Food waste is a significant problem for the environment and for food access. Approximately a quarter of the overall food supply, both residential and institutional, is wasted: either buried in methane-emitting landfills or burned in pollution-spewing incinerators. In September 2015, The U.S. set a national goal to reduce food waste by 50% by the year 2030. However, in Maryland almost a million tons of food waste is generated each year with only 15.5% of these scraps being diverted. Wasted food is a wasted opportunity in our schools, especially when 1 in 7 Maryland children faces hunger.
Schools have started to act: check out the Lunch out of Landfills program in Frederick County the Waste Warriors in Montgomery County! But schools across Maryland need support from the state to start these programs and bring them to scale to get usable food into the hands of people who need it, and food waste into the compost.
Legislation in 2022 created a grant program to support schools in reducing their food waste, but it needs funding in this year's state budget to make an impact. Funds through the program could be used for infrastructure improvements, education and training in saving usable food, contracts with local composting companies, construction of on-site composting systems, and more. This will provide support to schools where staff, students, and families want to act to reduce food waste, get usable food into the hands of people who need it, and develop composting infrastructure - a key component of Maryland's fight against climate change.
In parallel, legislation from Senator Gallion and Delegate Shetty will increase the infrastructure for compost and get farmers the materials they need to produce higher quality compost. Right now, farmers are allowed to use up to 40,000 sq. feet of their property to compost manure, but when they add food scraps to the mix (which important to get the right mix of materials) they are limited to only 5,000 sq. feet. HB253/SB262 changes these regulations so that farmers can compost food scraps in the same amount they may already compost manure, increasing opportunities for processing food scraps from schools and other sources across the whole state.
Please tell your elected officials to support these bills to save school food from going to waste and to expand on farm composting of food scraps.