A new Food Waste Legislative Tracker is now available to help people understand food waste policy issues across the United States. The Tracker was developed by Divert, the Zero Food Waste Coalition (ZFWC) and the Harvard Law School Food Law and Policy Clinic (FLPC).
“We hope our tracker helps inform decision-makers, policymakers, and consumers,” Holly Yanai, Senior Manager of Public Affairs at Divert, tells Food Tank.
The Tracker presents a comprehensive picture of the state of food waste legislation across the United States, detailing wasted food prevention, food rescue, and food waste recycling bills in every state. It provides status updates on each bill, as well as information about organic waste bans, organic waste by-product procurement, food recovery, and date labeling.
Divert’s inspiration for the tracker came from a desire to expand their customers’ access to information. The Tracker “originally started as a way for us to build awareness with our customers on the organic waste policies that would impact their operations,” Yanai tells Food Tank.
The Food Waste Legislative Tracker is designed to be accessible and inclusive of legislation that is in the process of being developed. This feature allows stakeholders to understand policies that may affect the landscape in the future and gives them the opportunity to influence legislation.
“Having this sort of information easily accessible makes it easier for ZFWC members and other stakeholders to weigh in on pending legislation in their state and to identify innovative policies… so that they can champion similar measures in their communities,” Heather Latino, Clinical Instructor at FLPC, tells Food Tank.
In addition to increasing awareness around food waste legislation, the tracker is intended to drive progress as well. “We hope that by offering tools that allow advocates to compare the food waste policies (and proposed policies) in their state to what is happening in neighboring states that strong policies will be replicated, and weak policies can be strengthened,” Latino says.
According to Feeding America, people in the U.S. waste 92 billion pounds of food each year, which is equivalent to 145 billion meals. 38 percent of all the food in America is unsold or uneaten, and 51.7 percent of this waste comes from the food industry.
In the long term, the creators of the Food Waste Legislative Tracker hope that this tool will help reduce food waste and empower stakeholders across the food system. “We’re still a long way from the national goal of reducing food waste 50 percent by the year 2030,” Latino tells Food Tank. “Our hope is that as we bring more organizations into this work, that we’ll be able to accelerate progress towards this benchmark.”
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Photo courtesy of Foerster, Unsplash
