2024 Wins in Food Waste & What’s Next in 2025

Zero Food Waste Coalition members in the Senate Agriculture Committee room during our March advocacy event

As we jump into 2025, our team reflects on last year's progress in the fight against food waste. From co-leading the Zero Food Waste Coalition to expanding the Food Matters cities network to supporting state policy, we have seen sustained progress, innovation, and collaboration across the food waste space. There have been many key achievements and other exciting developments over the past year and much more to come this year.

Regional and Municipal:

The NRDC food waste team continued to support cities through our Food Matters network, offering webinars and office hours for cities and others working on food waste reduction to share strategies, ask questions, and receive expert advice.

• Food Matters progress: This year we celebrated the progress of NRDC's Food Matters initiative and published our 2024 Food Matters Annual Report. We provided technical support and resources to over 20 city-based partners, who helped divert over 35,750 tons of food waste from landfills and incinerators, preventing nearly 62,000 metric tons of climate-warming carbon equivalent emissions.
• Model municipal policies: In the past year, we continued our collaboration with the Environmental Law Institute to expand our suite of model municipal policies for food waste reduction. Our most recently released model, Model Municipal Ordinance on Zoning for Community Composting, will be joined in the coming months by another model ordinance covering additional facets of community composting.
• Food Waste Prevention Week: This annual consumer education campaign garnered over 840 partners spanning 49 states and 19 countries in 2024. Through the planning committee we shared our model municipal policies and other food waste reduction resources.
• USDA grants: Through the U.S. Department of Agriculture's (USDA) Composting and Food Waste Reduction Cooperative Agreements, $11.5 million was awarded to 38 composting and food waste reduction projects across 23 states, funding initiatives like food rescue, composting infrastructure, and education programs to help cities and counties divert food waste from disposal, while also helping communities save money and strengthen food security.

NRDC team, City of Columbus staff, and Ohio EPA staff visiting a Class II Composting Facility at the London Correctional Institution (LoCI) in London, Ohio

State:

Our state-level work expanded in 2024, through our leadership of the Zero Food Waste Coalition (ZFWC) and support of state legislative and administrative efforts.

• California: NRDC co-sponsored California's food date labeling reform bill-signed into law in September-to standardize food date labels and reduce unnecessary waste that results from confusing phrasing. The bill serves as a model for other states as well as future federal date labeling standardization.
• Illinois: Bill SB2876 was passed, requiring large event facilities to collect organic waste for composting, a key step toward broader food waste reduction statewide. The bill's success is due to the support of Illinois-based coalitions including the Illinois Food Scrap Coalition, of which NRDC is a member.
• Michigan: The Michigan Food Waste Roadmap, released in March, includes the goal to halve food waste in the state by 2030. Developed with input from stakeholders including NRDC, the roadmap outlines barriers and solutions like incentives, funding, technical assistance, outreach, and policy and program changes. Make Food Not Waste, a Detroit-based nonprofit and Food Matters partner, is advancing a model to eliminate food waste in Southfield, Michigan. Ideally, this model will be replicated across additional cities, helping to achieve the state's food waste goal.
• EPA Climate Pollution Reduction Grants (CPRG): U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Climate Pollution Reduction Grants (CPRG) provided states, local, tribal, and regional governments with resources to plan for and implement greenhouse gas reduction actions, delivering both environmental and economic benefits. Several states and municipalities included food loss and waste in their CPRG Climate Action Plans and Minnesota, Virginia, and Oregon were awarded funding specifically for food waste reduction actions. Several other states were awarded funding related to abating methane emissions from landfills.

National:

This past year we have seen more activity helping us progress toward the national goal of reducing food waste by 50 percent by 2030.

• National Strategy to Reduce Food Loss and Waste: In June 2024, USDA, EPA, and Food and Drug Administration (FDA) jointly released the final National Strategy for Reducing Food Loss and Waste and Recycling Organics. The strategy includes several recommendations from NRDC and the Zero Food Waste Coalition and outlines clear actions that the U.S. government must take to achieve the U.S. goal to halve food waste by 2030. See our blog for more.
• Zero Food Waste Coalition (ZFWC): ZFWC, co-led by NRDC, grew to over 250 members headquartered in 46 states and DC. Our coalition is working together to educate stakeholders about key policy solutions to reduce food waste at the federal and state level.
• Food Donation Improvement Act Implementation: Since the passage of the Food Donation Improvement Act in January 2023, NRDC launched a video series called Food is Made to Be Eaten to raise awareness about the expanded liability protections for food donors. We also partnered with Chef Jon Deutsch from the Drexel Food Lab to inform chefs, restaurant workers, and culinary educators about food donation and liability protections through webinars, presentations, and educational articles.
• Engaging Households and Consumers: Polling and research groups MITRE and Gallup led the largest known representative study of food waste in the U.S. to date, providing key data that can help in planning effective strategies to rescue and redirect surplus food, recycle food scraps, and prevent food from going to waste in the first place. In the fall, EPA announced it was investing $39 million in a Recycling Education and Outreach grant to fund a national campaign to prevent food waste reduction and increase composting.

Global:

We continue to see global strides related to food waste reduction. At the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP29), 35 countries, including the U.S., signed the Declaration on Reducing Organic Waste Methane, setting targets to reduce methane emissions from organic waste. This declaration builds on the Global Methane Pledge launched at COP26 which aims for a 30% reduction in methane emissions from 2020 levels by 2030.

Looking ahead:

As we enter 2025, our focus remains on advancing practical solutions to reduce food waste - helping families keep food on the table, saving consumers money, and supporting businesses and communities alike.

At the regional and local levels, cities and counties can create impactful and replicable solutions that can help guide other cities, states, and eventually federal actors to adopt meaningful food waste reduction strategies. We plan to strategically grow our Food Matters network through initiatives that foster knowledge sharing and provide expert guidance to empower local decision makers. At the state level, we see significant opportunity for adoption of policy solutions such as organic waste disposal bans, which we view as one of the most impactful policies to keep food out of landfills and redirect food and food scraps to better uses.

At the federal level, we aim to advance pragmatic solutions like bipartisan legislation to standardize food date labels, building on the progress we've achieved so far. There is also a clear need for more research and consumer education on preventing food waste and understanding its broader impacts.

Everyone has a place at the table when it comes to reducing food waste - we look forward to strengthening partnerships in 2025, particularly through the continued growth of the Zero Food Waste Coalition.

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