• Shop Smarter - Use these Smart Shopping Guidelinesto reduce the amount of food thrown away at home.
• Meal Planning - By meal planning and shopping with lists, we can make sure we don't overbuy at the store.
• Understanding Date Labels - It's also important to know how to  Decipher Food Labels! Most dates on food products are for store employees or to identify peak freshness. Foods past those dates may still have lots of life left - don't be afraid to smell and visually examine foods to determine if they are still edible.
• Creative Cooking - If you end up with produce on the edge of spoiling, consider creative ways to use them in cooking.
  • 15 Creative Uses for Food Scraps
• Storage Techniques - In order to extend the life of fresh foods in your fridge, learn new  storage techniques. Once we get home it's good to know where to store things in the refrigerator and implement the best storage techniques for each food item.
• Learn more food saving and storage techniques for apples avocados, bananas, beets, berries, broccoli citrus corn onions peppers potatoes spinach, and tomatoes
• Learn more about how to Save the Food at savethefood.com. 

• Benefits

  • Prevent pollution related to food production, such as fertilizers and pesticides, and save energy associated with growing, preparing, and transporting food.
  • Reduce methane emissions from landfills.
  • Save money by buying only what is needed and by avoiding disposal costs.
  • Save labor costs through more efficient handling, preparation, and storage of food that will actually be used.

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  What Businesses Can Do

  Food Loss Prevention Tip Sheets

  Are you a restaurant, university, grade school, manufacturer or grocery store looking to prevent food loss and waste? Check out the suggestions EPA compiled to help get you started. 

  Conduct a Waste Audit

  Learn about what flows through your kitchen by measuring the amount, type, and reason for the generation of wasted food. Knowing how much and why wasted food is generated will help to create effective wasted food prevention strategies. It will also help to identify wasted food that is avoided and money saved. This analysis is called a waste audit.

  Depending on your goals, there are a variety of free EPA tools available to conduct a waste audit. With the results of your waste audit, you are ready to take the next steps below.

  Implement Reduction Habits

  Preventing wasted food is a matter of implementing better habits:

  • Compare purchasing inventory with customer ordering.
  • Modify menus to increase customer satisfaction and prevent and reduce uneaten food.
  • Examine production and handling practices to prevent and reduce preparation waste.
  • Ensure proper storage techniques.
  • Be creative with your kitchen excess. Surplus or excess food can be used in new dishes. For example, stale bread can become croutons; fruit can become a dessert topping; and vegetable trimmings can be used in soups, sauces, and stocks.
  • Reduce serving sizes as appropriate and avoid use of garnishes that don’t get eaten.
  • For buffet-style service, encourage customers to take only what they will actually eat.
  • For colleges, go trayless in the dining halls.

  Join EPA’s Food Recovery Challenge

  You will gain visibility for your efforts, have the opportunity for recognition, gain access to tools and resources, and learn how other organizations in your sector are preventing and reducing wasted food. Find out more and how to join.

  
  

   

Redistributing food to feed people is the second tier of EPA’s Food Recovery Hierarchy. EPA estimates that in 2018, about 63 million tons of wasted food were generated in the United States¹. While Americans dispose of millions of tons of food, the U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates that 10.5 percent of American households - about 13.7 million households - had difficulty providing enough food for all their members due to a lack of resources at some time during 2019.² In many cases, the food tossed into our nation’s landfills is wholesome, edible food.

We can be leaders in our communities by collecting unspoiled, healthy food and donating it to our neighbors in need. By donating food, we’re feeding people, not landfills, supporting local communities, and saving all the resources that went into producing that food from going to waste.

Anyone Can Be a Food Donor

Large manufacturers, supermarket chains, wholesalers, farmers, food brokers, and organized community food drives typically give food to food banks. Restaurants, caterers, corporate dining rooms, hotels, and other food establishments promptly distribute perishable and prepared foods to hungry people in their communities. Many food banks and food rescue organizations will pick up food donations free of charge, saving donors time and money. 

Tuesday Table Davis, CA

Feeding Animals is the third tier of EPA's Food Recovery Hierarchy. Farmers have been doing this for centuries. With proper and safe handling, anyone can donate food scraps to animals. Food scraps for animals can save farmers and companies money. It is often cheaper to feed animals food scraps rather than having them hauled to a landfill. Companies can also donate extra food to zoos or producers that make animal or pet food. There are many opportunities to feed animals, help the environment and reduce costs.

Legal Basics

• Swine Health Protection Act Be sure you know how to handle your food scraps properly. Refer to the Swine Health Protection Act.
• Leftovers for Livestock: https://chlpi.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/Leftovers-for-Livestock_A-Legal-Guide_August-2016.pdf , written by the Harvard Food Law and Policy Clinic and the Food Recovery Project at the University of Arkansas, describes different federal and state laws, regulations and requirements for feeding food scraps to animals. The guide also offers suggestions to generators of food scraps and animal feeding operations. 

Regulations vary in each state. Some states ban food donation for animal feed. Other states regulate what can be donated (often no meat or dairy). For example, businesses cannot donate coffee grounds and foods high in salt as they can harm animals.

Donating Food Scraps to Animals

• Contact your local solid waste, county agricultural extension office or public health agency for information.
• Determine what types, how often, and the amount of food scraps you can provide.

Success Stories

Disclaimer of Endorsement: Reference herein to any specific commercial products, process, or service by trade name, trademark, manufacturer, or otherwise, does not necessarily constitute or imply its endorsement, recommendation, or favoring by the United States Government. The views and opinions of authors expressed herein do not necessarily state or reflect those of the United States Government and shall not be used for advertising or product endorsement purposes.

Rutgers University

Rutgers University in New Jersey is a leader in keeping food scraps out of the landfill. The dining halls at Rutgers partners with a local farm, Pinter Farms. Pinter Farms collects about one ton of food scraps every day from Rutgers' four main dining halls and feeds it to the farm’s hogs and cattle. Diverting food scraps to Pinter Farms costs Rutgers half the price of sending the scraps to the landfill. View a fact sheet about Rutgers' program.

MGM Resorts International

MGM Resorts International has been reducing wasted food going to landfills since 2007. Many of their food scraps from Las Vegas Strip properties go to RC Farms, a pig farm with 3,000 pigs. RC Farms follows state requirements by cooking food scraps first before feeding them to the pigs. Learn more about MGM Resorts efforts biocycle.net/sustainable-food-management-in-action/.

The fourth tier of EPA's Food Recovery Hierarchy is industrial uses. Food can be used to not only feed people and animals, but also power your car or generator. There is increasing interest in finding effective means to obtain biofuel and bio-products from wasted food. These options aim to alleviate some of the environmental and economic issues associated with wasted food while increasing the use of alternative energy sources.

Anaerobic Digestion

Anaerobic digestion is a process where microorganisms break down organic materials, such as food scraps, manure, and sewage sludge. This is done in the absence of oxygen. Recycling wasted food through anaerobic digestion produces biogas and a soil amendment, two valuable products.

Wasted food can be processed at facilities specifically designed to digest the organic portion of municipal solid waste. It can also be co-digested at wastewater treatment plants and manure digesters.

• Learn more about anaerobic digestion.

What are industrial uses of fats, oil, and grease?

Liquid fats and solid meat products are materials that should not be sent to landfills or disposed of in the sanitary sewer system. Fats, oils, and grease can clog pipes and pumps both in the public sewer lines as well as in wastewater treatment facilities. This prevents combined sewer overflows, which protects water quality and lowers bills. Fats, oil and grease should be sent to the rendering industry to be made into another product, converted to biofuels, or sent to an anaerobic digester.

• Rendering - Liquid fats and solid meat products can be used as raw materials in the rendering industry, which converts them into animal food, cosmetics, soap, and other products. Many companies will provide storage barrels and free pick-up service.
• Biodiesel - Fats, oils and grease are collected and converted by local manufacturers into environmentally friendly biodiesel fuel. Biodiesel is an alternative fuel produced from renewable resources such as virgin oils (soybean, canola, palm), waste cooking oil, or other biowaste feedstock. Biodiesel significantly reduces greenhouse gases, sulfur dioxide in air emissions, and asthma-causing soot. Along with creating less pollution, biodiesel is simple to use, biodegradable and nontoxic.
• Anaerobic Digestion - Fats, oil and grease can be added to anaerobic digesters at wastewater treatment plants to generate renewable energy in the form of biogas.

Success Stories

Disclaimer of Endorsement: Reference herein to any specific commercial products, process, or service by trade name, trademark, manufacturer, or otherwise, does not necessarily constitute or imply its endorsement, recommendation, or favoring by the United States Government. The views and opinions of authors expressed herein do not necessarily state or reflect those of the United States Government and shall not be used for advertising or product endorsement purposes.

Des Moines Metropolitan Wastewater Reclamation Authority

The Des Moines Metropolitan Wastewater Reclamation Authority operates the Wastewater Reclamation Facility (WRF) in Des Moines, Iowa, which is home to six, 2.7 million-gallon anaerobic digesters. The WRF operates one of the largest hauled waste receiving programs in the nation, accepting over 60 truckloads per day, most of which is commercial fats, oils, & grease; food waste; and high-strength organic waste from various industrial processing facilities across a four-state region. These organic-based hauled wastes are mixed and co-digested with municipal sludge, which produces two products: biogas and biosolids. In 2017, the WRF generated an average of over 2.1 million cubic feet of biogas per day. Currently, the biogas/biomethane is used onsite to heat boilers and to fuel two, 1.4-megawatt engine generators. A portion of the biogas is also sold to a nearby industrial facility for boiler fuel. Soon, the WRF will begin diverting all of its purified biomethane to the local natural gas pipeline utility. Biosolids extracted from the anaerobic digesters are recycled back into the environment via land application, which returns valuable macro- and micronutrients back into the soil of the surrounding agricultural land.

Purdue University

Purdue University turns wasted food into renewable energy by partnering with the City of West Lafayette to send food waste to the local wastewater treatment plant. At the wastewater treatment plant, the food is added to the anaerobic digester, where it is processed by microbes to generate biogas, a source of renewable energy, and a solid residual that can be used as a soil amendment.

The University of Wisconsin Oshkosh

The University of Wisconsin Oshkosh started turning organic materials into renewable energy in fall 2011 with a dry fermentation anaerobic digester. The first of its kind in the nation, this facility uses agricultural plant waste, City of Oshkosh yard waste, and wasted food generated on campus to produce biogas. The digester produces enough energy to power up to 10 percent of the 13,500-student institution.

East Bay Municipal Utility District (EBMUD)

East Bay Municipal Utility District (EBMUD) in Oakland, CA was the first wastewater treatment plant in the nation to convert post-consumer food scraps to energy via anaerobic digestion. Waste haulers collect post-consumer wasted food from local restaurants and markets and take it to EBMUD. In an anaerobic digester, bacteria break down the wasted food and release methane as a byproduct. EBMUD then captures the methane and uses it as a renewable source of energy to power the treatment plant. After the digestion process, the leftover material can be composted and used as a natural fertilizer.

Composting is the fifth tier of EPA's Food Recovery Hierarchy. Even when all actions have been taken to use your wasted food, certain inedible parts will still remain and can be turned into compost to feed and nourish the soil. Like yard waste, food waste scraps can also be composted. Composting these wastes creates a product that can be used to help improve soils, grow the next generation of crops, and improve water quality. EPA estimates that in 2018, 2.6 million tons of food (4.1 percent of wasted food) was composted. In 2018, Americans recovered over 69 million tons of MSW through recycling, and almost 25 million tons through composting. This is 1.16 pounds per person per day for recycling and 0.42 pounds per person per day for composting. Food composting curbside collection programs served 6.1 million households in 2017, the most recent year for which information is available. 

What is Compost?

Gardeners and farmers add compost to soil to improve its physical properties. They may even use compost instead of soil to grow plants. Mature compost is a stable material with a content called humus that is dark brown or black and has a soil-like, earthy smell.

Compost is created by:

• Combining organic wastes, such as wasted food, yard trimmings, and manures, in the right ratios into piles, rows, or vessels.
• Adding bulking agents such as wood chips, as necessary to accelerate the breakdown of organic materials; and
• Allowing the finished material to fully stabilize and mature through a curing process.

Mature compost is created using high temperatures to destroy pathogens and weed seeds that natural decomposition does not destroy.

Benefits of Composting

There are a number of benefits, to compost that not everyone is aware of. Some examples are listed below:

Additional Information

• Organic waste in landfills generates, methane, a potent greenhouse gas. By composting wasted food and other organics, methane emissions are significantly reduced.
• Compost reduces and, in some cases, eliminates the need for chemical fertilizers.
• Compost promotes higher yields of agricultural crops.
• Compost can help aid reforestation, wetlands restoration, and habitat revitalization efforts by improving contaminated, compacted, and marginal soils.
• Compost can be used to remediate soils contaminated by hazardous waste in a cost-effective manner.
• Compost can provide cost savings over conventional soil, water and air pollution remediation technologies, where applicable.
• Compost enhances water retention in soils.
• Compost provides carbon sequestration.

Getting Started

It is important to know the composting process before beginning composting or starting a composting program.

• Learn more about home or backyard composting.
• Find out more about composting for organizations, businesses and communities.
• Explore EPA’s Managing and Transforming Waste Streams Tool to identify over three dozen examples of real-life organics recycling programs and policies throughout the U.S. that communities can implement.
• Learn about compost-based stormwater best management practices.
• Locate a composting facility https://findacomposter.com  is a free directory of composting facilities throughout North America, created and managed by BioCycle magazine and sponsored by the Biodegradable Products Institute. You can use the searchable database to locate a composting facility near you, or add your composting facility to the database.
• Composting on Tribal Lands
• Use EPA’s Tribal Green Building Toolkit to integrate or improve on composting in your community. The Toolkit, made available to the public in 2015, is designed to help tribal officials, community members, planners, developers and architects develop and adopt building codes to support a variety of green building practices, including composting.
• Read about how Tribal composting nourishes land and tradition in EPA’s https://nepis.epa.gov/Exe/ZyPDF.cgi/30006P0B.PDF?Dockey=30006P0B.PDF.  The Journal contains case studies of composting projects in different Tribal communities.
• Learn more about composting practices, benefits, marketing, policy and regulations by referring to https://www.biocycle.net/, which is an organics recycling magazine, and the  https://www.compostingcouncil.org/ which posts free articles and reports on composting. 
• The Institute for Self-Reliance’s July 2014 report, https://ilsr.org/size-matters-report-shows-small-scale-community-based-composting describes successful community composting initiatives, their benefits, tips for replication, key start-up steps, and the need for private, public, and nonprofit sector support. 

Biosolids Composting and Use or Disposal of Sewage Sludge

The Clean Water Act covers land application, surface disposal, and combustion of biosolids sewage sludge as well as biosolids composting. EPA published federal standards for the use or disposal of sewage sludge, which can be found in title 40 of the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) in part 503. Many of the standards in this rule may apply to municipal solid waste compost. More information can be found on EPA’s Biosolids website.

Success Stories

Disclaimer of Endorsement: Reference herein to any specific commercial products, process, or service by trade name, trademark, manufacturer, or otherwise, does not necessarily constitute or imply its endorsement, recommendation, or favoring by the United States Government. The views and opinions of authors expressed herein do not necessarily state or reflect those of the United States Government and shall not be used for advertising or product endorsement purposes.

New Seasons Markets

New Seasons Markets operates 12 stores in the Pacific Northwest and strives to support the local economy and sustainable agriculture. Since 2006, New Seasons Market has increased diversion of organic materials, including food waste to compost by 109 percent. Since 2011, they have diverted more than 2,410 tons of food from landfills and saved more than $25,000 in waste expenses. Find out more in the case study about New Seasons Market's food donation and composting initiatives.

Petco Park

Petco Park, home to the San Diego Padres, implemented a food composting program in 2005 helping the venue to save money on its trash disposal bills. In 2011, Petco Park diverted 164 tons from landfill, saving $75,000 since 2005. Learn more from the 2012 presentation on their efforts.

Middlebury College

Middlebury College in Middlebury, Vermont initiated a food waste composting program in 1993. Middlebury College used to haul the food scraps offsite, but now have a site on campus where they compost 90 percent of the food waste generated or 370 tons in 2011. In 2011, Middlebury saved over $100,000 in landfill fees by recycling and composting. https://www.biocycle.net/sustainable-food-management-in-action/

Sprouts Farmers Markets

Sprouts is committed to zero food waste, taking responsibility for preserving the resources that go into getting food from farm to store including the soil, water, packaging and transportation. To combat hunger and reduce food waste, in 2015, all Sprouts stores donated more than 14 million pounds of fresh food to local hunger relief agencies through their Food Rescue Program. Sprouts also diverted another 5.5 million pounds of food to composting facilities and to local farms to feed animals. By working with the EPA’s Food Recovery Challenge and organizations like Feeding America, Sprouts is able to reduce the impact of hunger in their communities and contribute to a cleaner environment.

Pearl City High School

During the 2014 – 2015 school year, Special Education students at Pearl City High School in partnership with Mindy Jaffe, owner of Waikiki Worm Co., staffed wasted food collection stations in the school cafeteria. Unconsumed food was separated from non-food waste, diverting the potentially wasted food from the general school trash stream. The fruits, vegetables, and selected starches were fed to composting worms and the remaining wasted food was hot composted, creating nutrient rich, organic products used in gardens in the community. This initiative resulted in 34,635 pounds of cafeteria scraps being composted on site over the school year, and a 97.5 percent wasted food diversion rate overall.

Stormwater Best Management Practices

Compost-based stormwater best management practices (BMPs) combine two important EPA initiatives: Sustainable Materials Management (SMM) and National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) stormwater regulations. These compost based BMPs, which include compost blankets, compost filter berms, and compost filter socks, provide particularly effective stormwater treatment when used in construction and post-construction stormwater BMPs. 

Why Should You use Compost BMPs?

• Compost retains a large volume of water, thus helping to prevent/reduce erosion, reduce runoff, and establish vegetation.
• Compost improves downstream water quality by retaining pollutants such as heavy metals, nitrogen, phosphorus, oil and grease, fuels, herbicides, and pesticides.
• Nutrients and hydrocarbons adsorbed and/or trapped by compost are decomposed by naturally occurring microorganisms.
• Compost improves soil structure and nutrient content, which reduces the need for chemical fertilizers.
• Compost-based BMPs remove as much or more sediment from stormwater as a traditional perimeter. 

What are the Compost BMPs?

The compost BMPs consist of three methods for using compost to improve water quality. These methods reduce the amount of stormwater that can enter waterways by increasing the amount of water that can infiltrate the soil. They do so through the creation of barriers that stop the water from flowing or cover the soil completely. The three compost BMPs include:

• Compost blanket (PDF) : A layer of loosely applied compost that is placed on the soil in disturbed areas to control erosion and retain sediment resulting from sheet flow runoff. Compost blankets are used in place of sediment and erosion control tools such as mulch, netting, or chemical stabilization.
• Compost filter sock: A mesh tube filled with compost that is placed perpendicular to sheet flow runoff to control erosion and retain sediment in disturbed areas. The filter sock can be used in place of a sediment and erosion control tool such as a silt fence.
• Compost filter berm: A dike of compost that is placed perpendicular to sheet flow runoff to control erosion in disturbed areas and retain sediment. It can be used in place of a sediment and erosion control tool such as a silt fence. The base of the berm is generally twice the height of the berm.

Learn more about reducing food waste

 Excess Food Opportunities Map

• Why Assess Wasted Food?
• Food Waste Assessment Guidebook
• A Guide to Conducting Student Food Waste Audits: A Resource for Schools
• Toolkit for Reducing Wasted Food and packaging
• Paper Tracking Waste Logs
• Food Loss Prevention Options for K-12 Schools, manufacturers, Restaurants, Universities and Grocery Stores
• Waste Reduction Model
• Managing and Transforming Waste Streams Tool
• Reducing Food Waste Activity Book
• Training Webinars
• Peer-to-Peer Exchange Webinars