Food Waste Diversion Efforts Not as Effective as Hoped, UCSD Study Finds

SAN DIEGO—While well-intentioned, the first several states attempting to divert food waste from landfills and incinerators posted just a 20 percent success rate, according to a study published Thursday. The study, published in Thursday’s issue of Science, “was conducted by researchers at the UC San Diego Rady School of Management. They found that of the first five states to adopt food waste bans, Massachusetts was the only one to have shown marked success.” “We can say with high confidence that the combination of waste bans did not reduce landfilled waste by more than 3%, and that is including Massachusetts, which successfully reduced landfilled waste by 7%—gradually achieving a 13.2% reduction,” said Robert Evan Sanders, assistant professor of marketing at the Rady School and coauthor of the paper. “Essentially, the data suggest that in four out of the five states we studied, these laws did nothing to reduce waste.”...