ReFED
Data and solutions for food waste.

Data and solutions for food waste.

Overview

Turning food waste into actionable strategy, powered by data

ReFED is a U.S. nonprofit focused on ending food loss and waste across the food system by advancing data-driven solutions. Together, we built the ReFED Insights Engine, a platform designed to help businesses, governments, funders, and nonprofits understand where food waste happens, compare the most impactful solutions, find partners, explore policies, and model the impact of action through connected tools and shared data.

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My role - Product & Interaction Design

Design-leading a complex platform through workshops, alignment, and data storytelling

Core Contributions:

  • Design Lead (end-to-end product direction): Owned the experience vision across the platform, balancing multiple tools and audiences into one coherent product ecosystem.
  • Workshop facilitation & cross-stakeholder alignment: Led online workshops with large client groups, breaking participants into teams and guiding them through structured exercises (blueprints, journeys, trade-offs) to define a shared product direction.
  • Information architecture across interconnected tools: Defined an architecture that connected multiple tools through consistent navigation, shared data logic, and clearer mental models, including merging tools when the overlap made more sense for users.
  • Data visualization & comparative UX: Designed high-impact visual storytelling to make comparisons intuitive across contexts (states, sectors, stakeholders), helping users quickly understand the scale and shape of food waste across the U.S.
Results

A unified platform that makes a national problem measurable

63 million tons of food waste quantified (U.S.)
ReFED estimates that 25% of all food in the U.S. (63M tons) ends up in landfill/incineration/drain, turning the platform into a critical reference point for understanding the problem.
Built on 80+ public and proprietary data sources
The Insights Engine is powered by data from 80+ sources, combining research, expert input, and system-wide datasets into one place.
A toolkit of 6 connected products, not just “a dashboard”
The platform includes the Food Waste Monitor, Solutions Database, Solution Provider Directory, Impact Calculator, Capital Tracker, and Policy Finder, all linked through the same information ecosystem.
A roadmap with $100B+ value potential and major climate impact
ReFED’s analysis shows that coordinated action to reduce food waste can unlock ~$100B in net economic value, create ~15,000 jobs, recover 1.8B meals annually, avoid ~18M tons of GHG emissions per year, and save ~1.6T gallons of water annually.
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