The Senate Environment and Energy Committee has approved a bill that would use discarded food as a source of renewable energy - certainly a more environmentally friendly solution than allowing it to rot in landfills.
When your mother preached, "Eat your dinner, there are people starving in (insert country here)," you probably never realized how wise she was.
The Harvard Food and Law Policy Clinic estimates that in this country, 40-percent of the food supply goes uneaten, according to a report by NJSpotlight.
Worldwide, we're talking about 1.3 billion tons of food wasted every year, all while millions upon millions of people go to bed hungry every night.
Meanwhile, that food you toss in the trash, multiplied every day by food discarded by supermarkets, hospitals and prisons, accounts for the single largest component of solid waste that makes it to U.S. landfills.
Now a series of bills working their way through the N.J. Legislature recognizes the huge cost of that waste and aims to turn it into a positive.
Proposal would help turn food waste into energy
The Senate Environment and Energy Committee has approved a bill that would use discarded food as a source of renewable energy - certainly a more environmentally friendly solution than allowing it to rot in landfills, creating the greenhouse gas known as methane that is a significant cause of climate change.
State Sens. Bob Smith (D-Middlesex and Somerset) and Christopher Bateman (R-Hunterdon, Mercer, Middlesex and Somerset) are co-sponsors of the bill.
It would require than any large generator of food - those supermarkets, hospitals and prisons - separate the waste and send it to an authorized recycling facility nearby.
Another vital bipartisan bill, this one still in committee, would require the state Department of Environmental Protection to work with the state Department of Agriculture to create a viable plan for reducing the volume of food waste in the state by 50 percent by 2030.
This is in keeping with national guidelines. In 2015, the federal Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Agriculture set a similar goal for the United States.
The state Office of Legislative Services reports that as many as 1 million residents of the Garden State do not have access to adequate food on a consistent basis.
For these neighbors, we are particularly heartened by a bill sponsored by Sen. Raymond Lesniak (D-Union) that would encourage businesses to donate excess wholesome food to charitable groups serving the needy by allowing them a deduction on their gross income tax.
Yet another of the measures under consideration directs the state DEP to develop a blueprint for the state's K-12 schools and institutions for higher education to recycle food waste.
The plan would include recommendations for how schools can reduce the volume of surplus food they generate, and information on cost-effective and safe ways schools can donate unused items to food banks, food pantries and soup kitchens.
All these measures are still in their early stages, but we're encouraged that our legislators are moving in the right direction.
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