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Request a DemoGeorgians waste billions of pounds of food annually while people go hungry, and the state does little
This is Part 1 of a series that looks at the amount of food waste in Georgia and how the state, once at the forefront of the waste issue, has failed to regulate it.
ATLANTA — Over the next two months, food will be uppermost in the minds of most Georgians as they head into the high-holiday season of Thanksgiving, Christmas and Hanukkah.
While many will enjoy turkey and other holiday food traditions — albeit at higher prices than last year, more than a million Georgians will go hungry or struggle to find affordable and nutritious food.
Amid the festivities is a sobering reality: A good bit of the food prepared or available this holiday season won’t make it to the table. A large amount will end up in state landfills.
Some 1.6 billion pounds of food – or 151 pounds per Georgian – is wasted in the state annually, according to Science for Georgia. To put it in perspective, the amount of food wasted by Georgians is 10 times the weight of the Washington Monument.
Wasted food includes food from retail stores, plate waste, uneaten prepared food, kitchen trimmings from restaurants, cafeterias and homes, and byproducts from food and beverage processing plants.
“If food waste were a country, it would be the world’s largest polluter, producing as much as 10 percent of global emissions,” according to Drawdown Georgia, a statewide initiative for “scaling Georgia-specific climate solutions.”
“And as food goes to waste, many people around the world — including right here in Georgia — are food insecure,” officials at Drawdown Georgia say.
Roughly half of the state’s wasted food comes from metro Atlanta, according to the state’s Environmental Protection Division, which also notes on its website that food residuals represent the “largest single category of solid waste going into Georgia’s landfills.”
At issue is the fact that while Georgia residents spend the fourth-highest amount on food nationally, most of that food goes to waste when 1 in 9 adults in the state or 1.14 million people and 1 in 7 children go hungry each year. Wasted food in Georgia amounts to nearly $2 billion, according to Science for Georgia.
Despite such data, Georgia has failed to regulate food waste like neighboring South Carolina and 11 other states.
“[We] don't necessarily regulate or even have requirements that are reported to the state,” said Keith Stevens, solid waste permitting manager for the EPD. “So municipal solid waste landfills that accept food residuals, and other household trash, are essentially permitted to accept any non-hazardous waste.”
Stevens oversees Georgia’s 92 landfill facilities. Of those, 40 are solid waste landfills that accept food and household trash and waste.
In Georgia, responsibility for collecting, recycling and disposing of wasted food is left mostly to cities, counties, private disposal companies, and nonprofit food recovery or sustainability organizations or programs.
Determining exactly how much food currently goes into the state’s landfills is complicated, says Stevens. The state has not produced a study since 2005. But Stevens estimates that 25% of the waste stream in Georgia’s solid waste landfills is food and food residuals.
It’s not just a Georgia problem
Nationally, Americans throw away more than 40 million tons of food each year. That waste occupies more space in U.S. landfills than many other materials, and has tripled since the 1960s, officials at the U.S. Environmental Protection Administration note. As the food rots, it produces greenhouse gases equal to 37 million cars.
Such chilling environmental consequences have prompted some states to enact legislation that includes tax incentives, liability protection for donations, improving date labels on food and food waste bans.
Last year, lawmakers across 18 states introduced 52 bills involving food waste management, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Most states, including Georgia, adhere to federal legislation, such as the Bill Emerson Good Samaritan Food Donation Act. A dozen states have gone further by enacting food waste laws. Georgia is not among them. At least eight states require food to be diverted from landfills. Georgia does not.
Little has been done at the state level in Georgia in terms of widespread policies and programs since state officials closed the Office of Environmental Management more than a decade ago, according to one waste expert. The office was part of the state’s Department of Community Affairs (DCA).
The closing was due to “a combination [of reasons],” Athens-Clarke County’s Solid Waste Director Suki Janssen told State Affairs. “There were folks who didn't want to do any solid waste plans anymore. There were no plans to review anymore and then there was no solid waste diversion or solid waste reduction goals anymore.
“Once the state stopped requiring that 25% [overall solid waste] diversion goal and once they stopped requiring solid waste management plans to be reviewed that kind of started the erosion of that office,” added Janssen who should know. She is a former employee of the now-defunct office, which was closed during Gov. Nathan Deal’s tenure.
Georgia’s last comprehensive statewide inventory of its food waste was in 2004 when food waste accounted for 12% of the materials going into state landfills. Today, that percentage is estimated to have more than doubled.
The state’s website dealing specifically with food waste matters uses data from a Georgia Statewide Waste Characterization study, released in 2005.
An unexpected about-face
Years of inaction by the state in overseeing food waste and disposal is a far cry from when Georgia was considered a leader in the southeast in the disposal of “food scraps,” the term most widely used in the sustainability industry. The state kept diligent tabs on the type and amount of food scraps statewide and even parceled out grants to aid in properly disposing the waste.
Justin Vining, spokesman for DCA, told State Affairs the department “was unable to comment” on the issue.
“The state has been absent from waste reduction conversations for over 10 years,” Janssen said. “They got rid of the office [Office of Environmental Management] which did a lot of proactive grants and had a waste reduction goal at that time. That’s all gone.
“They pretty much took away all the funding for waste reduction activities in a big way when they got rid of the office,” added Janssen, former president of the Georgia chapter of the Solid Waste Association of North America.
An October 2021 report on state food waste policies done by the Harvard Law School Food Law and Policy Clinic found that Georgia has weak or no policies in 8 of 10 key areas it examined.
The report said, for example, that Georgia’s Environmental Protection Division offers resources for composting and food residual diversions to residents, but Georgia has no organic waste bans or waste recycling laws dealing with food waste.
The federal government provides tax deductions to entice businesses to donate food but Georgia offers no additional tax incentives beyond the federal incentives, according to a report, which was done on behalf of the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC), an international non-profit environmental advocacy group.
It also noted that the city of Atlanta has a food systems plan but no such regional or statewide plans exist in Georgia.
“North and South Carolina have staff members at the state level that actually are responsible for technical assistance for local governments,” Janssen noted. “They've had grants they’ve passed through or created state funds so that people could start composting programs.
“They actually make the communities report back their waste diversion activities,” she added. “Those two states have reporting requirements that help hold local governments accountable.”
In South Carolina, the Department of Health and Environmental Control and the commerce department oversee the state’s Don’t Waste Food SC campaign. The campaign’s goal is to cut food waste in half by 2030.
Meanwhile, the Georgia official responsible for dealing with wasted food is settling into the newly-created job within the Georgia EPD.
A restart or retrenchment?
Lena Chambless became manager of EPD’s Recovered Materials and Abatement Program in August. Chambless, whose main duty, for now, is administering permits for composting, declined to comment on food waste in the state, noting in an email that she would not “be the best point of contact” to answer the question of how much food Georgians waste.
Nonetheless, Chambless said: “Georgia EPD works primarily in the compost permitting space of organics waste diversion in a regulatory space.
"Since we work as a regulatory agency, the state does not have any cost associated with food waste disposal. Likewise, EPD does not have any data on the percentages of food waste composition compared to other materials sent to landfill."
Asked if there was one central office in the state government that keeps data on food waste for all 159 counties, Chambless said: “Sadly, we have not had a characterization study done since 2004. So some folks choose to base that [food waste data] on the national numbers. Obviously, it's not ideal but that’s what we have right now.”
There are signs Georgia is starting to pay attention again.
The state recently announced it would be distributing about $2 million in grants to be used for any type of waste diversion or reduction activity. Some 42 entities seeking a total of more than $10 million applied. The grants are slated to be awarded in December.
“This is huge because some grants are earmarked just for traditional recycling or carts,” Janssen said. “This one is for anything and several of us around the state are going for food scrap collection infrastructure.”
If awarded, Janssen’s Athens solid waste operations plans to use the grant “for a truck that will pick up more food scraps.”
“Our truck we have currently is too small,” she said. “Food scrap material is very dense and water heavy so it takes a truck that can hold several tons of material.”
What the state has now is a big opportunity, according to Blair Beasley, director of climate strategies at Ray C. Anderson Foundation, which works with Drawdown Georgia.
“At the same time that we have food that is edible and not being eaten, we also have people in our community who are in need of food or are food insecure,” said Beasley. “So the goal is to connect to those in our communities who are in need of food with edible food that will be wasted otherwise, and then to try to keep food that is not suitable for human consumption out of landfills through options like composting.”
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Header image: Food waste composting (Credit: bojanstory for Getty Images)
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Global bird flu disrupts Georgia exports, costing chicken producers millions
ATLANTA — A global bird flu that has rapidly spread from birds to dairy cows, milk supplies and humans has cost untold millions of dollars in lost export business in Georgia, the nation’s leading poultry producer, officials with the state Department of Agriculture and poultry industry said.
Georgia has had only three reported cases of H5N1 avian influenza since it reemerged in 2022. The last of those cases was resolved in November 2023 but ramifications of those outbreaks continue to have a big effect on the state’s ability to export chicken and chicken parts, such as chicken feet, to different countries, including China, one of Georgia’s biggest export markets for chicken feet.
In 2022, frozen chicken feet, for example, accounted for more than 85% of all U.S. poultry exported to China, according to Farm Progress, publisher of 22 farming and ranching magazines.
The $30 billion poultry industry is Georgia’s largest segment in its No. 1 industry — agriculture.
China has also placed a ban on the import of chicken products from 41 other American states. The ban on Georgia products went into effect Nov. 21, 2023. Efforts to reach the Chinese Embassy in Washington, D.C. were unsuccessful.
Georgia Poultry Federation President Mike Giles estimates the state’s loss at “well into the millions of dollars.”
“It’s a significant amount in a significant export market for us,” he said. “Poultry paws [feet] immediately lose value because of the loss of demand.”
The ban has forced Georgia poultry producers to find alternative markets for their products that would normally be headed to China.
“Some are sold domestically, some are frozen and stored, hopefully to find markets later on, and some go to other countries,” Giles said.
This isn’t the first time China has banned U.S.-produced poultry products due to a bird flu outbreak. The country instituted a ban in January 2015 which lasted until November 2019 — even though U.S. poultry products were deemed free of the disease by August 2017.
After that ban was lifted, China’s appetite for American-produced chicken products became voracious.
In 2022, U.S. producers shipped nearly $6 billion in poultry meat and related products (excluding eggs) to over 130 countries. China has emerged as the second largest destination for U.S. poultry exports, increasing from $10 million in 2019 to a record $1.1 billion in 2022, according to Southern Ag Today.
Chicken paws, for instance, are eaten in many Asian countries, including the Philippines, Thailand, Indonesia and Korea.They can also be found on Chinese dim sum menus throughout the U.S. and are also popular in Jamaica, Trinidad, Russia and Ukraine in everything from soups and curries to fried snacks.
Three Georgia counties have reported H5N1 outbreaks since 2022. The most recent case was late last year. Henry, Sumter and Toombs counties each reported one case of H5N1 bird flu. Those outbreaks are resolved, poultry and state agriculture officials say.
“When HPAI cases are found in any state, that state is given a designation that could lead to foreign countries halting trade on poultry products from that state,” Georgia Department of Agriculture spokesman Matthew Agvent told State Affairs.
Not since 2016 has the United States experienced such a fast-moving case of the H5N1 avian influenza. In the last two months, the virus has spread in parts of the United States from birds to dairy cows, some milk supplies and humans. Two people — a Texas dairy worker and a prison inmate in Colorado who was killing infected birds at a poultry farm — are reported to have caught the virus, according to news reports. The outbreak is the largest in recent history, impacting both domestic poultry and livestock as well as wild birds and some mammal species.
State officials are continuing to monitor the national outbreak and its impact on Georgia.
Georgia’s poultry & egg industry: At A Glance
Annual economic impact: $30.2 billion
Percentage of the Agriculture industry: 58% *
Jobs: 87,900
Counties involved in poultry & egg production: 3 out of 4
National ranking in chicken broiler production: No. 1
Daily production of table eggs: 7.8 million
Daily production of hatching eggs: 6.5 million
Pounds of chicken produced daily: 30.2 million
Pounds of chicken produced annually: 8 billion
Number of chicken broilers processed each day: 5 million
Counties involved in poultry & egg production: 3 out of 4
Source: Georgia Poultry Federation; The Center for Agribusiness & Economic Development, University of Georgia, Ag Snapshots 2024; Georgia Poultry Federation.
Have questions? Contact Tammy Joyner on X @lvjoyner or at [email protected].
Is it safe to eat chicken and eggs and drink milk? Answers to your most pressing questions about the latest bird flu outbreak
A two-year-old strain of bird flu has heightened concerns in Georgia and the rest of the country after the virus recently spread to dairy cows. Here’s what you need to know about the virus and its impact on Georgia and the rest of the country. What are the symptoms of this flu in humans? Eye …
Kemp signs bills on education, health care, taxes
Gov. Brian Kemp signed a slew of bills over the past week or so, including the private school voucher bill long sought by Republicans and a bill that will ease regulations over the construction and expansion of medical facilities in rural areas.
His bill-signing events were clustered into themes: education, health care, military members, human trafficking and Georgia’s coastal communities.
Education
Among the education-related bills Kemp signed was Senate Bill 233, also known as the Georgia Promise Scholarship Act, which provides the families of Georgia students enrolled in underperforming school districts with $6,500 scholarships that can be used toward private school or homeschooling expenses, including tuition, fees, textbooks and tutoring.
“Georgia is affording greater choice to families as to how and where they receive their education, while also continuing our efforts to strengthen public schools, support teachers, and secure our classrooms,” Kemp said, and thanked leadership in the House and Senate for prioritizing passage of the bill, which had failed in a close vote in 2023.
Democrats and many public education advocates who opposed the bill argued it will drain resources from public schools and primarily benefit students from wealthy families.
Kemp also signed Senate Bill 351, sponsored by nine Republican senators, which will require social media companies, as of July 1, 2025, to verify their users are at least 16 years old unless they receive approval from a parent.
House Bill 409, sponsored by Rep. Lauren Daniel, R-Locust Grove, directs school systems to consider not having bus stops where a student would have to cross a roadway with a speed limit of 40 mph or greater. The bill also increases the penalty for passing a stopped school bus to $1,000 from $250.
Kemp noted that Ashley Pierce, the mother of Addy Pierce, an 8-year-old who was fatally struck by a motorist as she boarded her school bus, “passionately advocated for and was instrumental in the passage of this legislation.”
Senate Bill 395, sponsored by Sen. Clint Dixon, R-Gwinnett, states that no school visitor or personnel can be prohibited from possessing an opioid reversal drug such as Narcan and directs schools to maintain a supply. It also allows opioid antagonists to be sold in vending machines and directs certain government buildings to maintain a supply of at least three doses.
Senate Bill 464, also sponsored by Dixon, creates the School Supplies for Teachers Program to financially and technically support teachers purchasing school supplies online. It also creates an executive committee of five voting members within the Georgia Council on Literacy and limits the number of approved literacy screeners to five, one of whom must be available to schools for free.
Health care
The governor chose his hometown of Athens as the venue to sign several bills aimed at improving health care in rural and underserved communities.
Among them was House Bill 1339, sponsored by Rep. Butch Parrish, R-Swainsboro, which revises the Certificate of Need process by which the state determines if and how new medical facilities can be built or expanded. The bill provides for several new exemptions, including psychiatric or substance abuse inpatient programs, basic perinatal services in rural counties, birthing centers and new general acute hospitals in rural counties. It also raises the total limit on tax credits for donations to rural hospital organizations to $100 million from $75 million.
Senate Bill 480, sponsored by Sen. Mike Hodges, R-Brunswick, establishes student loan repayments for mental health and substance use professionals serving underserved youth in the state or in unserved geographic areas disproportionately impacted by social determinants of health.
House Bill 872, sponsored by Rep. Lee Hawkins, R-Gainesville, chair of the House Health and Human Services Committee, expands cancelable loans for certain health care professionals to dental students who agree to practice in rural areas.
Senate Bill 293, sponsored by Sen. Ben Watson, R-Savannah, chair of the Senate Health and Human Services Committee, reorganizes county boards of public health and opens the qualifications for the CEO of each county board of health to include either licensed physicians or people with a master’s degree in public health or a related field.
Military members and veterans
Kemp on Wednesday focused on bills to improve military recruitment and provide more work opportunities for veterans and military family members.
House Bill 880, sponsored by Rep. Bethany Ballard, R-Warner Robins, allows spouses of military service members to work under a license they hold in good standing in another state while under the supervision of an existing Georgia medical facility or provider.
Senate Bill 449, sponsored by Sen. Larry Walker, allows military medical personnel to practice for 12 months while a license application is pending, including working as a certified nursing aide, certified emergency medical technician, paramedic or licensed practical nurse. The bill also creates a new advanced practice registered nurse license and makes it a misdemeanor to practice advanced nursing without a license.
Human trafficking
The governor on Wednesday was accompanied by first lady Marty Kemp and other members of the GRACE Commission for the signing of an anti-human trafficking package. It includes Senate Bill 370, which adds certain businesses to the list of organizations that must post human trafficking notices, including convenience stores, body art studios, businesses that employ licensed massage therapists and manufacturing facilities.
Sponsored by Sen. Mike Hodges, R-Brunswick, the bill also allows the Georgia Board of Massage Therapy to initiate inspections of massage therapy businesses and educational programs without notice and requires massage therapy board members to complete yearly human trafficking awareness training.
House Bill 993, sponsored by Rep. Alan Powell, R-Hartwell, creates the felony offense of grooming of a minor and creates new penalties for offenses relating to visual mediums depicting minors engaged in sexually explicit conduct.
House Bill 1201, sponsored by Rep. Houston Gaines, R-Athens, allows human trafficking survivors who received first offender or conditional discharge status to vacate that status for certain crimes, as long as the crime was a direct result of being a victim of human trafficking.
Coastal communities
Earlier today in Brunswick, Kemp signed legislation impacting Georgia coastal communities, including House Bill 244, which amends the laws around how wild game can be hunted and how seafood dealers operate, and House Bill 1341, which designates white shrimp as the state’s official crustacean.
Taxes
Earlier this month Kemp signed several bills related to taxation, including House Bill 1015, sponsored by Rep. Lauren McDonald, R-Cumming, which lowers the state income tax for tax year 2024 to 5.39%, accelerating a multiyear drop in state income taxes that started at 5.75% in 2023 and will continue through 2029.
The Governor’s Office of Planning and Budget estimates the tax cut acceleration will save Georgia taxpayers approximately $1.1 billion in calendar year 2024 and about $3 billion over the next 10 years.
Kemp also signed House Bill 1021, sponsored by Rep. Lauren Daniel, R-Locust Grove, which increases the state’s income tax dependent exemption to $4,000 from $3,000.
House Bill 581, sponsored by Reps. Shaw Blackmon, R-Bonaire, and Clint Crowe, R-Jackson, enables a constitutional amendment (House Resolution 1022) to let voters decide whether counties can provide a statewide homestead valuation freeze, which limits the increase in property values to the inflation rate.
The governor has until May 7 to sign or veto bills passed during the legislative session that ended on March 28. Those he takes no action on will automatically become law.
Legislation signed by Kemp is posted on the governor’s website.
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Incumbent candidates for local, federal races likely to be no-shows at this weekend’s primary debates
ATLANTA — One of Georgia’s prominent media organizations is pleading with incumbent state and congressional candidates to participate in its primary election debates slated for Sunday.
For the first time in The Atlanta Press Club’s 30-year debate history, incumbents facing challengers in the May 21 primary have either declined or not yet committed to participating in the organization’s well-known debate series. The possible no-shows include candidates in four Congressional races as well as the Georgia Supreme Court, and the Fulton County District Attorney races.
“This is the first time that we’ve had so many [incumbents] not participate,” debate organizer Lauri Strauss told State Affairs. Strauss declined to speculate why candidates aren’t participating.
Hoping to encourage more participation, the organization issued the following statement:
“The Atlanta Press Club believes it is the responsibility of people running for public office to answer questions from their local media that will help inform voters before they cast their ballots. If a candidate is running for public office, the candidate should be willing to participate in the democratic process, which includes attending debates and fielding questions from journalists and opponents.”
Candidates have until Friday to RSVP.
Strauss said candidates who fail to appear will be represented on stage by an empty podium during the debate.
District Attorney Fani Willis has declined to participate and Democratic U.S. Reps. Lucy McBath and David Scott have yet to RSVP. Strauss said the organization is still in talks with Georgia Supreme Court Justice Andrew Pinson’s staff about his appearance in the debate.
Willis, declined earlier this week to participate, citing constraints around talking about sensitive cases like the criminal prosecution of former President Donald Trump.
McBath currently represents the 7th Congressional District and is now running in the newly drawn 6th Congressional District against two Democratic challengers, Jerica Richardson and Mandisha Thomas. McBath declined to participate in the press club’s general election debate in 2022, forcing her Republican challenger Mark Gonsalves to debate with an empty podium. McBath won with 61% of the vote.
The debates will air live on April 28 on GPB.org, on The Atlanta Press Club’s Facebook page (www.fb.com/TheAtlantaPressClub). It will be rebroadcast in early May on WABE.org.
Race | Tape and Livestream Sun. April 28 |
GPB-TV Broadcast | WABE Broadcast |
Congressional District 6 Democrats | 10:00 a.m. | April 29 at 7:00 p.m. | May 1 at 4:30 p.m. |
Congressional District 13 Democrats | 11:15 a.m. | April 28 at 4:00 p.m. | May 1 at 5 p.m. |
Congressional District 3 Republicans | 1:00 p.m. | April 28 at 5:00 p.m. | May 2 at 3:30 p.m. |
Congressional District 2 Republicans | 3:00 p.m. | April 29 at 5:00 p.m. | |
Georgia Supreme Court | 4:45 p.m. | May 2 at 4:30 p.m. | |
DeKalb County CEO | 5:45 p.m. | May 2 at 5:15 p.m. | |
Fulton County District Attorney | 6:45 p.m. | May 1 at 4 p.m. |
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