Reducing Food Waste
Issue Briefing
Food waste reduction policies would divert organic waste from landfills and help lower greenhouse gas emissions.
Clear Policy Ask: States should help divert food waste from landfills by offering incentives to donate or compost excess food.
Improper food waste disposal is a major source of methane emissions.
Methane, a potent greenhouse gas, plays a significant role in accelerating climate change. Its presence in the atmosphere is short-lived, but it traps heat at 80x the potency of CO2. Methane’s potency makes it an urgent problem; quickly reducing methane emissions would help slow the pace of global warming in the short term and buy us time to solve particularly vexing decarbonization challenges.
In the U.S., methane accounts for around 10% of total greenhouse gas emissions, and while a lot of methane is produced by the energy sector, landfills account for 17% of U.S. methane pollution. When organic material decomposes without oxygen in a landfill, it emits methane. Shockingly, this happens to about 30-40% of food produced in the U.S. every year.
Organic landfill emissions present such a significant climate problem that the nonprofit Project Drawdown, which evaluates a comprehensive list of climate solutions in terms of decarbonization potential, ranks reducing food waste as the #1 most effective climate solution in a 2ºC warming scenario.
How to keep organic waste out of landfills
There are multiple ways to achieve the goal of reducing food waste, from the production stage of food all the way through its user stages, and many are remarkably cost-effective and low-tech. The nonprofit ReFED categorizes policy levers for reducing food waste into 3 buckets:
Prevention (e.g. more precise date labeling),
Rescuing (e.g. donating food instead of throwing it out), and
Recycling (e.g. composting and using compost as fertilizer).
It’s common for farmers and other producers to dispose of excess food products, but there are nonprofits across the country that have the capacity to take in and distribute surplus food. Getting producers to donate those goods so they don’t end up in landfills is a critical step in reducing food waste. This is an example of a policy lever focused on rescuing.
Sometimes food disposal cannot be avoided, and that’s where recycling waste comes in. When food must be thrown away, composting is the best recycling method. Composting is a sped-up version of organic matter’s natural decomposition, which is achieved by providing an ideal environment for food waste to turn back into fertilizer.
It’s a straightforward solution, but widespread composting hasn’t yet materialized in the United States. Only 12% of American households have access to public composting programs. In a recent survey, 72% of Americans reported that they don’t compost their waste.
The good news is that there’s clear willingness to start: of those who do not compost, 69% indicated they would compost if it were easier to do so. That’s where the government can step in.
STOP! You now know enough about reducing food waste to take meaningful action.
Curious about this climate solution and want to learn more? Cool, keep scrolling!
Quick Frames
People have different values and priorities and are therefore motivated by different framings of the same policy issue (policymakers and decision-makers included!).
Facts are facts, but reframing the issue to speak effectively to folks with different perspectives is important and productive:
🇺🇸 POLITICAL FEASIBILITY: Composting, relative to other decarbonization methods, has largely avoided partisan framing around greenhouse gas emissions and is viewed more neutrally as waste reduction. Food waste reduction incentives have been enacted by both red and blue states.
💡 RAPID DECARBONIZATION: Food waste in landfills accounts for 17% of U.S. methane emissions. Methane has 80x the warming potential of CO2. By quickly reducing landfill methane through widespread composting, we buy time to tackle other sources of greenhouse gas emissions.
♥️ HUMAN HEALTH & SAFETY: Methane and its byproduct, ozone, are hazardous to human health, with links to cardiovascular and respiratory disease. Methane is also flammable and explosive, and landfills are known to catch fire and even explode. In contrast, compost improves the quality of locally farmed food and reduces the need for carbon-intensive, carcinogenic agrochemicals and fertilizers.
✊ EQUITY AND JUSTICE: 80% of U.S. trash incinerators are located in low-income neighborhoods and low-income and minority groups are more likely to live within one mile of a landfill, where they are exposed to toxic runoff. By decreasing methane emissions, these sites become less dangerous, and their size can be contained instead of expanding further into communities.
💰 ECONOMIC COST SAVINGS: Composting can yield economy-wide savings by reducing the maintenance costs of municipal waste infrastructure and improving the sustainability and resilience of regional agriculture with healthier soil. Incentives for composting also deliver additional direct savings to consumers and businesses.
🌿 ENVIRONMENTALISM: Composting embodies the principles of waste minimization, regenerative resources, and environmental stewardship central to a more circular (sustainable) economy. It offers an alternative to the dominant economic model of overconsumption and helps sustainably close the loop of product life cycles.
Wonky details ahead!
Wonky details ahead!
(you can handle it)
Examples of effective state policy levers
Statewide tax credits for food donation: About one-quarter of U.S. states have implemented tax credits to pay food producers and retailers for donating the excess food they cannot sell. The most generous existing tax credits allow producers to recoup at about double the cost of production, which is often more than half of the total revenue they could have earned by selling the product.
Composting tax credits for households and businesses: If the composting survey data is accurate, making it convenient to compost should go a long way in reducing the amount of improper food waste disposal. States can boost composting rates with residential and commercial tax credits for composting equipment.
Competitive grants for municipal composting programs: In 2024, only ~400 municipalities across 25 states offered public composting services. By establishing competitive grants, states can help municipalities overcome upfront cost barriers to developing public composting programs, like providing free organics waste bins and a curbside pickup service.
How composting prevents methane emissions
When food ends up in a landfill, it’s suffocated by a giant trash heap. Tightly packed, oxygen-deprived environments are exactly where methane-producing anaerobic bacteria thrive. Bacteria called methanogens break down food waste into nutrients that are useful to them: methane and carbon dioxide—two compounds we, as humans, do not want hanging around in the atmosphere. The more food we throw in the trash, the more methane we emit from landfills.
The composting process exposes food waste to oxygen, thereby avoiding the type of anaerobic decomposition that produces methane. Instead of being turned into methane, nutrients are returned back into the soil. This has the added benefit of going on to support healthy plant growth and carbon sequestration.
Why is there so much food waste to begin with?
The stat reported by the White House saying roughly a third of U.S. food production goes to waste can be difficult to absorb. How is it possible that supply and demand are so imbalanced? The answer is multifaceted, involving a combination of consumer habits, agricultural practices, supply chain inefficiencies, and other economic factors.
Consumer behavior: For most Americans, there is an abundance of available food, and portions are disproportionately large compared to other wealthy nations. This leads consumers to purchase more than they can actually eat before it spoils. There’s also a strong bias toward aesthetically pleasing produce, leading retailers to reject large quantities of fruits and vegetables that are perfectly edible but cosmetically imperfect. At home, consumers may also misinterpret "best by" and "sell by" dates as hard safety guidelines rather than indicators of peak quality, resulting in the disposal of food that’s still safe to eat.
Supply chain inefficiency: During harvesting, crops that don’t meet specific quality or size standards are often left in the fields, even if they’re perfectly edible. Transport and storage phases are also critical points where food can be wasted due to inadequate handling procedures or logistical failures that expose food to improper temperatures, leading to spoilage.
Financial incentives & market distortions: Food industry economics differ from other industries due to the temporary shelf life of most food products. Retailers offer bulk discounts and promotions for edible products the same way they would for toilet paper or soap. At the production stage, federal farm subsidies can lead to improper price signaling and a surplus of goods for which there is no consumer demand.
Lack of food waste reduction policy: Of course, most of what’s outlined above can be considered a “market failure.” That means it would be economically efficient for the government to step in and correct the imbalance. But there’s been relatively little action by state and local governments to motivate change in any of these categories. In some cases, regulations actually make it more difficult or expensive to donate excess food. Without government incentives in place, landfill disposal is the path of least resistance for thousands of producers and sellers across the country.
FAQ
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The customizable email templates in every Climate Changemakers Action Playbook are designed to be politically neutral.
That said, we always highly recommend adding your own personalization to the templates. This may mean replacing some of the arguments with compelling benefits that are better suited to your area’s demographics.
In general, use a word like “pollution” rather than “climate change” or “decarbonization,” and focus on economic benefits.
Additionally, every Issue Briefing has a “Quick Frames” section (above) that can help you focus your argument through the most appropriate lens. For conservatives, those will often be “cost savings” or “job creation.” Some conservative policymakers also respond well to arguments about environmental conservation (as distinct from anything related to greenhouse gas emissions).
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What a wonderful problem to have! First, clarify whether they have actually championed the Clear Policy Ask—have they introduced or cosponsored legislation to incentivize composting?
If the answer is still yes: try reframing your message with specific reference to their supportive actions, thanking them for their leadership, then push them to do even more. There is always room to do more.
Yoa can also ask if there's anything you can do as a constituent to help them get things across the finish line!
Separately from your message to policymakers, you can also spend your valuable action-taking time recruiting friends in other legislative districts to get in on this action. If you’re asking a friend to follow in your footsteps and contact a specific decision-maker, consider making it super easy for them by editing the email template on their behalf, then sending it to them to transmit. See the Action Plan webpage and the last step of every Action Playbook for more information and resources about activating your network!
Social Media Example
⬇️ Personalize this message to your network and customize for your preferred social media platform:
Today I learned that that the food we throw into the trash turns into a TON of methane once in the landfill (17% of U.S. methane emissions!) and right now, a shocking one-third of food produced in the U.S. goes to waste. 🤯 But a fun fact is that nearly 7 in10 Americans say they’d compost food scraps if composting were simpler. That is a huge opportunity! 🥕 @STATE LEGISLATORS @GOVERNOR, please incentivize statewide composting w/ tax credits & municipal grants!
Or revisit the Issue Frames to post about this climate solution from a specific angle you care about.
Policymaker Resources
Click here for a list of resources you can share with elected officials to assist with composting policy design. (These are also linked in the letter templates).
The resources include:
Toolkits for incorporating composting and other food waste policy into climate strategies
White papers on composting and methane
Sample state statutes establishing food donation tax credits and municipal composting grants.
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