STATE HOUSE – The House of Representatives today approved legislation sponsored by Rep. Lauren H. Carson to put some teeth into a law that is meant to reduce school cafeteria waste in the state’s landfill.
The bill (2026-H 7342) requires all school food service contracts to include provisions mandating the composting or recycling of organic waste, and requires the public disclosure of schools’ waste audits that detail its efforts to reduce waste, recycle and divert usable food to the community instead of the landfill. The bill also provides a framework for “share tables,” already used in many school cafeterias, where students put unopened food they don’t want so others may eat it, instead of in the trash.
Existing law only “encourages” schools to require food vendors to recycle or compost food waste, and while it requires waste audits every three years, the results don’t have to be publicly disclosed.
“With our state’s only landfill on track to reach capacity by 2045, we need to get serious about diverting everything we can from the trash. We’ve been slow-rolling food-waste diversion at schools for years. The schools that do it have shown that they can make a very significant impact. And even more importantly, they are shaping the next generation’s habits around keeping food waste out of the trash,” said Representative Carson (D-Dist. 75, Newport). “Rhode Island has plenty of experience now that shows us schools can institute cafeteria waste sorting and recycling very successfully. Kids are willing, and they’re good at it. For the sake of the earth that they will inherit, waste diversion at schools should be universal now.”
According to the Rhode Island School Recycling Project, 5 million pounds of food is wasted at Rhode Island schools each year. An estimated 776,698 pounds of that food is perfectly usable food that could have gone to some of the one-in-three families in Rhode Island experiencing food insecurity.
The Rhode Island School Recycling Project, which is a joint effort of several agencies and donors, offers a voluntary program that’s currently used in more than 70 schools in the state. Schools in the program have students sort their food waste into separate buckets for recyclables, compostable organics and trash, overseen by volunteer student “food waste rangers.” The compostables are picked up by a commercial composter or composted on site.
Unopened food — like granola bars, bags of chips, cheese sticks, fruit with intact peels, cartons of milk and other drinks — go to the share table or an associated refrigerator, where anyone else can take it. Unused items from the share table are sent home with kids who need it or donated to food pantries.
Since the program began with three schools in 2021, it has diverted an estimated 711.6 tons — the equivalent of five Statues of Liberty — of food waste from the landfill and recovered 80 tons of usable food through share tables.
Additionally, with the help of curriculum developed by Rhode Island Resource Recovery Corporation, teachers engage students in projects calculating the impact of the program, including collecting the data for the school’s waste audit.
The project’s organizers say they expect it to reach half of Rhode Island’s schools by 2027, and all of them by 2030.
“Requiring food waste diversion in food service contracts is a critical step toward finally implementing this strategy across the state. With the addition of transparency for schools’ waste audits, we’ll get real data about exactly how much of a difference this makes. This is low-hanging fruit in terms of policy changes we can adopt to protect our limited landfill space, and it comes with the additional benefits of redirecting unopened food to people who need it and equipping young Rhode Islanders with better skills and viewpoints when it comes to recycling and preventing waste,” said Representative Carson.
The bill now goes to the Senate, where Sen. Bridget Valverde (D-Dist. 35, North Kingstown, East Greenwich, South Kingstown) is sponsoring companion legislation (2026-S 2438). That bill is scheduled for a hearing tomorrow before the Senate Environment and Agriculture Committee.
Representative Carson had a few guests with her in the House today to watch the bill’s House passage: Julie Dorsey, principal of Smithfield’s LaPerche Elementary School, and LaPerche students Nika Pagios, Maxwell Polseno and Jacelyn Bushee, who serve as food waste rangers in their cafeteria. LaPerche was one of the three schools that adopted the Rhode Island School Recycling Project in its inaugural year.