Reducing Food Waste and Food Packaging for a More Sustainable Future

The Department of Environmental Quality is leading several efforts to reduce the environmental impacts of materials across their full life cycle.
Two current initiatives intersect with Oregon’s food industry.
Given the massive climate impacts of food production, coupled with high rates of food waste and loss in the U.S., Governor Brown’s Executive Order 20-04 aims to reduce the wasting of food by 50 percent by 2030.
Working with other states, local governments and industry, DEQ is working to scale up its efforts at food waste prevention through several projects.
A research-based state-wide campaign - I’m a Bad Apple - encourages Oregon households to reduce wasted food in order to avoid wasting money.
An innovative regional program - the Pacific Coast Food Waste Commitment - brings food industry businesses together in a voluntary, pre-competitive setting to work together to identify solutions to address institutional and systemic causes of food waste.
Packaging also looms large in the public’s concern about the environment. While recycling and composting are generally beneficial, they need to be performed well in order to deliver actual environmental benefits.
Recent research by DEQ illustrates that some recyclable and compostable packaging may actually worsen environmental outcomes, due to higher impacts in what materials are used and how they’re produced. Using less material in the first place may be a superior strategy, even if the materials can’t be recycled.
But at the same time, recycling systems in the U.S. are not living up to their potential, in part due to challenging economics. Oregon will be the first U.S. state to solve this problem with a policy commonly used in other countries: extended producer responsibility.
A recently-adopted state law, the Plastic Pollution and Recycling Modernization Act, will require U.S. producers of packaged products sold into Oregon to share in the financial and legal responsibility for a modernized, convenient, and responsible recycling system.