Estimating the Hidden Sustainability Contributions From Food Sharing Initiatives at the Municipal Scale

Establishing the impacts of municipal food systems is essential for guiding policy, ensuring accountability and promoting just, resilient, and sustainable food system transformation at this scale. However, knowledge of these systems remains partial. While the goals of food sharing initiatives (FSIs), such as community gardens, kitchens, and surplus food redistribution organisations, often support more equitable and sustainable food systems, their impacts are rarely documented and therefore remain invisible to municipal food governance. In response, this article presents a methodology for estimating sustainability impacts from FSIs and applies this to the municipality of Dublin, Ireland. Using FSI mapping, surveys, and a sample of sustainability impact assessments from growing, cooking, and redistribution initiatives, the approach enables estimations of social, economic, and environmental impact for municipalities. This gives greater visibility to the impacts FSIs create collectively, but alone cannot guarantee that these impacts are considered by decision-makers. In the context of developing a post 2030 sustainability agenda, we call for the development of municipal governance systems that both incentivise impact data collection for all food organisations and ensure the resulting impact data is meaningfully considered in decision-making.