New study reveals food waste bans ineffective in reducing landfill waste, except in Massachusetts

The paper, published today in Science, suggests a need to reevaluate current strategies, citing Massachusetts' approach as a benchmark for effective policy implementation.

Between 2014 and 2024, nine U.S. states made it unlawful for commercial waste generators -- such as grocery chains -- to dispose of their food waste in landfills, expecting a 10-15% waste reduction.

"We can say with high confidence that the combination of waste bans did not reduce landfilled waste by more than 3%, and that is including Massachusetts, which successfully reduced landfilled waste by 7% -- gradually achieving a 13.2% reduction," said Robert Evan Sanders, assistant professor of marketing at the Rady School of Management and coauthor of the paper. "Essentially, the data suggest that in four out of the five states we studied, these laws did nothing to reduce waste."

Fiorentia Anglou, coauthor of the paper, who conducted the research while earning a PhD at the University of Texas at Austin's McCombs School of Business added, "With food waste around the globe contributing 8 to 10% of greenhouse gas emissions, we certainly don't think states should abandon these laws, but more action needs to be taken to make them effective."

The authors of the paper compiled a comprehensive waste dataset covering 36 U.S. states between 1996 and 2019 to evaluate the first five implemented at the state level: California, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Massachusetts.

The researchers point to three distinctive features in the Massachusetts food waste ban law that when combined, likely help make it effective. They include:

• Best composting infrastructure network. The state has the most food waste processing facilities per every 1,000 square miles in the state.
• The simplest language: The law in Massachusetts is the easiest to understand, with the least number of exceptions and exemptions.
• Enforcement: Massachusetts had more than triple the number of inspections per generator per year than the next nearest state, Vermont. And there was almost no enforcement -- either in inspections or fines -- in the other states.

The authors used a variant of the synthetic control method, which is used by economists and data scientists to evaluate government policy changes. The authors compared each state that adopted the ban to similar states that did not implement a waste ban. And they were able to project how much waste would have gone to landfills had California, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Vermont and Massachusetts not implemented waste bans.

"With most of these laws, about 70% of commercial organic waste would have been illegal to send to landfills," said Ioannis Stamatopoulos, coauthor of the paper and associate professor at UT Austin's McCombs School of Business. "If you take all that organic waste out of landfills, it should reduce the amount of waste that's going into landfills by 10% in some cases, and that should have been something we were able to see in the data but did not."

The researchers used data fromenvironmental state agencies of in 36 states, covering the waste produced by 274 million Americans -- or 85% of the U.S. population. Though some states provide the data on their websites, most of it was collected manually over the course of a year from public records requests and contacting state agencies.

"Our findings indicate that simply implementing a food waste ban is not enough to achieve significant reductions in landfill waste," the authors note. "Massachusetts has shown that with the right combination of comprehensive coverage and effective enforcement, these bans can work. It's crucial for other states to learn from this model and adapt their policies accordingly to meet environmental targets and reduce greenhouse gas emissions."

They added that California has taken a step in the right direction with the passage of SB 1383 in 2022, which requires every jurisdiction to provide organic waste collection services to all residents and businesses.