Tracking Progress: Launching Our Global ‘Policy Advances’ Series

May 1, 2025 — Around the world, food loss and waste (FLW) pose enormous challenges to food security, environmental sustainability, and economic resilience. As millions go hungry and landfills swell with edible food, it’s clear that thoughtful policy interventions are critical levers for change. Governments can — and must — create the conditions for food recovery to flourish. We are proud to announce the launch of our new Policy Advances Series, highlighting important FLW policy progress in countries around the world.

The Global Food Donation Policy Atlas Project is dedicated to mapping the policy landscape for food waste and food donation worldwide. Our goal is to identify what legal frameworks exist, where gaps remain, and what best practices can be shared to unlock more food recovery globally. Using a structured methodology, we assess policies across key categories like liability protections, tax incentives, date labeling, food safety, and donation requirements. Each policy area is evaluated using a standardized rubric, classifying its strength as no policy, limited, moderate, or strong based on its scope, clarity, enforceability, and real-world impact.

Starting this year, we will conduct extensive reviews of countries in our database to track new legislative and regulatory changes. We look for newly passed laws, amendments, regulatory guidance, and notable implementation efforts. When we identify new policies that meaningfully strengthen a country’s approach to food donation, we will update that country’s profile — and, if applicable, shift its ranking across the relevant issue areas.

We are releasing a series of concise briefs spotlighting major policy updates from across the globe: from Israel’s new food donation law to Colombia’s enhancement of its tax incentives, to Singapore’s liability protection law, to new regulatory clarifications and national strategies in the United States.

Moving forward, we will release these Policy Advances Briefs—along with updates to the color coding on the map and blog posts authored in collaboration with our local foodbank partners—on a semi-annual basis, ensuring policymakers, advocates, and researchers have timely insights into how the global policy landscape is evolving. By showcasing these advances, we aim not only to recognize countries making meaningful progress, but also to inspire new ideas and policy adoption elsewhere. As we continue to track developments and refine our methodology, the Atlas will remain a living resource — charting the path toward a world where less food is wasted and more people are nourished.

Stay tuned as we publish the first briefs in this exciting new series over the next few weeks — and thank you for being part of the movement to advance food recovery worldwide.