On May 21, 2026, Verra officially registered the very first project under its pioneering food loss and waste methodology, VM0046. The landmark initiative, titled "Brightly – Reducing Food Loss and Waste" (Verra Project 4711), represents a significant breakthrough in tackling both climate change and food insecurity.
Situated in the United States, which is currently the third-largest generator of food loss and waste in the world, the project directly addresses the staggering reality that food waste is responsible for 8 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions. Over its initial seven-year crediting period spanning from 2020 to 2027, the Brightly project is expected to facilitate the rescue of approximately 167 million pounds of surplus food. By diverting this massive volume of food away from traditional waste disposal methods, the initiative is projected to generate roughly 115,118 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) in verified emission reductions. This historic registration signals the successful operationalization of Verra's new standards, proving that carbon markets can effectively channel finance toward critical food rescue operations.
The Brightly project operates as a grouped initiative across the United States, partnering directly with nonprofit Food Rescue Organizations (FROs) like The Farmlink Project and Food Finders. At its core, the project mitigates harmful methane emissions by recovering edible, high-quality surplus food from farms, retailers, and distributors, and redirecting it to food-insecure communities. Historically, the food rescue sector in the United States has been severely constrained by unstable, grant-based funding, leading to a consistently low national food diversion rate that has historically hovered around a maximum recorded estimate of 7.8 percent.
These financial limitations were further exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, which massively disrupted business-as-usual operations while simultaneously causing a surge in demand for food assistance. To combat these investment barriers, Brightly assumes the substantial upfront risks and costs associated with carbon project development and measurement, utilizing a proprietary technology platform to rigorously track food types, weights, and distances traveled while filtering out non-food items to ensure conservative accounting. Through contractual agreements, the majority of the revenue generated from the sale of these carbon credits is returned directly to the participating FROs. This reliable, ongoing carbon finance unlocks the necessary capital for these organizations to scale their fleets, upgrade refrigeration infrastructure, and expand their operations well beyond historical limits.
The foundation of this innovative project is Verra’s VM0046, the "Methodology for Reducing Food Loss and Waste, v1.0," which has been active since July 12, 2023. This methodology provides the rigorous accounting procedures required to quantify the downstream greenhouse gas emission reductions achieved by diverting food from traditional food loss and waste (FLW) destinations, such as landfills without flaring, open dumps, or controlled combustion facilities. The methodology applies to a wide variety of activities designed to keep food in the human supply chain, encompassing interventions at the farm level (like gleaning), at processing facilities, at retail locations through dynamic pricing or enhanced demand planning, and even at the residential and foodservice levels.
To be eligible under VM0046, a project must actively reduce the amount of food discarded compared to a baseline scenario, adhere strictly to all relevant local and national food health and safety legislation, and introduce tangible changes at any stage of the food's life cycle. Furthermore, the methodology includes strict guidelines for determining additionality and baseline emissions, requiring detailed calculations of the dry matter content of the rescued food, as well as mandatory accounting for potential project emissions from transportation and electricity use. By establishing these rigorous parameters, VM0046 ensures that projects generate high-integrity carbon credits, ultimately proving that environmental markets can drive vital climate action while simultaneously advancing human well-being and global sustainability.
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