Vermont Banned Food From the Landfill — and Food Rescue Nearly Tripled

In 2012, the Vermont Legislature unanimously passed a law that most people filed under "recycling." Act 148 — the Universal Recycling law — would phase in bans on throwing away recyclables, then yard debris, then food scraps. It was written to fix a stubborn problem: for nearly two decades, the state's recycling rate had hovered around 30 to 36 percent. But one of its most heartening results had nothing to do with bottles or cardboard. Once businesses had to keep food out of the dumpster, a lot more of it started landing on dinner tables.

A ladder, not just a ban

The law didn't simply tell businesses to compost. It encouraged them to follow a food recovery hierarchy that puts the highest uses first: reduce waste, then donate food to people, then feed animals, and only then compost or send scraps to anaerobic digesters. The bans arrived in stages — recyclables in 2015; leaves, yard debris and clean wood in 2016 — and the food-scrap ban started with the largest generators before reaching every household on July 1, 2020.

That staging mattered. Supermarkets and other big producers of surplus food were among the first required to find somewhere other than the landfill for it. For a grocer, the simplest place to send an unsold-but-good case of produce turned out to be the food shelf down the road.

Matching stores with food shelves

The Vermont Foodbank used the law as an incentive. According to a 2017 presentation by the state's solid waste program, the Foodbank worked with supermarkets, matched stores with nearby food shelves and other recipients, and promoted direct delivery of fresh produce and perishables to local food shelves. Food rescue rose 30 percent in the first year and another 40 percent in the second.

By late 2015, the Foodbank's chief operations officer, Alex Bornstein, told Vermont Public that its network partners' pickups from retail stores were up 209 percent. Much of what arrived was food that had simply fallen through the cracks of commerce — cabbages too small for the wholesale market, products with labeling errors, perfectly good groceries with nowhere to go.

By the state's January 2019 status report, the Vermont Foodbank reported that food rescue had nearly tripled from 2014 to 2017.

"Vermont's Universal Recycling law has shifted the focus from trashing edible food to feeding hungry Vermonters. What is not donated can be fed to animals, composted, or used to create renewable energy in anaerobic digesters." — Emily Boedecker, then-Commissioner, Vermont Department of Environmental Conservation (2019 status report)

Still paying off a decade later

The habit stuck. This spring, the Williston Observer reported that Hannaford's food rescue program provided 2.5 million pounds of food to Vermont food shelves in 2025. Seventeen Vermont Hannaford stores partner with at least one local food shelf; in Williston, staff set aside produce, items with damaged packaging, and near-date meat and dairy, and food-shelf volunteers come by to collect it.

An honest accounting

The law hasn't been a straight line. In 2017, Vermont's trash disposal unexpectedly rose 11 percent after two years of decline, and in 2018 the Legislature postponed the requirement for haulers to collect food scraps. But the food-rescue numbers make a point that reaches well beyond Vermont: a great deal of good food is thrown away not because nobody wants it, but because throwing it away is the easiest option. Change what's easy, and that food finds the people who need it.

Pantry was built on the same idea — make giving surplus food easier than throwing it out, so a few taps can turn a grocer's extra case of produce into a neighbor's next meal.