Expanding the Food Waste Legislative Tracker to Capture a Full Suite of Policy Solutions

Over the past decade, FLPC has tracked state food waste policies to help us share with our partners and policymakers the ways that states are taking action to reduce food waste. States have such an important role to play in this space, especially because they oversee management of solid waste, along with permitting and licensing for most food retail and food service operations.

Since its launch in August 2024, the Food Waste Legislative Tracker—developed by Divert, the Harvard Law School Food Law & Policy Clinic (FLPC), and the Zero Food Waste Coalition (ZFWC)—has provided a first-of-its-kind, national snapshot of state food waste policy, as our effort to make the tracking we have been doing more available and accessible in real time. The Tracker compiles and summarizes bills across all 50 states and the District of Columbia, focused on wasted food prevention, food rescue, and food waste recycling, and specifically on policies such as Organic Waste Bans, Edible Food Recovery, By-Product Procurement, and Date Labeling. The tracker has helped advocates, policymakers, and other stakeholders understand evolving food waste legislation and identify opportunities to engage with legislators in their own communities.

Beginning this year, the Food Waste Legislative Tracker will capture an expanded set of policy topics that states are considering for food waste reduction. New categories to the tracker include Animal Feed (laws governing how food scraps can be safely used to feed livestock), Awareness (such as Food Waste Awareness weeks and consumer education campaigns), and Composting/Anaerobic Digestion (AD) Permitting (clarifying where composting and AD can occur and under what conditions). The Tracker will also now follow policies that support the underlying infrastructure for change, including funding mechanisms dedicated to food loss and waste programs, food waste reporting requirements, and research initiatives such as task forces or studies to evaluate food waste interventions. The updated Tracker will also cover additional topics that fall outside of the above categories.

By expanding the categories we track, FLPC and our partners aim to give advocates, legislators, and community organizations a more complete picture of the policy tools available to reduce food waste nationwide, and to support continued progress toward the national goal of cutting food waste in half by 2030.

Explore the 2026 Food Waste Legislative Tracker here.

Read the FLPC January 2026 Newsletter, and subscribe to our listserv.