New Jersey lawmakers hear wide-ranging proposals to curb food waste, push county planning bill

Trenton, N.J. — Lawmakers and nonprofit, industry and university witnesses told a joint New Jersey Senate and Assembly environment committee on April 22 that the state must rapidly expand food-waste recovery systems to meet diversion targets and cut greenhouse-gas emissions.

"It is estimated that 40% of all food, globally, is wasted," said Serpell Yuron, director of Rutgers EcoComplex Clean Energy Innovation Center, urging source-separated collection and stronger recycling infrastructure. Yuron said municipal solid-waste totals for 2020 imply roughly 1,300,000 tons of food waste in the state’s waste stream and described composting and anaerobic digestion as pathways to recover nutrients and avoid methane leakage from landfills.

The hearing, held as an Earth Day event, brought a series of proposals and real-world examples. Sarah Elnakib, chair of Family and Community Health Sciences at Rutgers Cooperative Extension, recommended using the new K–12 climate-education requirement to teach food-waste prevention, expanding school-based trainings, and mandating "shared tables" in schools to redirect surplus meals to students or food pantries.

Zach Shaben, U.S. and Canada public affairs manager for the surplus-food marketplace Too Good To Go, described a business model that connects stores and restaurants with consumers to sell unsold items at reduced prices. "To effectively address food waste, policies must prioritize prevention," Shaben said, and he urged standardizing date labels to reduce consumer discards.

Nonprofit Share My Meals and a new Meal Recovery Coalition described an operational model for recovering prepared meals from corporations, hospitals and universities and delivering them to food-insecure residents. Karen Lemon, chair of Share My Meals' board, said the coalition will publish statewide meal-recovery guidelines this summer and urged committee support for S2426, legislation to require county food-recovery planning.

Industry witnesses highlighted capacity gaps and projects under construction. Gary Sondemeyer of the Association of New Jersey Recyclers said an anaerobic-digestion facility in Linden will have 1,540 tons-per-day capacity and that Bioenergy DevCo plans a 500-ton-per-day facility in Mantua Township. Brian Blair, manager of Trenton Renewables, said the Trenton Biogas facility produces "approximately 27,000 megawatt hours a year" and described monitoring and testing investments, including PFAS screening, to ensure product safety.

Several composting operators and applicants described regulatory barriers. A representative for Vivari Ecologics and speakers from the New Jersey Composting Council said the DEP recycling rules currently require Class C composting facilities to operate in enclosed structures, which they called unique to New Jersey and a major barrier to siting community and small-scale composting. The applicants said they petitioned DEP to remove the enclosure requirement; they reported the petition was denied in 2024 and urged a tiered permitting approach and exemptions for community gardens and school-scale systems.

Committee members and witnesses discussed technical options to expand capacity, including co-digestion at wastewater-treatment plants and using existing sewer-authority infrastructure. Members asked stakeholders to engage the Association of New Jersey Environmental Authorities to assess which plants can accept food waste and under what terms.

Several witnesses and lawmakers urged lawmakers to move several pending bills: S2426 (County Food Recovery Planning Act), S200 (date-labeling standardization), and S3889 (campus food-waste reduction). The committee chair asked stakeholders to submit testimony and requested follow-up letters to Appropriations leadership to advance S2426.

The hearing closed with an agreement to continue stakeholder conversations, pursue DEP rulemaking options to allow expanded composting and digestion, and seek legislative steps to link county planning, funding incentives and technical assistance to new infrastructure development.