In 2024, NH Recycles was invited to participate in the creation of the Wasted Food Brief for the 2025 NH Food and Agriculture Strategic Plan, published earlier this year. Andrea Folsom, NH Recycles' Education & Grants Manager, served as the brief's lead author, and Reagan Bissonnette, NH Recycles' Executive Director, served as one of the brief's subject matter expert and contributing author. The other subject matter experts included Allison Bussiere, Food Systems Coordinator of Gather; Cherry Sullivan, Director of Programs for Willing Hands; and Paige Wilson, Waste Reduction & Diversion Planner for the NH Department of Environmental Services.
The Wasted Food brief lays out the challenges and opportunities of addressing wasted food, which includes all food that goes unsold or unused by a business or that goes uneaten, including food and inedible parts that are donated, fed to animals, repurposed to produce other products, or are composted, sent to an anaerobic digester, or a landfill.
Following its publication, a workshop at the NH Food System Statewide Gathering directly utilized the brief's recommendations to expand on-farm composting, also leveraging the Composting & Food Waste Diversion Map as a vital resource.
The New Hampshire Food and Agriculture Strategic Plan is,
"an actionable roadmap toward positive change, streamlining our collective efforts to obtain funding, pass policies, develop programs, invest in infrastructure, and build networks to increase farm, fish, and food business viability and foster equity across our food system.
The entirety of the NH Food and Agriculture Strategic Plan—every brief, recommendation, and outcome—is grounded in the goal of increasing the farm, fish, and food business viability and equity in our state. It was spearheaded by the NH Food Alliance in partnership with the NH Department of Agriculture, Markets, and Food, UNH Extension, and more than 89 other food system organizations and hundreds of individuals deeply committed to New Hampshire's food system."
View and Download a PDF of the Wasted Food Brief
Wasted Food
What's at Stake?
In 2022, 38% of the U.S. food supply went uneaten or unsold; the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) reported that food waste accounts for approximately 24% of the municipal solid waste sent to landfills or incinerators. In New Hampshire, mitigating wasted food at the local and state level is imperative to strengthening local farms and businesses and addressing environmental justice concerns, including air pollution, limited landfill space, soil loss, and the food waste-food insecurity dichotomy. Composted organic matter (food) adds nutrients to the soil. Conversely, organic matter in an anaerobic environment, like a landfill, takes up space and emits methane gas (a harmful greenhouse gas) as it slowly breaks down over decades. Wasted food reduction, redistribution, diversion, and composting saves economic and environmental resources.
Current Conditions
New Hampshire faces a significant wasted food problem. It affects every resident, visitor, and business, as waste occurs throughout the supply chain and contributes to local environmental and economic challenges. New Hampshire still lacks comprehensive policies, infrastructure, capacity, and education to address the issue, despite significant progress in recent years.
43% of wasted food comes from households, the largest single area contributor. Simultaneously, 7.4% of New Hampshire households experience food insecurity, indicating a need for improved food access and distribution. Municipalities request support for wasted food education and technical assistance from the NH Department of Environmental Services (NHDES) and the Northeast Resource Recovery Association (NRRA), but a lack of funding and capacity limit assistance. The high cost to transport and process wasted food, coupled with the negative environmental impacts of landfills, disproportionately affects residents and businesses in environmental justice areas, including the North Country and urban centers.
NHDES is engaged in New Hampshire’s first statewide waste characterization study and is planning a waste generator study and infrastructure analysis. These studies will illustrate the magnitude of wasted food and prepare the state for the upcoming food waste ban for generators of 1 ton or more per week and food waste diversion grants from the NHDES Solid Waste Management Fund. The Food Waste Diversion and Composting Map by the NRRA highlights the disproportionate access to composting across the state.
Challenges
> The lack of understanding about food waste reduction14 and date labels, the EPA’s Wasted Food Scale,15 and per-and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) concerns16.
> Food recovery and waste diversion programs and organizations are decentralized across the state, reducing efficacy. The burden of managing food waste is placed on individual municipalities, regardless of size or access to resources, and there is no statewide entity for the coordination of food recovery.
> There is a limited amount of low-barrier and accessible funding for education, food recovery, and waste diversion programs.
> There is a lack of infrastructure in the state, including no permitted anaerobic digesters, scattered on-site municipal composting facilities, and a lack of on-farm composting options.
> There is an absence of policies, like waste bans to guide wasted food handling for households or generators of less than 1 ton of wasted food per week
Opportunities
> The Solid Waste Working Group and the Zero Food Waste Coalition could serve as models for food recovery and diversion work at the state level. The Composting Association of Vermont17 can serve as a model for increasing on-farm composting.
> Residents and visitors have a strong desire to protect New Hampshire’s natural beauty, offering an opportunity for behavior shift around how residents handle their waste.
> Collaboration between farmers and communities could both address wasted food management and support local agriculture through composting.
> Wasted food initiatives can be aligned with the Solid Waste Management Plan’s goals18 to address environmental justice concerns.
