California Food Waste Law: Requirements, Fines, and Exemptions

California’s food waste law, Senate Bill 1383, requires every resident and business in the state to keep food scraps and other organic material out of the trash by sorting it into a separate container, and it requires large food businesses to donate surplus edible food to recovery organizations. Fines for residents and businesses that don’t sort start at $50 and climb to $500 for repeat violations, while cities and counties that fail to run a compliant program can be penalized up to $10,000 per day by CalRecycle.¹ The 2025 deadline has now passed, the regulations are fully in effect, and enforcement is escalating.

What Residents Have to Do

If you live in California, you have to participate in your local organics curbside collection program and put organic waste in the correct bin.² Your city or county is the one running the program, and its haulers decide the pickup schedule, but the sorting itself is on you.

SB 1383 standardizes bin colors across the state so the rules are the same wherever you go. Under the most common three-container setup:

The green container is for food waste, yard waste, and other organic materials.
The blue container is for traditional recyclables like bottles, cans, and plastic, along with clean paper and cardboard.
The gray container is for anything that isn’t organic or recyclable.

Gray, not black, is now the standard color for landfill-bound trash.³ Jurisdictions have until existing bins wear out or January 1, 2036 to finish the switch, so if your neighborhood still uses black cans that’s fine for now. Some jurisdictions use two-container or even one-container systems instead, depending on what their local processing infrastructure can handle.⁴

What Counts as Organic Waste

The definition is broader than most people expect. Beyond food scraps and yard trimmings, organic waste under SB 1383 includes food-soiled paper, cardboard, lumber, wood waste, organic textiles, paper products, printing and writing paper, manure, and biosolids.² Hazardous wood waste and non-compostable paper stay out of the green bin.³

What Businesses Have to Do

Businesses have the same sorting obligation as households, plus one extra requirement: they must place collection containers for organic waste and recyclables in every area where customers dispose of waste, with the sole exception of restrooms.² A single trash can at a checkout counter is no longer enough.

Edible Food Donation for Larger Food Businesses

Certain large-scale food businesses have to do more than sort. They have to donate surplus edible food, rather than throwing it out, and back that up with a written contract or agreement with a food recovery organization like a food bank, food rescue operation, or pantry.⁵ The law puts these businesses in two tiers by size and type.

Tier 1 has been under the requirement since January 1, 2022. It covers supermarkets with gross annual sales of $2 million or more; grocery stores of 10,000 square feet or more, including large convenience stores that primarily sell food; wholesale food vendors; food distributors; and food service providers operating under contract at institutional, governmental, or commercial locations.

Tier 2 was phased in on January 1, 2024. It covers:⁵

Restaurants with 250 or more seats or a total facility of 5,000 square feet or more
Hotels with 200 or more rooms and an on-site food facility
Health facilities with 100 or more beds and an on-site food facility
Large venues averaging more than 2,000 visitors per day
Large events like sporting events and festivals averaging more than 2,000 attendees per day
State agency cafeterias with 250 or more seats or 5,000 square feet or more
Local education agencies with an on-site food facility

Smaller restaurants and food businesses that fall below these thresholds still have to sort organic waste, but they’re not required to run a donation program.

Fines for Residents and Businesses

Cities and counties are the ones who write tickets to households and businesses, and they monitor compliance mainly through annual hauler route reviews, where haulers check what’s actually going into each bin.⁶ Repeated failure to separate organic waste triggers escalating fines:¹

First violation: $50 to $100
Second violation: $100 to $200
Third or later violation: $250 to $500

Penalties escalate when the same entity commits the same violation within a one-year window. Most jurisdictions start with warnings and education before writing tickets, but the structure means persistent non-compliance gets expensive.

Fines for Cities and Counties

Local governments run the collection programs, and CalRecycle can penalize them directly when they don’t. The state-level fines are tiered by severity:⁷

Minor violation: $500 to $4,000 per violation per day
Moderate violation: $4,000 to $7,500 per violation per day
Major violation: $7,500 to $10,000 per violation per day

Major violations include having no ordinance at all, running no edible food recovery program, or failing to keep an Implementation Record. The combined penalty across multiple violations is capped at $10,000 per day.¹ A jurisdiction that submits a Notification of Intent to Comply and follows through on its corrective plan can have penalties waived, but if it doesn’t follow through, CalRecycle can revoke the waiver and impose the penalties retroactively.⁸

When the Rules Might Not Apply to Your Area

Not every community runs a full organics program. CalRecycle grants several kinds of waivers to jurisdictions where full compliance isn’t practical:⁹

Cities and special districts that disposed of less than 5,000 tons of solid waste in 2014 and have a population under 7,500 can apply for a low-population waiver.
Jurisdictions entirely at or above 4,500 feet in elevation can seek a waiver from food waste and food-soiled paper separation.
Jurisdictions that meet the state’s definition of a rural jurisdiction can adopt a resolution explaining the need for an exemption.
Schools and certain non-local entities that generate very little organic material, or that lack physical space for additional containers, can apply for de minimis waivers.

If you live or run a business in one of these areas, some or all of the sorting requirements may not reach you. Everywhere else, they do.

Where Enforcement Stands Now

The 2025 deadline for the state’s 75% organic waste diversion target and 20% edible food recovery target has passed. On the food recovery side, California recovered roughly 217,000 tons of unsold food through local programs in 2023, reaching about 94% of the 2025 target of 231,476 tons.¹⁰

As of early 2026, CalRecycle had roughly 610 jurisdictions subject to evaluation, with compliance evaluation letters and Implementation Record request letters going out statewide.¹¹ The rollout period is over. Jurisdictions that have been slow to adopt ordinances or build collection infrastructure are the ones now facing state penalties, and jurisdictions on the receiving end of pressure from CalRecycle are more likely to start enforcing against residents and businesses in turn.

1
CalRecycle. Enforcement Questions and Answers
2
CalRecycle. Statewide Mandatory Organic Waste Collection
3
Legal Information Institute (LII). California Code of Regulations Title 14, 18984.1 – Three-Container Organic Waste Collection Service
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CalRecycle. Collection Systems, Container Colors, and Labeling
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CalRecycle. How to Identify SB 1383 Commercial Edible Food Generators
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CalRecycle. Best Management Practices for Implementing a Route Review
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Legal Information Institute (LII). California Code of Regulations Title 14, 18997.3 – Department Penalty Amounts
8
CalRecycle. Notification of Intent to Comply with SB 1383 Regulations
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CalRecycle. Department-Issued Waivers
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CalRecycle. California’s Climate Progress on SB 1383
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CalRecycle. CalRecycle Oversight and Enforcement