A new study reveals that among the first five U.S. states to introduce food waste bans, only Massachusetts successfully managed to divert waste from landfills and incinerators, as reported by researchers from the University of California Rady School of Management.
The study, published today in Science, highlights the need to reassess the existing strategies, pointing to Massachusetts’ method as an example of effective policy execution.
From 2014 to 2024, nine U.S. states prohibited commercial waste producers, including grocery chains, from sending food waste to landfills, aiming for a reduction of 10-15% in waste.
“We can assert with a high level of certainty that the various waste bans collectively did not lead to a reduction of more than 3% in landfill waste, which includes Massachusetts, where landfilled waste was decreased by 7%, eventually reaching a 13.2% reduction,” explained Robert Evan Sanders, assistant professor of marketing at the Rady School of Management and coauthor of the study. “Basically, our data indicates that in four out of the five states we examined, these regulations had little to no impact on waste reduction.”
Coauthor Fiorentia Anglou, who conducted the research while pursuing a PhD at the McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas at Austin, added, “Given that food waste contributes between 8 to 10% of global greenhouse gas emissions, we believe that states should not discard these laws, but rather that more efforts are needed to enhance their effectiveness.”
The authors created an extensive waste dataset encompassing 36 U.S. states from 1996 to 2019 to analyze the initial five states that implemented waste bans: California, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Massachusetts.
The researchers identified three key features in Massachusetts’ food waste ban that likely contributed to its success:
- Best composting infrastructure network: The state boasts the highest number of food waste processing facilities per 1,000 square miles.
- Clear language: Massachusetts law is straightforward, with the fewest exceptions and exemptions.
- Robust enforcement: Massachusetts conducted over three times more inspections per generator each year compared to Vermont, the second-highest state in inspections. Other states had minimal enforcement actions, whether in inspections or fines.
The authors applied a version of the synthetic control method, commonly used by economists and data scientists to assess government policy alterations. They compared each state that adopted the ban with similar states that did not, estimating the landfill waste that would have occurred without the bans in California, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Massachusetts.
“With most of these laws in place, approximately 70% of commercial organic waste would have been illegal to dispose of in landfills,” stated Ioannis Stamatopoulos, coauthor and associate professor at UT Austin’s McCombs School of Business. “If we eliminated all that organic waste from landfills, it should have led to a 10% reduction in some instances, which should have been reflected in the data, but we did not observe that trend.”
The researchers collected information from environmental state agencies across 36 states, covering waste produced by 274 million Americans—about 85% of the U.S. population. Although some states share this data on official websites, much of it was gathered manually through public records requests and direct inquiries to state agencies.
“Our results suggest that simply having a food waste ban in place is insufficient for achieving meaningful reductions in landfill waste,” the authors articulate. “Massachusetts exemplifies that with the appropriate combination of broad coverage and effective enforcement, these bans can indeed be successful. It’s essential for other states to learn from this example and adjust their policies to achieve environmental objectives and lower greenhouse gas emissions.”
They also noted that California has made progress with the enactment of SB 1383 in 2022, which mandates that every jurisdiction provide organic waste collection services to all residents and businesses.
