The New Jersey State Policy Lab and its partner, the Organics Workgroup of the New Jersey Climate Change Alliance, have completed a research effort designed to inform the development of statewide public policy aimed at reducing food waste, contributing to food security, and reducing landfill organic wastes in an effort to reduce methane emissions, a potent contributor to global warming. This collaborative project was a direct follow-up to the Alliance’s release of a Sustainable Organic Material Management Plan for New Jersey that outlined potential policy efforts related to food waste reduction, food donation, food waste management in schools, community-scale composting, large-scale organics recycling infrastructure, and sustainable animal manure management.

The report outlines potential public policies for consideration in New Jersey based on experiences in a set of other states and cities in a variety of areas, including opportunities in state and municipal government, the health-care sector, the nonprofit sector, the agriculture sector, the waste management sector, local school systems, and institutions of higher education. The authors outline 13 research initiatives and key findings, with an additional section on reimagining prison food systems, a topic that repeatedly emerged during the research process.