1. Build Healthy, Resilient Food Systems
StopWaste supports policies that prevent food waste, sustain edible food recovery, and strengthen local food systems. This includes advancing sustainable and equitable food and farming practices, expanding composting and food scrap recycling, and building markets for compost and mulch.
California’s SB 1383 established important requirements for edible food recovery and organic waste diversion. However, the law does not provide ongoing, reliable funding to support food recovery and distribution organizations—such as food banks and non-profit community-based partners—responsible for implementing these mandates. Strengthening the food system requires aligning policy requirements with sustainable funding.
2. Support a Thriving Circular Economy
StopWaste supports policies that reduce waste at the source and keep materials in use. This includes advancing Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) frameworks that require manufacturers to design products for durability, reuse, repair, and recyclability—and to take responsibility for their products at end of life.
A strong circular economy reduces environmental impacts, lowers costs for local governments and ratepayers, and drives innovation in materials management.
3. Accelerate Innovation in the Construction Sector
StopWaste supports policies that reduce greenhouse gas emissions in buildings and construction while advancing circular use of materials. This includes continued progress toward building electrification and reducing reliance on fossil fuels, as well as policies that promote low-carbon, durable, and reusable building materials.
Supporting innovation in construction helps California meet its climate goals while reducing waste and strengthening local and regional economies.
Additional State Policy Related Issues
Food Recovery Funding
California has made significant progress in requiring edible food recovery through SB 1383, but the system remains severely underfunded.
StopWaste supports the creation of a dedicated, ongoing funding source for food recovery infrastructure and operations—including food banks, pantries, transportation, and storage. Funding could come from state sources (e.g., climate funds or the General Fund) or from mechanisms within the food system itself.
Policy priority: Ensure that the costs of mandated food recovery are sustainably funded—moving from a primarily charitable model to a stable, systems-based approach that can reliably divert edible surplus food to food-insecure Californians while reducing landfill disposal and methane emissions.
Compostable Plastics
Products labeled as “compostable” are often marketed as sustainable alternatives, but in practice they create challenges for California’s organics system and threaten human health. They are hard to distinguish from conventional plastics and often do not break down, have been found to leave behind microplastic residue in compost, and most compost facilities remove them before composting—sending both the material and attached food scraps to landfill.
Compostable plastics also reinforce a single-use, throw-away model rather than reducing waste. StopWaste prioritizes policies that align standards and labeling with real-world composting conditions,
protect compost quality and support facility operations, and advance reusables.
