California Gov. Jerry Brown signed a bill to encourage manufacturers to voluntarily standardize date labeling on their products in order to curb some of the 5.5 billion tons of food tossed into the state’s landfills each year.
Bill AB 954 will “direct the California Department of Food & Agriculture, in coordination with the Department of Public Health, to publish information about date label standards by July 2018,” says Waste Dive. “Manufacturers, processors, and retailers would be asked to voluntarily begin using ‘BEST if Used by’ or ‘BEST if Used or Frozen by’ to indicate quality dates, and ‘USE by’ or ‘USE by or Freeze by’ to indicate safety dates.”
California has a statewide goal of recovering 20 percent of its food by 2025, amid a larger goal of recycling 75 percent of all products by 2020.