ReFED’s Gunders Discusses Tackling Food Waste Including Policy, Partnerships, and the Waste Management Sector’s RoleReFED’s Gunders Discusses Tackling Food Waste Including Policy, Partnerships, and the Waste Management Sector’s Role

Tackling food waste remains a front-and-center priority for much of the world. In this Waste360 Q&A, ReFED President Dana Gunders discusses reducing food waste across the supply chain, including the waste management sector's role.

Gunders illuminates what new satellite data tell us about landfill methane emissions these organics generate —and she explains how advancing satellite technology could soon impact monitoring and reporting capabilities.

Waste360: Where does the solid waste management industry fit into the food waste reduction picture?  How can states’ waste operations prepare for increasing responsibility?

Gunders: In 2023, ReFED estimates there were 91.2 million tons of surplus food in the U.S., and 35 percent of it was landfilled.

While it is imperative to prevent food from going to waste in the first place, and rescue as much edible food for human consumption as possible, there will inevitably be unavoidable waste. That’s where the solid waste management industry comes in.

Setting up infrastructure to divert food waste from landfill, sewer, incineration, and other disposal methods towards options like composting or anaerobic digestion comes with obvious emission-lowering benefits while also maximizing value of the unavoidable food waste.

As more states struggle with diminishing landfill capacity, we anticipate the need to build more infrastructure for collecting and processing organic waste. To help prepare, states can look to examples like Massachusetts and California. Since SB 1383 went into force in California, 93 percent of required jurisdictions have residential organics collection in place. MassDEP has a food waste ban which it has supported by providing grants for collections and for businesses to manage food waste through anaerobic digestion and composting.

Waste360: What are some initiatives demonstrating food waste reduction work across the whole supply chain?

Gunders: The U.S. Food Waste Pact is a great example of an initiative working across the supply chain. Led by national nonprofit partners ReFED and World Wildlife Fund, the “Pact” is aligned around the global framework of “Target, Measure, Act” to help food businesses reduce waste within their operations through measurement, participation in working groups to drive pre-competitive collaboration, and participation in pilots to test, implement, and scale solutions. 

These businesses are trying to understand how they can act together to reduce waste in specific supply chains. For example, they are studying where the food waste hotspots are in strawberries and potatoes. In strawberries, they found that much of the loss happens on farms when smaller or off-color fruit is unharvested. They are discussing how they might act together to find uses for this product. 

Waste360: Just how much impact can food rescue organizations make? What are they up against, and how can they make more headway?

Gunders: Only two percent, about 1.75 million tons, of surplus food was donated in 2023. A stronger food rescue system requires expanded storage, transportation, and staffing capacity within food rescue organizations—as well as a consistent flow of goods from food business donations, which can be achieved through solutions like business education or coordination and matching technologies that make donation easier.

ReFED estimates solutions like these could rescue an additional 4.6 billion meal equivalents for the more than 47.4 million Americans struggling with food insecurity. As an example, since committing to recover 20 percent of edible food that was going to waste, California communities have expanded programs to donate unsold food and have already reached 94 percent of that goal, diverting over 215,000 tons from landfill.

Waste360: What are some good policies around food waste reduction and prevention? 

Gunders: State-level organic waste bans are one of, if not the, most important policies for food waste reduction. Waste bans help to avoid methane that comes from food rotting in landfills while also establishing demand for organics recycling infrastructure.

On the prevention side, legislation to standardize food date labels is gaining momentum, with California passing a game-changing law to standardize these labels to two phrases—one for quality and another for safety—and the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Food and Drug Administration issuing a request for information, including research on how consumer perception of date labels can lead to food waste. 

Waste360: Who is leading in policy development in the U.S.? What do you believe makes these policies successful?  

Gunders: Generally, a successful state ban should apply a tiered and phased-in approach; grant only limited waivers and exemptions (if at all); provide grants for infrastructure and food waste reduction efforts; and specify an implementation and enforcement authority.

Massachusetts is doing a good job. The state started with the largest generators—over one ton or more of organic waste per week—which encouraged organics recycling infrastructure. Eight years later, they decreased the threshold to a half ton per week to capture smaller generators. Also, Massachusetts limited exemptions and made the ban easy to understand, while providing resources to help businesses comply. They helped to fund organics recycling infrastructure and engaged in monitoring and enforcement to ensure that businesses were complying. 

In two years, the commercial food waste ban created more than 900 new jobs and $175 million in economic activity. That, on its own, might interest other policymakers to follow suit.

Waste360: What work has come from COP to address food waste and specifically from COP29 that just took place?

Gunders: At COP29, more than 30 countries signed on to the “Declaration on Reducing Methane from Organic Waste.” Representing 47 percent of global methane emissions from organic waste, these countries committed to working collaboratively to increase the pace and scale of action toward objectives that focus on prevention, separate collection, and improved management of organic waste. The signatories include seven of the 10 biggest emitters of methane from organic waste, including the United States. 

This Declaration highlights that many food waste solutions come with opportunities to address climate change, pollution, and biodiversity loss while presenting economic opportunities such as creating local jobs, improving living standards, and reducing costs for cities while contributing to sustainable urban development. 

The Declaration was in some ways fueled by the Lowering Organic Waste Methane (LOW-Methane) initiative, which was established at COP28. This is a coalition effort to support jurisdictions in cutting 1 million tons of annual methane emissions from the solid waste sector.

Next year at COP30, we anticipate even greater action on reducing food waste and diverting organics from disposal. 

Waste360: Methane measurement seems to be a fast-evolving space. What do the numbers tell us? And how might measurement technologies be used in the future?

Gunders: Methane measurement is fast-evolving mostly due to new information coming from satellite tracking. This new technological capability can drill down to the site level, making it realistic to think that satellites could monitor methane in the not-too-distant future.

So far, it is indicating that landfill methane [generated from decomposing organics] is larger than previously thought. For instance, 47 of 70 landfills surveyed by the TROPOMI satellite showed emissions that exceeded levels reported to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in 2019. This may lead to adjustments in some standard reporting methods to more accurately coincide with satellite data.

Bigger picture, methane overall is attracting more attention given new government and corporate goals. One of the debates has been around how to convert methane’s warming impact to “carbon equivalents,” which are used to estimate total greenhouse gas footprint. The typical timeframe has been 100 years, but given that methane only lasts in the atmosphere for about 12 years, spreading its impact over such a long time period makes it seem less potent than it is.

The solution that seems to be gaining traction is to use that 100-year timeframe when necessary, but also set goals separately for methane.