New Tracker Highlights State-by-State Opportunities to Advance Food Waste Legislation

August 13, 2024

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What inspired Divert’s Public Affairs team to start creating this policy tracker? How did it come together?

It started because we needed a tool at Divert to build our customers’ awareness of organic waste policies that were going to impact their operations. Many of our customers have already been working with Divert to reduce wasted food, increase donations, and divert organics from the landfill in states where these policies have not yet been put into practice. We were already aware of legislation being implemented in California (CA SB 1383) and Washington (WA HB 1799), and recognized that it would also be important to ensure best industry practices were incorporated into emerging policies, so that legislative authors could take into consideration what works and what does not work from an implementation standpoint. We wanted to create a comprehensive view of food waste-related legislation state-by-state, and share it with other stakeholders and customers. 

As our list grew, we shared it with the Zero Food Waste Coalition (ZFWC) and Harvard’s Food Law and Policy Clinic to get their input. It was a really collaborative effort to create a robust tool that everyone in the industry can use.

Why is a policy tracker like this needed? What sets it apart from other tools out there? Why is it needed right now? 

You can’t influence what you don’t know about. Existing tools show legislation that is already signed into law, which is helpful, but that doesn’t give stakeholders or citizens the opportunity to influence legislation while it’s being developed. While Divert has been working with its customers to understand prevention, rescue, and food waste policies, this tracker serves as an opportunity to extend that knowledge to all stakeholders involved in addressing wasted food space. Furthermore, by developing this tracker with Zero Food Waste Coalition and Harvard’s Food Law and Policy Clinic, there is a better opportunity to share these insights beyond just Divert’s customers and food donation partners to ensure that all stakeholders involved in these complex policy decisions can share their insights about what is needed and what is working. A variety of input is crucial to creating actionable, effective policy that will ultimately move the needle on reducing food waste. So our goal was to create a tool that gives people clarity on what they have the power to influence, not just legislation that already exists. 

You can’t influence what you don’t know about. Existing tools show legislation that is already signed into law, which is helpful, but that doesn’t give stakeholders or citizens the opportunity to influence legislation while it’s being developed.”

We designed the tool to show state legislation because although federal legislation is important, state policy is where we will see what organic waste legislation looks like in practice and how it impacts local communities – from landfill capacity, to food recovery efforts, to renewable energy supply, and more. 

This is an urgent need because organic waste bans and other similar legislation are being formed in response to the climate crisis; the sooner we formulate policies that people can act on to reduce food waste, the more of an impact we can have on mitigating the harmful effects of food waste on the environment. But to create effective policy that benefits everyone, we need input from stakeholders. We hope this tool drives momentum in effective organic waste policy being enacted across the country.

As you’ve been building out the policy tracker, 2024 has been an active year for organic waste legislation. Where have you seen the biggest wins and challenges? 

As I mentioned, we’ve been very focused on following the organic waste legislation in Washington and California. These two states have been our focus because their policies are really laying the groundwork for other states to tackle organic waste legislation, although that will vary by state; how Maine handles their organic waste will be unique from how a state like California handles theirs. 

There are two specific bills we’ve been involved in shaping this year:

• Washington House Bill 2301 – A multi-stakeholder coalition was formed and led by a facilitator, allowing government, industry, and private organizations to gather bi-weekly to determine which areas of food related policy they wanted to see implemented in the state of Washington. The process itself began prior to the 2024 legislative session, and following consensus, a bill was introduced in early January that stakeholders could continue to influence throughout the entire legislative process. It was beneficial to have a clear sense of what the legislative priorities would be, even before the bill process began. Divert played a key role by working with the legislative sponsor and the governor’s office throughout the session until the bill was signed. 

• California Senate Bill 1426 – While the state of California has introduced numerous food waste-related bills this year, we focused our efforts in helping the state clarify how food waste innovators may assist customers in jurisdictions that have not yet been able to meet their organic waste diversion and recycling goals. We’ve collaborated with the Recycle Right Coalition to develop policy that clarifies what types of wasted food diversion, processing, and donation services may be provided to customers, especially when such services are not being provided by a local jurisdiction. The goal of that bill is to ensure local jurisdictions and large generators of food waste have options when complying with CA SB 1383, the state’s organic waste ban that was signed into law in 2016. We’re hopeful that SB 1426 will give food industry stakeholders clarity on actions they can take to reduce and divert their wasted food when their local waste management services cannot process their wasted food without creating additional environmental challenges (such as microplastics in finished compost products), and therefore must send it to the landfill. 

As you said, every state will have their unique challenges to forming and implementing organic waste bans, but what are some of the overarching themes you’ve noticed as you’ve built this tool and worked on these bills?

The biggest things have been stakeholder alignment and scarcity. We have a diverse set of stakeholders we have to engage with, from composters to anaerobic digesters, to food recovery organizations, to food industry businesses, and legislators. When they come to the table, they agree that wasted food is a problem and want to solve it, but their priorities and perspectives on how to do it are very different. Initially, there’s a fear of scarcity – what if this new policy means less rescued food for my foodbank, or less feedstock for our composter? But when you look at the scale of wasted food it’s really important to reiterate that there’s enough to go around, unfortunately.

In fact, as an organic waste ban becomes established within a state, there is such an important and widespread educational push from food rescue organizations and government regulators to prioritize donations instead of diversion. Implementing prevention and rescue initiatives into any recycling service has become the standard. At Divert, we work with our retail partners to help educate store employees on opportunities to donate prior to diversion, and can provide further insights into what they’re donating. This two-in-one practice has helped some of our customers increase their donations by at least 20%.

Then the issue becomes prioritization; we know that we won’t be able to rescue every single piece of edible food or implement every solution at scale right away. It’s a layered problem with layered solutions and prioritization. It requires tough conversations and hard decisions on how to address this problem, but we’re already seeing that we can make meaningful progress if we work together. 

What’s on the horizon for the 2025 legislative session? 

2025 will be another active year in organic waste legislation. We plan to update our Food Waste Legislative Tracker quarterly, and will have more detailed insights into 2025 policies when we share the first update this fall. But in general, I’m hopeful that this new tool we’ve created will inspire stakeholders and policymakers from other states to look at the legislation happening in places like Washington and California and create their own organic waste legislation. 

As for states that already have implemented organic waste bans, I think we’ll see some reflection from policymakers on how effective they are and refinements need to be made to optimize diversion efforts. We need to go beyond just checking the box of an organic waste ban and begin looking at enforcement mechanisms to ensure generators know that they need to be serious about implementing donation and diversion solutions.

States can also begin to fund opportunities for cities or counties to adopt technologies aimed at gathering data insights on how well waste generators are helping these states meet their recycling goals. It can be a lot to require jurisdictions to develop and fund organic waste management programs if they haven’t previously needed to provide these solutions to businesses and residents, so it is crucial for states that are mandating diversion to determine how they can help jurisdictions with new funding needs. 

Implementing prevention, donation, and diversion policies require complex problem solving and massive amounts of community education. We know that the work isn’t finished and there’s more to do. 

In your view, what is that next step after a waste ban? What do states need to do to encourage further action on changing how we handle organic waste? 

The things that are top of mind for us are education, enforcement, and capacity building to process the incoming donations and wasted food that is being diverted. When I speak with customers about diversion requirements within a state, I find that even though our programs ensure our customers are compliant with a variety of different types of organic waste bans, I am often the first person to inform them that their state has an organic waste ban. More outreach is needed for businesses to build awareness of these newer policies and why they’re important: what does increasing donations to families in need mean for the communities they work in? How does diverting wasted food from the landfill help to better mitigate climate change? By educating wasted food generators on the “why,” it opens up room for a conversation, rather than creating just another regulatory requirement that they have to comply with. 

Following education, states need to look at how they plan to enforce these organic waste bans and hold wasted food generators to the standards that are outlined in these policies. Developing enforcement mechanisms will signal that states are serious about implementing policies that just make sense for business revenue, communities in need, and the climate.  

Additionally, we need to implement policies that ease the siting, permitting, and development of facilities that help to divert wasted food. According to a study conducted by ReFed in 2022, of the 88.7 million tons of surplus food generated, the majority of it ended up going to waste via landfills, sewers, incineration, or dumping. Only 2.1% of that surplus food was rescued for human consumption, and anaerobic digestion only processed 1.2% of that waste. 

Divert’s goal is to expand that capacity by developing 30 facilities within 100 miles of 80% of the population by 2031. But when you read statistics like ReFED’s, it begs a series of questions: Why is our capacity so small, as a country? We have the technology to recycle organic waste with anaerobic digestion; why aren’t we able to get more of this technology set up in more communities? Are states setting themselves up for success to meet these recycling and diversion goals?  States that are implementing these organic waste bans are often requiring the largest commercial food waste generators to comply first, but since the material they produce is often unsuitable for composting, and there are little to no depackaging capabilities or anaerobic digestion facilities available to take the wasted food, they aren’t able to meet the goals set forth by their state. California has a goal of reducing by 75% compared to 2016 levels by 2030; if we don’t have processing capacity, we’re not going to meet those goals without more legislation to expand it across the state. 

Oftentimes it’s a permitting issue, and it’s a local education issue – prohibitive regulations that need to change and make it easier for companies like Divert and others to join communities, give them new options for food rescue and recycling, and help them understand what we do so that communities feel more at ease when these technologies are introduced.

Wasted food is a complex problem, but our goal is to help policymakers and stakeholders across the country have a vision beyond 2030 so that we can keep building together to achieve 100% organic waste diversion.

Wasted food is a complex problem, but our goal is to help policymakers and stakeholders across the country have a vision beyond 2030 so that we can keep building together to achieve 100% organic waste diversion.”

What has given you hope as you’ve worked on all of this? Where do you see the most meaningful change taking place? 

When I log off every evening, I always leave feeling more hopeful than when I started. The conversations that I have with my colleagues, food rescue organizations, and government stakeholders consistently remind me that although there is still a lot to do, we are consistently working towards the same goal and are willing to have the difficult conversations. I am especially inspired by the working group meetings held by ZFWC, where a variety of stakeholders with very different perspectives can come together to understand how best to achieve the ultimate goal of preventing, rescuing and recycling food waste, even though we might all bring different skill sets and operational infrastructure to achieving that goal.

The last two years have shown immense progress in solving the problem of wasted food and it’s incredibly exciting to see stakeholders willing to engage. When I started at Divert in 2022, I found in my conversations that wasted food generators were hesitant to discuss what they were wasting, share their food waste data, or even talk openly about what they hoped to see from a policy perspective. Let’s face it, no industry wants to be regulated even more than they already are. However, as more technologies became available to address this waste and the connection between wasted food and climate change became readily apparent, generators began to understand what prevention, rescue, and recycling of wasted food could mean for their bottom line and have recognized that it is the right thing to do. Stakeholders have become interested in figuring out how to provide meaningful input to shape actionable legislation to achieve the collective goal. There’s been a lot of momentum in the last year and I think we are at a turning point of being able to utilize technologies like Divert’s to increase U.S. food recycling capacity.

What do you think is behind that shift in willingness from food industry leaders to engage in this? It’s obviously not as simple as “it’s just the right thing to do”; there are real logistical challenges these companies face in changing their operations, publishing their waste data, etc. What has made the biggest difference? 

I think there are a few factors that have helped companies make the shift. Again, it’s about industry education and making that connection between food waste in the landfill, food insecurity in your community, and climate change. I’ve worked on climate policy initiatives for the bulk of my career, but in my day-to-day I find the concept of climate change and its impacts on my life a bit abstract. But after working on wasted food policies for two and a half years, I am very cognizant of the effects wasted food has on my community. I can see the line to my local food rescue organization of families trying to feed themselves every week when I take a walk. For retail employees, it’s the same concept: when they see the direct benefit that diverting wasted food has on their communities and their day-to-day operations, they are more inclined to engage in food prevention, rescue, and recycling programs. As companies have shared the why of what they are doing with their employees and customers, it has made adoption of these types of programs significantly smoother. 

Another factor is business impacts. Divert started by focusing on providing a solution for retail food waste generators. According to ReFED, food retailers generate 5 million tons, or $31.2B in surplus food each year. Wasted food is considered a subset of surplus food, which ReFED defines as all food that goes unsold or unused by a business or that goes uneaten at home. This can be concerning for retailers, who might make an average of $50,000 in sales a day, while hoping to achieve a profit margin of 1.5% or $750, but could easily lose tens of thousands in revenue in a single business day if food is improperly managed. On top of this, it is important to remember that rescuing wasted food is a free diversion approach and grocery retailers are recognizing that by directly giving back to their communities, they can save money on recycling fees or landfill tip fees. Divert’s own pricing model helps to incentivize customers to waste less by incorporating markdown and rescue into a grocery store’s prevention practices. 

The room for error in this industry is small. We help food retailers reduce these errors by sharing wasted food data back to the stores—when they know what’s being wasted, they can adjust their ordering processes, mark down processes, and food recovery efforts to prevent waste. 

At Divert, we have always believed that environmental sustainability is as good for business as it is for people and planet, and the numbers bear that out when it comes to wasted food diversion. Once business leaders see that, then they can also see that legislation is a tool, not a weapon being wielded against them. They want to engage with it because they know that the right policy will help everyone achieve business goals, food security goals, and climate goals. That’s why we created the tracker, because we want to give relevant stakeholders the opportunity to engage with the legislation in a way that will enable them to prevent, rescue, and recycle before landfilling. 

In our day-to-day roles at Divert, we’re working with decision-makers in the food industry, policymakers, and others, but not so much with our customer’s customers (grocery shoppers, restaurant patrons, everyday citizens.) What kind of insights do you want to share with someone who might be reading this and thinking, how do I get started – what can I do to change my wasted food habits and shape organic waste legislation in my state? 

I always start by sharing what Divert does and what anaerobic digestion is. From a personal perspective, before I began working with Divert I was not aware of the nuance between wasted food management programs such as composting and anaerobic digestion – and I certainly was not aware that not all food waste is created equal. I think it is important for people to understand that while composting is absolutely what should be happening at the residential level, it is not necessarily a suitable solution for commercially generated food waste due to the level of plastic packaging, the sheer amount, and the wetness of the waste. 

These are the steps I encourage people to take to get involved in the effort to reduce food waste: 

• First, find out whether your city or county composts or diverts organic waste from the landfill. The easiest way that you can get involved and start to understand what you are throwing out and where it is going, and utilize any local diversion programs available. The more people are aware, the more we can begin to hold jurisdictions and waste companies accountable in how they manage organic waste.
• If your jurisdiction does not make it easy for you or your business to divert wasted food, find another way to recycle some of your wasted food, if you can. There are often local composting initiatives held at farmers markets or community gardens that can provide information on how you or your business can best divert wasted food. 
• If your state doesn’t have an organic waste ban right now, there are two steps you can take:
  • 1) Connect with organizations like Zero Food Waste Coalition, Natural Resources Defense Council, World Wildlife Fund, and ReFED, that are giving communities the tools to understand the different policies that are emerging and how to influence them.
  • 2) Contact your representatives. Talk to them about the harmful effects of food waste and how it will impact your community to have legislation that mandates increased food donations and recycling wasted food into renewable energy.
• Don’t feel shame in doing the best you can do to reduce your food waste, even if it’s not perfect. If there are days where you remember to compost, then do it! Get creative with using the leftovers in your fridge. Managing your own waste is a behavioral change that takes time; give yourself and your neighbors grace and express curiosity about how you can improve your habits. 

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