State leaders are advancing efforts to tackle food waste across the U.S.—responding to consumer demand, creating jobs and economic opportunities, ensuring food makes it to those experiencing food insecurity, and addressing environmental harms and climate change.

This toolkit seeks to similarly embolden officials and advocates from across the country to learn from others' successes and accelerate their own leadership and impact. To do so, this toolkit contains a range of tried and tested policy opportunities that states can use to prevent food waste and keep food waste out of landfills and incinerators.

The target audience for this toolkit is state policymakers and advocates—whether their interest stems from concerns around climate change and environmental sustainability, financial responsibility, increasing food rescue, or finding opportunities to support local farmers, all of which can be achieved through policies described in this toolkit.

While this toolkit was drafted with this audience in mind, it may also be helpful to a wide range of individuals and groups interested in enacting legislation to tackle food waste at the local, state, or federal level.