In a country where nearly 60 million tons of food are thrown away each year—close to 40% of the national supply—wasted meals have become more than just a moral or economic dilemma. They are a climate liability. As policymakers, businesses, and communities search for solutions, Massachusetts stands out for its innovative approach to keeping food out of landfills and turning waste into a resource.
In 2014, Massachusetts became one of the first states to introduce a ban on food waste disposal. Under this regulation, businesses and institutions that generate more than half a ton of food waste per week are required to divert that waste from landfills and incinerators to instead compost or donate edible leftovers. Since then, VT, CA, NY, RI, and CT have followed suit. Vermont’s Universal Recycling Law, for example, led to a 40-percent increase in food donations statewide.
Yet, Massachusetts’s efforts go beyond mere legislation. While the law has been in place since 2014, enforcement has been light—just 141 businesses have been cited for noncompliance in the past decade. Recognizing that regulation alone is not enough, the state has invested in building a culture of waste reduction by supporting waste consultants who help businesses put the law into practice.
Heather Billings is one such consultant. After growing up watching her father-in-law collect newspapers for recycling, she launched a neighborhood recycling center 35 years ago and later joined the waste-hauling industry. Today, she serves as a senior waste reduction consultant for the Center for EcoTechnology, a state-contracted nonprofit. Her role involves visiting restaurants, grocery stores, and food service businesses to identify sources of food waste. She then offers these establishments tailored and realistic solutions, such as providing smaller bins for food scraps or connecting kitchens with composting services and food recovery nonprofits.
This kind of action is urgently needed. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency estimates that in 2019, nearly 60% of wasted food ended up in landfills. When food rots in these oxygen-starved environments, it generates methane, contributing to approximately 8-10% of global greenhouse gas emissions. These food waste emissions are equivalent to those produced by dozens of coal-fired power plants.
The consequences extend far beyond the climate. Every uneaten meal represents wasted land, water, labor, and energy. The economic toll of food waste in the United States in 2023 was estimated to exceed $338 billion. Meanwhile, millions of Americans live with food insecurity. Recovering surplus food and redirecting it to those in need would work to both fight hunger and cut emissions.
Composting, in particular, offers one of the most promising ways forward. Unlike landfilling, composting allows food and organic material to decompose in the presence of oxygen, which prevents methane production. The resulting compost enriches soil, reduces dependence on chemical fertilizers, and helps farmland retain water. If the U.S. could redirect just half of its food waste to composting, it could reduce greenhouse gas emissions by more than 64 million tons of carbon dioxide-equivalent annually. By employing waste consultants like Billings, Massachusetts is already taking steps toward that target. A study published in “Science” found the state has made more progress than any other in reducing total waste per capita.
Beyond Massachusetts’s waste consultants, other states with food waste laws have seen the value of pairing legislation with education and infrastructure. In California, for example, the Food Cycle Community Compost Program helped participating households cut their food waste by nearly 50%, diverting over 210,000 pounds of scraps from landfills and preventing 144,000 pounds of greenhouse gas emissions over six years. Programs like this demonstrate how communities can make meaningful progress when given the right tools and support, yet they remain limited in scale and are often disconnected from broader policy enforcement.
That is where Massachusetts offers a hopeful model for what is possible. While other states are beginning to embrace the idea that policy alone is not enough, Massachusetts has shown how to take that commitment further and be effective at scale. While valuable, food waste programs alone often rely on voluntary participation and tend to reach a limited audience. In contrast, Massachusetts’s implementation of government-contracted waste consultants has reduced food waste across industries. It embeds support directly into the system by ensuring that waste reduction does not depend on individual initiative but becomes a standard part of businesses’ operations. This kind of support system ensures that food waste laws are not just symbolic, but actually work.
For states that have already passed food waste laws, Massachusetts offers a blueprint for their next steps. Community-based programs, like those in California, are a promising step in the right direction by showing growing recognition that laws alone are insufficient. Yet, to create large-scale, lasting change, states need the kind of infrastructure Massachusetts has built. By investing in education, offering hands-on support, and treating food waste as a solvable problem, Massachusetts has demonstrated how to turn policy into progress and waste into climate action. As more states follow suit, the path toward a more sustainable, less wasteful future is not only possible, but is already beginning.
Sophia Ghafouri ’27 (sghafouri@college.harvard.edu) writes News for the Independent.