The Zero Food Waste Act directs the Environmental Protection Agency to run a competitive grant program to reduce U.S. food waste 50 percent by 2035 (relative to 2015). It authorizes $650 million per year from FY2026 through FY2035 to fund planning, data collection, and projects that prevent, rescue, upcycle, or recycle food that would otherwise be landfilled or incinerated.
The bill matters because it pairs a national diversion goal with significant federal grant funding and a suite of intervention types—pricing tools, disposal restrictions, technical assistance, and infrastructure support—while requiring the EPA to collect and publish data and to report annually to Congress on progress and lessons learned.
At a Glance
What It Does
The bill establishes a competitive EPA grant program with three grant types: (1) studies and planning, (2) food-waste data collection and public reporting, and (3) implementation projects that range from prevention to recycling and market development. Grants may fund policy tools such as differential disposal pricing, disposal restrictions, technical assistance, and demand-stimulation for recycling end-markets.
Who It Affects
Eligible applicants include states, local/territorial and Tribal governments, nonprofit organizations, and partnerships of those entities; however, nonprofits are excluded from the study and data grant categories and face additional application requirements. Waste managers, organics processors, food rescue organizations, and communities prioritized for investment will be directly affected by program awards and conditions.
Why It Matters
By pairing an explicit national reduction goal with predictable annual appropriations, the bill aims to drive local and regional investment in organics diversion and market development. It also builds a federal data and reporting backbone intended to measure progress and spread effective approaches, which could reshape municipal waste policy and private sector practices.
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What This Bill Actually Does
The Act tasks the EPA with designing and running a competitive grant program focused on cutting food waste in half by 2035 versus 2015 levels. The program has three grant use categories: planning and study grants to document generation and prepare implementation plans; data grants to collect and publicly report how much food waste a jurisdiction produces; and project grants to fund concrete reduction activities such as prevention, rescue, upcycling, recycling, technical assistance, pricing reforms, and infrastructure investments.
Not every applicant can access every grant type. The statute specifically excludes nonprofit organizations from the study and data grant categories, though nonprofits can receive project grants; when nonprofits apply they must include a letter of support from a relevant government entity or another locally experienced nonprofit that will not participate in the proposed project.
The EPA must seek geographic and programmatic diversity among grantees and prioritize applicants that either (a) operate programs already, (b) demonstrate a clear need for infrastructure investment, or (c) will use funds in communities of color, low-income communities, or Tribal communities harmed by environmental or health impacts.The bill allows grants to underwrite regulatory-style interventions—differential pricing to discourage landfill/incineration and incentivize diversion, disposal restrictions, and demand-stimulating policies for recycling end-markets—alongside conventional infrastructure and technical-assistance grants. For anaerobic digestion projects the statute imposes explicit constraints: applicants must provide an end-product recycling plan that adheres to EPA guidance and avoids environmental hazards; animal waste may be no more than 20 percent of feedstock; and the remainder must be source-separated organics (not mixed solid waste).
Grantees must report results in EPA-prescribed form and the agency must publish an annual public report to Congress describing progress toward the 50 percent target and how it is promoting learning across grantees.The Act defines key terms (food waste, prevent, recycle, rescue, upcycle, source-separated organics) and ties source-separated organics to ASTM D6400/D6868 certifications while explicitly excluding mixed solid waste. Funding is authorized at $650 million per year for fiscal years 2026–2035, available until expended, creating a decade-long, federally funded effort to seed programs, infrastructure, and data systems intended to scale organics diversion and related markets.
The Five Things You Need to Know
The bill authorizes $650 million annually from FY2026 through FY2035—ten years of funding available until expended for EPA to run the grant program.
Nonprofit organizations are barred from receiving the planning/study and data collection grants; they can receive project grants but must include a letter of support from a local/State/Tribal government or a non-participating local nonprofit.
Grant-funded anaerobic digestion projects must submit an end‑product recycling plan meeting EPA guidance, limit animal waste to 20 percent or less of feedstock, and use only source‑separated organics (no mixed waste) for the remainder.
Grants may finance policy tools such as differential disposal pricing and disposal restrictions—i.e.
money can be used to implement fees that disincentivize landfill/incineration and to stimulate recycling end‑markets.
Entities receiving data grants must publish their collected food-waste data as monthly or quarterly public reports (on any publicly available website), creating a public feed of jurisdictional diversion metrics.
Section-by-Section Breakdown
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Program establishment and national goal
This subsection requires the EPA Administrator to create and run a competitive grant program whose stated purpose is to reduce food waste 50 percent by 2035 relative to 2015. Practically, the EPA becomes the federal clearinghouse for grant awards, technical guidance, and progress measurement tied to that national reduction target.
Study and planning grants (nonprofit exclusion)
The statute authorizes grants to eligible entities—excluding nonprofits—for studies of local food-waste generation and of policies that reduce food waste, plus the creation of a plan to implement at least one prevention‑first activity. Because nonprofits are excluded from this grant class, state and local governments and Tribal entities are the likely recipients for baseline studies and municipal planning funded under this provision.
Data grants and public reporting (nonprofit exclusion)
This clause permits grants—again excluding nonprofits—to collect jurisdictional food-waste data and requires grantees to publish monthly or quarterly public reports on the data (on any public website, including NGO sites). The result is an expectation of more granular, repeatedly published jurisdictional data that the EPA can aggregate to assess progress.
Implementation project grants (open to all eligible entities)
Project grants fund a broad menu of activities: prevention, rescue, upcycling, recycling, technical assistance, infrastructure, differential pricing on disposal, disposal restrictions, and policies to stimulate recycling end-markets. The EPA may also fund other activities it determines will reduce food waste, giving the agency discretion to finance novel local approaches.
Application rules and prioritization criteria
Applicants must submit EPA-prescribed applications showing how grant funds will be used. Nonprofits must include letters of support from a government entity or another qualified local nonprofit that won’t participate in the project. The EPA must seek diverse geographic and programmatic award distribution and prioritize (a) entities already running diversion programs or with demonstrated infrastructure need and (b) projects serving communities of color, low-income communities, or Tribal communities disproportionately harmed by environmental or health effects.
Anaerobic digestion specific requirements
For grants financing anaerobic digestion, the statute requires an EPA-guided end-product recycling plan to ensure digestate is used as a soil amendment without creating environmental hazards. It caps animal waste at 20 percent of feedstock and mandates source-separated organics for the remaining feedstock, explicitly excluding mixed solid waste—both quality controls and constraints that affect project feasibility and feedstock sourcing.
Reporting, funding authorization, and definitions
Grantees must report results to the EPA in agency-specified form so the EPA can track effectiveness; the EPA must deliver an annual public report to Congress detailing progress and efforts to promote grantee learning. The Act defines core terms (food waste, prevent, recycle, rescue, upcycle, source-separated organics with ASTM tie-ins) and authorizes $650 million per year for FY2026–FY2035, available until expended.
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Explore Environment in Codify Search →Who Benefits and Who Bears the Cost
Every bill creates winners and losers. Here's who stands to gain and who bears the cost.
Who Benefits
- State, local, territorial, and Tribal governments: gain access to federal funds to do baseline studies, build diversion programs, and invest in organics infrastructure that they might not otherwise afford.
- Food rescue and upcycling organizations: can receive project grants to scale redistribution and upcycling work that diverts surplus food into consumption or higher‑value products.
- Municipal waste managers and composting/anaerobic digestion operators: stand to gain capital and technical assistance for collection and processing infrastructure, as well as market-development support for end-products.
- Environmental justice communities (communities of color, low-income, Tribal communities): prioritized for certain awards, increasing the likelihood of targeted investment in areas that have faced disproportionate environmental and health burdens.
Who Bears the Cost
- Municipalities and waste-hauling entities facing differential pricing or disposal restrictions: may need to change operations, update contracts, or invest in diversion systems to avoid new fees or comply with restrictions.
- Anaerobic digestion project sponsors: must design projects to meet end-product plans and feedstock limits (animal waste ≤ 20% and source-separated organics), potentially raising costs or constraining feedstock sources.
- Small governments and nonprofits applying for grants: will incur administrative and reporting burdens (data publication, EPA reporting) and nonprofits face extra application requirements that increase transaction costs.
- Private recycling end-market participants and compost buyers: will shoulder the responsibility to absorb increased organics volumes created by grant-funded programs; without healthy end-markets, projects risk financial unsustainability.
Key Issues
The Core Tension
The bill pits an explicit, measurable national diversion goal against a decentralized, grant-driven implementation model: funding and guidance are federal, but success depends on local capacity, market development, and consistent measurement—areas where short-term grants and uneven data practices may fall short of delivering a durable, equitable 50 percent reduction.
The Act pairs an ambitious national target with a grant-based strategy that assumes local actors will build diversion capacity if given capital and technical support. That approach leaves open whether time-limited grants can catalyze long-term behavior and market change: infrastructure and municipal program rollouts require sustained operating dollars and steady feedstock quality, not just capital.
The statute’s data provisions aim to solve the measurement problem, but differing local data methods and voluntary public reporting cadence (monthly or quarterly) could produce inconsistent baselines and make national progress hard to compare.
Several implementation choices create trade-offs. Excluding nonprofits from study and data grants steers baseline analysis toward governments, which may produce different priorities and data collection methods than community organizations would; requiring nonprofits to include third‑party letters of support raises transaction costs that could deter smaller groups.
The anaerobic digestion constraints (end-product safety plan, animal waste cap, and source-separated requirement) improve environmental safeguards and compost quality but may make co-digestion or rural proposals less financially viable. Finally, permitting grants to support differential disposal pricing and disposal bans gives grantees regulatory tools to drive diversion—but without coordinated interjurisdictional policy alignment these tools can shift waste flows rather than reduce them, and they risk imposing economic burdens on low-income households unless paired with equity safeguards.
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