This week, the Zero Food Waste Coalition (ZFWC) submitted comments on the EPA, USDA, and FDA’s Draft National Strategy for Reducing Food Loss and Waste and Recycling Organics. The goals of this strategy are to prevent food loss and waste; increase the recycling rate of food and other organic materials; reduce GHG emissions; save households and businesses money; and build cleaner, healthier communities.

The Zero Food Waste Coalition—a collection of organizations dedicated to informing and influencing U.S. food waste policy at the federal, state, and local levels—commends the agencies for releasing this draft strategy and driving forward innovative and progressive food loss and waste policy. The coalition supports the actions outlined in the plan and has identified several ways for the agencies to build on them further.

In summary, the Zero Food Waste Coalition suggests the following actions be added to the strategy:

1. Create a whole-of-government strategy: Having the three primary food agencies address food loss and waste within their programming is an excellent starting point, and the ZFWC encourages the creation of an expanded strategy that includes the White House and other federal agencies.
2. Include lead-by-example commitments internally: Federal agencies and facilities should evaluate their operations for ways to reduce food loss and waste, such as within federal agency cafeteria operations and procurement, then the publicize food waste and food recovery data.
3. Commit to more extensive measurement and reporting: By investing in thorough food loss and waste measurement up-front, the agencies can improve the accuracy of food loss and waste measurement models and thereby support actors on the ground using this information, such as advocates, policymakers, and businesses.
4. Establish incentives under grant and cooperative agreement programming: The agencies should use their own funding programs as leverage to increase food loss and waste reduction by their grantees, by requiring grant applicants to develop food waste plans as a condition of receiving grant funding, or by offering bonus points to grant applicants that include food waste plans.
5. Include greater emphasis on upcycled food and animal feed pathways: Since nearly 40% of all food crops are grown for animals, there is an untapped opportunity to displace traditional feeds grown from soy and corn, which are major drivers of land conversion, with animal feed derived from human food production and food surplus deemed unfit for human consumption.
6. Provide more specific commitments around how the agencies will promote environmental justice and equity. Though the strategy states the agencies will promote equity through the strategy's implementation, we encourage the agencies to explicitly identify the ways they will do so and include those commitments within the finalized strategy.

The Zero Food Waste Coalition is glad to see the agencies taking the necessary next steps to achieve the national goal to halve food loss and waste by 2030. Additionally, the coalition encourages the agencies to utilize the knowledge of the ZFWC—a pre-existing network of food loss and waste stakeholders—to effectively implement the strategy.

To read the coalition’s full comment, click here. To learn more about or join the Zero Food Waste Coalition, please email zfwcoalition@gmail.com.

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Download Files
ZFWC Comment on the Draft National Strategy

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The Zero Food Waste Coalition aims to inform and influence policy at the local, state, and federal levels, and share policy updates and opportunities with partners and stakeholders around the country to bring consumers, businesses, and government together to make food loss and waste history. The Coalition was launched by NRDC, WWF, ReFED, and FLPC in April 2023, formalizing a partnership that began in January 2020.

CONTACT:
Zero Food Waste Coalition, zfwcoalition@gmail.com