Bayer Joins New Jersey’s Meal Recovery Coalition to Advance Food Access, Community Health

PRINCETON, NJ – Bayer, a global life sciences company with a mission, Health for all, Hunger for none, has joined the Meal Recovery Coalition (MRC) — a statewide initiative led by nonprofit Share My Meals Inc. to reduce food waste and address hunger by normalizing the practice of recovering and redistributing surplus prepared meals.

This cross-sector partnership reflects Bayer’s commitment to strengthening community health, advancing sustainability, and supporting innovative, systems-level solutions in New Jersey and beyond. As part of the MRC, Bayer will collaborate with peer corporations, food service providers, government agencies, and nonprofit partners to scale a model that diverts edible surplus food from landfills and redistributes it to food-insecure residents across the state.

Turning Surplus Into Solutions

Each year, more than five million prepared meals go to waste in New Jersey. The Meal Recovery Coalition’s vision is a world where each of these untouched, ready-to-eat meals from corporate campuses, hospitals, universities, and other institutional kitchens are captured and redirected to households experiencing food insecurity. Promoting collaboration between stakeholders can create a powerful, efficient channel that complements rather than competes with traditional hunger relief systems.

In 2024 – its inaugural year – the Coalition supported the recovery of over 770,000 meals between Share My Meals Inc., Table to Table, and FoodRecovery.org diverting the millions of pounds of greenhouse gas emissions that would have been generated if these meals had gone to landfill. This underscores the potential of meal recovery to address urgent environmental and social challenges at the same time.

“At Bayer, our mission, Health for all, Hunger for none, goes beyond our products — it extends to how we support the communities where we live and work,” said Susan Anderson, Director of Philanthropy and Community Impact. “By joining the Meal Recovery Coalition, we’re proud to support a practical, scalable solution that reduces waste, strengthens local food access, and advances environmental sustainability. This partnership reflects our belief that no good meal should be wasted when so many of our neighbors are in need.”

“Bayer brings a powerful alignment of mission and values to the Coalition,” said Hélène Lanctuit, CEO of Share My Meals and Co-Chair of the Meal Recovery Coalition. “Their commitment reinforces a growing recognition that meal recovery is not just about locating food, it is about systems change. With Bayer’s support, we can strengthen the infrastructure needed for safe and scalable recovery, expand our reach, and connect more surplus meals with trusted community partners across New Jersey.”

A Blueprint for Broader Change

Bayer joins a growing coalition of cross-sector partners working together to make meal recovery a standard part of New Jersey’s food system. The MRC’s membership now includes: Accenture, Bristol Myers Squibb, The Campbell's Company, Capital Health (US), Dartcor Hospitality, Food Bank of South Jersey, Johnson & Johnson, Merck, Novartis, Novo Nordisk, Sanofi, and Trenton Area Soup Kitchen (TASK). Partners in key initiatives include food-service providers Sodexo and Compass Group (Eurest and Flik Hospitality Group); the community organizations Community FoodBank of New Jersey and nourish.NJ, food recovery nonprofits Table to Table and FoodRecovery.org; academic institutions Rutgers University and the Harvard Law School Food Law and Policy Clinic, and state agencies including the NJ Department of Environmental Protection and the NJ Department of Health.

As an example of what cross-sector collaboration can achieve, the MRC’s Alignment on Standards project—facilitated by FCHS, Rutgers Cooperative Extension—led to the publication of the New Jersey Food Donation Guidelines. Developed with input from state agencies, food-service providers, nonprofits, academic partners, and food recovery organizations, these guidelines offer clear, practical direction for anyone involved in donating, recovering, or redistributing surplus food. By establishing shared expectations and best practices, this work helps open new opportunities for safe food donation and builds the trust and consistency needed to expand access to high-quality meals for communities across the state.

Beyond New Jersey, the MRC’s goal is to create a replicable model that other regions can use to address food waste and hunger through collaborative, scalable solutions. With Bayer’s participation, the Coalition moves closer to its target of recovering one million meals by 2026, building toward a longer-term ambition of recovering millions of meals annually for families across the state.

About Share My Meals & the Meal Recovery Coalition

Share My Meals is a New Jersey-based nonprofit that reduces food waste and addresses food insecurity through sustainable meal recovery solutions. In 2024, Share My Meals launched the Meal Recovery Coalition (MRC) to coordinate and expand these efforts across the state. The MRC brings together corporations, food donors, nonprofits, and government partners to build a scalable model that ensures surplus meals reach people — not landfills.

About Bayer

Bayer is a global enterprise with core competencies in the life science fields of health care and nutrition. In line with its mission, Health for all, Hunger for none, the company’s products and services are designed to help people and the planet thrive by supporting efforts to master the major challenges presented by a growing and aging global population. Bayer is committed to driving sustainable development and generating a positive impact with its businesses. At the same time, the Group aims to increase its earning power and create value through innovation and growth. The Bayer brand stands for trust, reliability and quality throughout the world. In fiscal 2024, the Group employed around 93,000 people and had sales of 46.6 billion euros. R&D expenses amounted to 6.2 billion euros. For more information, go to www.bayer.com.