Wegmans Food Markets is celebrating 10 years of its Zero Waste initiative, launched with a bold, long‑term goal to get to a place where the company throws nothing away.

The Zero Waste program began in 2016 as a single‑store pilot in Canandaigua, New York, and has since expanded across all Wegmans stores.

By focusing on three core pillars — food donations, composting, and recycling — Wegmans concentrates on the areas where it can make the greatest impact. Today, nearly 90 percent of materials from Wegmans operations are diverted from landfills.

“Zero Waste is about doing the right thing every day — for our communities, our environment, and our people,” said Chris Foote, sustainability area manager at Wegmans. “We started this work by asking a simple question — what more could we do — and that mindset continues to guide us today.”

A cornerstone of the program is food donation. In 2025 alone, Wegmans donated 36.8 million pounds of food to local hunger-relief organizations, supporting neighbors while ensuring surplus food is put to its highest and best use.

When food can’t be donated, the company works with partners like Natural Upcycling to compost food scraps, so they can be returned to the soil or used to generate energy, keeping organic material out of landfills.

“As our Zero Waste efforts have grown, so has our partnership with Natural Upcycling,” Foote said. “They started as a small operation, and together we’ve helped grow a solution that ensures food never has to end up in a landfill, creating a sustainability ‘triple win’ for our business, our communities, and the environment.”