Are US State Bans on Food Waste Bans Really Not Working?

Several US states have introduced food waste bans. But of the first five, only one state’s approach has worked, according to one study. But there’s more than meets the eye.

To curb the US’s gnawing food waste problem, a number of states have been prohibiting supermarkets, restaurants and other commercial waste generators from sending uneaten food to landfills.

In the last decade, nine states have introduced such legislation in a bid to reduce food waste by 10-15%. But in a recent study, researchers compiled datasets covering the waste produced by 85% of the population between 1996 and 2019, and used it to examine the first five state food waste bans, in Connecticut, Vermont, and Massachusetts (all implemented in 2014), Rhode Island, and California (both in 2016).

They found that Massachusetts reduced landfilled food waste by 7% annually in the first five years – but none of the other four was successful in diverting waste from landfills or incinerators.

“We can say with high confidence that the combination of waste bans did not reduce landfilled waste by more than 3%, and that is including Massachusetts,” said Robert Evan Sanders, assistant professor of marketing at the Rady School of Management and co-author of the study. “Essentially, the data suggests that in four out of the five states we studied, these laws did nothing to reduce waste.”

The bans laid out in New York, New Jersey, Maryland and Washington were deemed too new to analyse, but the researchers sought to highlight the inefficacy of current measures to cut food waste – even though some experts have called the findings into question.

Why Massachusetts was successful in its food waste ban

The researchers used a method employed by economists to evaluate government policy changes, comparing each state that adopted the ban to similar ones that didn’t. Doing so helped them project how much waste would have gone to landfills if the five states hadn’t introduced these regulations.

“With most of these laws, about 70% of commercial organic waste would have been illegal to send to landfills,” said Ioannis Stamatopoulos, co-author of the paper and associate professor at UT Austin’s McCombs School of Business.

“If you take all that organic waste out of landfills, it should reduce the amount of waste that’s going into landfills by 10% in some cases, and that should have been something we were able to see in the data, but did not.”

The researchers pointed to three key reasons why Massachusetts was effective in slashing food waste through its law. First, the Bay State was found to have the best composting infrastructure network, with the most number of food waste processing facilities per 1,000 sq miles of the five states.

Massachusetts also has the most comprehensible law, with the least number of exemptions. That makes it easy for people to understand the regulation.

Finally, the state honed in on enforcement and fines, unlike others. Massachusetts had more than triple (216%) the number of inspections per waste generator every year compared to the next highest state on the list, Vermont.

All this allowed Massachusetts to gradually lower food waste by 13.2%. “Our findings indicate that simply implementing a food waste ban is not enough to achieve significant reductions in landfill waste,” the authors wrote.

“Massachusetts has shown that with the right combination of comprehensive coverage and effective enforcement, these bans can work. It’s crucial for other states to learn from this model and adapt their policies accordingly to meet environmental targets and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.”

ReFED criticises food waste study’s ‘faulty approach’

Across the US, 33% of all food goes to waste, which is worth $428B, according to food waste non-profit ReFED. Much of this is landfilled, responsible for 58% of methane emissions from solid municipal waste landfills. It is the single largest volume of material sent to landfills and incinerators and causes emissions equivalent to those of over 50 million gas-powered cars.

In fact, the amount of food lost or wasted in the country could feed around 46 million Americans – that’s more than the entire states of New York and Florida combined. And while nearly half of this comes from households, a fifth is attributed to consumer businesses like retailers and restaurants.

But ReFED was critical of the study, highlighting the fact that the study only evaluates policies that began in 2016 or earlier, and even then, the scope of the research ends in 2018 due to the complexity of the data. Since then, reports from states like California and Vermont have reported that these food waste bans have indeed been successful.

The authors themselves noted that California’s SB 1383 – adopted in 2022 – was a step in the right direction, through which every jurisdiction is required to provide organic waste collection services to all residents and businesses.

Washington requires supermarkets to donate safe-to-eat food, Maryland offers tax credits to farmers who donate edible food, and New York requires large businesses to donate excess food and recycle leftover scraps if they’re within 25 miles of a composting facility.

“The study’s faulty approach incorrectly threatens what we think is one of the strongest levers to successfully reduce food waste across the country. State-level food waste bans create a cascade of benefits – from incentivising the creation of organics recycling infrastructure to promoting food recovery and even to enabling source reduction,” said ReFED president Dana Gunders.

“Now is the time to focus on scaling the solutions we have available, including food waste bans, instead of hindering our efforts because of an incomplete assessment,” she added.

Fiorentina Anglou, a PhD student at the University of Texas and co-author of the study, said: “With food waste around the globe contributing 8-10% of greenhouse gas emissions, we certainly don’t think states should abandon these laws, but more action needs to be taken to make them effective.”

On a federal level, the US adopted its first national strategy to tackle food waste and loss earlier this year, outlining goals for businesses and consumers to prevent wastage, increase recycling, reduce emissions, and save money. Initiatives include extending the shelf life of foods, expanding food donations, improving local infrastructure to upcycle waste, and developing a national awareness campaign.