis and restaurants may consider dropping off leftovers at nearby pantries or shelters. For more info: www.regionalfoodbank.net Capitol Roots places bins in various farmers' markets for shoppers who buy and donate produce. It also tends community gardens and organizes gleanings. Call 518-274-8685 to learn about volunteering. Learn more at www.capitalroots.org Radix Center at 153 Grand St. in Albany also needs volunteers for many projects. The food scrap collection service costs $15 per month. Call (518) 605-3256. Learn more at radixcenter.org Visit www.foodcowboy.com to learn about the app. See More Collapse

There is a 1996 federal law that currently protects small restaurants, caterers and grocers who want to donate prepared foods like sandwiches or tossed salads in plastic clamshell containers or untouched bowls of potato or pasta salad. The problem is, many food makers don't seem to know about it.

"There's a tremendous lack of knowledge about the 1996 Bill Emerson Good Samaritan law which protects anyone who donates food in good faith to the needy," said Capital Roots CEO Amy Klein, whose Troy nonprofit distributes fresh produce and healthy food to the needy. "It protects anyone who donates food they believe to be wholesome from being sued. But some companies are so risk-averse, they feel safer tossing wholesome food because they worry they'll be liable if someone claims it made them sick,"

Klein says educating the public about the law should make the waste of edible food decrease . Her organization collects donations of produce from farmers' markets and directly from the farm fields by gleaning, an approach to feeding the poor that dates to the Old Testament. Farmers leave a portion of their crops behind in the fields for gleaners to gather for food pantries and shelters. Capital Roots gleans bushels of potatoes, beans, potatoes, turnips and cabbage.

"The main problem is unpredictability," Klein explained. "Sometimes a farmer can donate more of one crop because the market price fell and it costs more to harvest than donate. And then you have to call all the volunteers willing to glean."

At the other end of the tech spectrum, Food Cowboy is an app that matches truckers hauling food with pantries and soup kitchens. Here's how it works; imagine a trucker drops off his cargo of tomatoes in Albany but the warehouse manager tells him a couple of pallets are so ripe, they would have to be sold today so take them away.

Instead of ditching the pallets, the trucker texts the Albany pantries that have the Food Cowboy app and offers to drop off the tomatoes for them.

At the food bank

The Regional Food Bank of Northeastern New York in Colonie dispatches four trucks daily 7:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. to gather donations from stores and farms to bring back to its 62,000 square-foot warehouse. The bank collected 37,899,527 pounds of food last year and distributed to agencies and pantries in 23 New York counties. Executive director Mark Quandt credits wildly energetic volunteers, technology and a staff that sorts tons of food each day with drill team precision.

"Still, about 30 percent of our produce is wasted because we're getting it just as it is about to lose freshness or go soft," Quandt said. "We send the rotten produce to pig farms we work with."

The pigs love every kind of produce except potatoes.

As soon as the trucks unload the daily donations, staff rapidly sorts through produce, meat, dairy and non-perishables. It is a race against the clock every day.

"You never know what will be in the boxes," said food bank truck driver Darren Dyer. "If July 4th is rainy, for example, you might get lots of steaks and hamburger meat donated because people cancelled their cookouts."

The categories of food are sorted again. Meat is divided into beef, pork, seafood, chicken and deli, for example, then weighed. Two staff members punch the information into the computer system so the food pantries and agencies the bank serves can place online orders.

Meanwhile, two staffers tackle the Herculean task of sorting more than 10,000 pounds of produce at two enormous tables.

All apples go in one bin, and potatoes and onions are boxed together. Fragile fruit like berries and bananas, the divas of the fruit world, get special attention from staffers who hawk them, sing their praises and urge clients to take them when they arrive for their pantry orders.

There is an area of the warehouse that is chilly and keeps the fragile fruit fresh longer. But the staffers still try to hustle it out the door while it's fresh.

Flawed food such as bruised fruit, dented cans or squashed cereal boxes goes down a conveyer belt where volunteers inspect it. If the flaws are purely cosmetic, it's kept. If there's any risk the food was contaminated or if it looks unhealthy, it's tossed.

"The belt moves slowly enough that we don't have an I Love Lucy show situation develop," salvage coordinator Tammie Racine said, referring Lucy's famous catastrophic chocolate factory gig.

Bowls of cubed honeydew, zucchini spaghetti and other deli items go into the industrial size fridges alongside the dairy and pastry fridge where it's all first come, first served. It cannot be pre-ordered.

"Sometimes we get a birthday cake with a child's name already written on it but the pantries know some family will want it," Dyer said.

Birthday cake is a luxury for cash-strapped parents who are delighted to scrape off the stranger's name so they can serve the cake on their child's big day.

Quandt hopes more people realize they don't have to be on food stamps or living in poverty to go to one of the pantries the bank serves. College students barely scraping by, recently arrived refugee families, workers who can only afford potato chips for dinner after paying the electric bill — all of them could go to the banks' client pantries and get a box of groceries.

Regional Food Bank staff frequently visit their client pantries to ensure they are clean, store food properly and are respectful of the dignity of all who come for help.

"Anyone struggling to get a meal can go to one of our pantries. You will not be humiliated. You will be welcome," Quandt said. "Think of it this way; food isn't wasted if someone who needs it gets it."

Quandt is hoping to join upcoming discussions about how to reshape the Food Recovery Act. Like Dugan, he feels confident that this will be the rare law that pleases everyone from pantry and shelter supervisors to food industry managers and town and city governments. In the mean time, the NRDC is calling on the federal government to curb food waste by making expiration dates on canned and packaged foods more accurate. Americans tend to toss food when it hits that date — so do grocers. But in reality, the food is edible and wholesome long after the date although the nutritional value decreases over time.

Quandt sees expiration date accuracy as the next winnable battle against food waste. Meanwhile, Capital Region residents can donate food to shelters, pantries or directly to the Regional Food Bank. And the Radix SUV and eBike are eager to expand their routes.