People in New Jersey sent 1.3 million tons of food waste to landfills and incinerators in 2017, according to an estimate from the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection (“NJDEP”). However, efforts to reduce food waste in the state recently received a boost as Gov. Phil Murphy signed legislation April 14th that among other things, will require certain commercial and institutional entities to source-separate and recycle food waste.
In so doing, New Jersey joins six other states and several cities across in the U.S. that have enacted food waste recycling laws. The other states are California, Massachusetts, Vermont, Connecticut, Rhode Island and New York. The Garden State now is poised to reap the environmental, economic, and social benefits that stem from food waste reduction efforts, but a number of questions regarding the implementation of the new law remain to be resolved.
