Think about the acres of land, gallons of water and tons of fertilizer required to grow and produce that food. Add the miles traveled by delivery trucks to move it from farms to grocery stores and restaurants. Every time we throw out spoiled ingredients from the back of our fridges or grocery stores toss unsold produce from their shelves into the trash, we’re not just wasting the food itself – we’re wasting all of these resources too.
Much of our discarded food ends up in landfills – it’s actually the single most common material found buried in them. And it remains there for years before fully degrading, all the while releasing huge amounts of global warming methane pollution into the air.
It’s a colossal problem – but it’s a problem that states across the country have begun to take action to remedy.
For more than a decade, Massachusetts has limited large businesses from sending their organic waste to landfills, and now, the commonwealth is taking steps to expand food waste diversion.
By proposing to expand the disposal ban to residents, Massachusetts is taking the next step toward curbing our food waste disposal problem, and, in so doing, offering a promising model for other states to follow. The policy isn’t perfect – but its gaps point to important next steps.
In 2014, Massachusetts became one of the first states to require large businesses and institutions to divert their food and organic waste from landfills. The initial rule applied to commercial waste producers that generated one ton of food waste weekly, and in 2022, that threshold was strengthened to half a ton weekly.
A decade after the initial rule went into effect, the state now diverts roughly 350,000 tons of organic waste from landfills in just a year – which is over a third of all food waste disposed of in the state. Much of that food was put to use in other ways: businesses could donate safe-to-eat leftovers to food recovery programs and send scraps to compost and anaerobic digestion facilities, producing fertilizer or biogas energy. More than 160 municipalities – nearly half of all cities and towns in the commonwealth – now run some sort of food waste collection program that helps to divert food waste in these ways.
Twelve years after Massachusetts’ original organic waste disposal ban, 11 states have implemented similar measures. Now, Massachusetts is aiming higher.
In December 2025, the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection proposed an updated policy aimed at achieving near total diversion of food and organics from landfills. In stage one of the proposed plan, the commercial threshold for organics would be lowered from half a ton per week to zero, meaning businesses and institutions would not be permitted to intentionally send any food waste to the landfill. In the second stage, the ban would expand to include residential food waste, meaning that homes would have to donate their surplus food or compost their scraps instead of throwing them in the trash.
Food eaten at home accounts for the largest share of food waste in the commonwealth. According to the food waste nonprofit ReFED, more than half of Massachusetts’ food waste comes from the residential sector. Ensuring residents donate or rescue their organics marks a critical next step in the plan to meet the state’s food waste diversion goals.
While it’s encouraging to see Massachusetts getting more ambitious – after all, keeping food out of landfills is critical to reducing methane emissions and conserving resources – reaching total diversion will require more than an expanded ban alone.
Massachusetts relies disproportionately on strategies that manage food waste after it has already been created, primarily through anaerobic digestion, which decomposes organic waste in the absence of oxygen, turning it into biogas energy and fertilizer. Digesters are the state’s largest destination for food waste, processing about 70% of the state’s diverted organic materials in 2024.
This overreliance is largely due to the fact that both grant programs and the state give digesters a great deal of financial and technical assistance. For example, the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center provided $6.5 million in funding for digestion and composting-with-heat-recovery projects through its Commonwealth Organics-to Energy program from 2012 to 2020.
While digesters are a vital part of the strategy to keep food waste out of landfills, there are some potential drawbacks that could prove harmful. For one, sometimes methane escapes during the digestion process, resulting in the direct release of a powerful greenhouse gas to the environment.
Additionally, digesters may not completely degrade some types of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances – more commonly known as PFAS, or “forever chemicals” – which are highly toxic and can stay in the environment and remain harmful for hundreds of years. This is particularly problematic when food waste is digested at wastewater treatment plants and mixed with sewage sludge, especially since PFAS have been found in wastewater. Studies also show that individual food waste streams may be contaminated because of contact with PFAS-containing materials in packaging and compostable waste. There’s a risk that the fertilizer digesters produce could contain these compounds, which is a major problem when we apply that fertilizer to the soil that we grow our food in.
The most effective way to reduce food waste is to avoid creating it in the first place – whether by buying less food, taking smaller portions, or donating safe and edible food to others who can make use of it. After all, the real goal shouldn’t be to “divert” as much food waste as possible, but rather to limit the overall waste of resources and creation of pollution. According to the EPA, reducing food waste at the source like this produces “order-of-magnitude greater climate benefits than any other pathway” for addressing food waste.
As more states ban food waste from their landfills, they should also simultaneously offer a pathway for it to be rescued. One proven option is investing more in food rescue and donation programs which redistribute safe, edible food that would otherwise be thrown away to food banks and other destinations where it will be eaten.
These programs work. After the Massachusetts ban took effect, the amount of food received by food rescue organizations in the state grew 93%. One program – Boston’s Food Rescue U.S. – directs surplus food from grocers and restaurants to local social service agencies. Since 2022, they’ve diverted over 2 million pounds of food from the landfill and provided Bostonians with more than 1.8 million meals. But food rescue organizations are currently still massively underutilized as a landfill alternative – in 2024, they handled only around 7% of the state’s diverted food waste.
Food rescue programs can’t receive and distribute an increased volume of food without support. In particular, they depend on funding for refrigeration, transportation and storage facilities. States and local governments can further help to eliminate barriers to food recovery by incorporating education and resources about food donation into inspection processes for restaurants and grocery stores, as well as better connecting food donors with food rescue organizations.
If states like Massachusetts can invest heavily in food recycling projects like anaerobic digestion, they should demonstrate the same commitment to reducing food waste at its source and expanding food recovery.
We’re making progress on our food waste crisis – Massachusetts marks an encouraging start. However, there’s room for improvement. Lasting reductions will require better diversion pathways and smarter investments in preventing food waste from becoming waste in the first place.
