Americans generate enough food waste to fill a 90,000-seat football stadium every day. Based on the national average, you could say the Vineyard generates about 155 tons of food waste every month, jumping to more than 1,000 tons a month in the summer when the population multiplies more than six times over.

Taking such figures to heart, Massachusetts has become the first state in the nation to put a ban on commercial food waste entering landfills. As of Oct. 1, restaurants, supermarkets and other businesses that generate more than one ton of food waste per week are required to donate or repurpose their organic waste. Statewide, about 1,700 businesses will be affected by the ban.

Several of the larger businesses on the Vineyard are now preparing for the changes. Stop & Shop, perhaps the largest food waste producer on the Island, already sends much of its organic waste to Morning Glory Farm in Edgartown, which runs a large-scale composting program, accepting material from dozens of Island sources.

Businesses and residents are feeling the need for more composting resources, especially in light of the new regulations, which are expected to expand to include household food waste in the future. But the options on the Vineyard are limited. Neither of the Island’s refuse districts is equipped to compost food waste, so some businesses are looking to local farms to meet their composting needs.

Below the towering windmill at Morning Glory Farm are huge piles of decomposing organic material, most of it yard waste but a good deal of it originating from Stop & Shop’s bakeries and produce departments. Throughout the year, the piles are mixed and aerated and end up on the large field across the road from the farm store. Last month, 1,600 cubic yards of compost crossed the road. “As soon as we let the landscapers know we were receiving this material, they came in enthusiastically,” said farm owner Jim Athearn, who said the farm began composting about 15 years ago. “They’ve told me that they find it very useful because of its proximity to work,” he added. “They need a place to dump.”

The Martha’s Vineyard Refuse Disposal and Resource Recovery District, which serves Edgartown, West Tisbury, Chilmark and Aquinnah, as well as Bruno’s Rolloff Inc., which manages waste for Oak Bluffs and Tisbury, are looking to establish municipal composting facilities. But neither district expects to be composting food waste anytime soon.

ABC Disposal Service delivers the food waste from Stop & Shop to Morning Glory Farm. “We have reached out to other businesses that have a large output of compostable goods, but many of them already have made arrangements with a farmer on-Island,” ABC dispatcher Aretha Brown said.

Robert Goulart, general manager of Bruno’s, said there is a clear need for a commercial food waste facility and that local farms can handle only so much of the Island’s organic waste. “We’re looking for alternatives — being able to compost right at one of the facilities on the Island — but that’s a ways out,” he said.

Mr. Athearn said Morning Glory is not yet operating at capacity, but is challenged to handle the current load. “If there was more, we’d just have to space it out faster, moving it away and stacking it in the fields,” he said.

At the Martha’s Vineyard Refuse District (MVRD) long-term plans to expand its transfer station in Edgartown include buying a municipal composter. But those plans will likely not materialize for several years. The district’s nearer-term plans to expand the station to better accommodate commercial and residential traffic have so far been approved by two of the four member towns. If the remaining towns approve the plans this winter, the project would likely start in the fall; the composter is part of a later phase that would also require approval from the towns.

District manager Don Hatch said the present transfer station does not have enough space for a composter, which would need to be fully enclosed to meet local guidelines that specify that the station be kept bird-free. He said when the station was built birds were a particular concern because of the proximity to the Martha’s Vineyard Airport.

“We don’t have any bird issues, but don’t want to start,” Mr. Hatch said.

Under the food waste ban, refuse districts must inspect all incoming loads and notify commercial haulers of the new regulations. ABC and MVRD both provide composting containers for businesses, and Bruno’s plans to offer a similar service in the future. The Edgartown transfer station accepts brush and yard waste and ships it to John Keene Excavation in West Tisbury for composting.

One problem for the Island is keeping track of how much food waste is actually produced by towns and businesses, and determining the demand for new facilities. MVRD handled about 450 tons of leaves and brush last year, but did not have figures for how much food waste entered the waste stream. Mr. Goulart said Bruno’s was working on a system for tracking the amount of food waste it receives.

Megan Ottens-Sargent, a MVRD board member who has advocated for organic waste services on the Island, believed that accurate numbers would go a long way in moving things forward.

“If we are going to buy a composting vessel, we will need to justify that capital expense by showing how much compost we can collect,” she said. “My hope is that we will do some pilot programs before that acquisition.”

Ms. Ottens-Sargent applied last year for a Martha’s Vineyard Vision Fellowship grant to support a composting program that would have involved both districts, the shellfish recovery program, Morning Glory Farm and the Farm Institute in a two-year pilot program. She said the project was turned down in part because the foundation believed it should be funded publicly. “Their priority was to fund projects that didn’t have the access to public funding that the refuse districts have,” she said.

Another grant last year seeking $500,000 from the state for a municipal composter was also turned down. Tomar Waldman, who wrote the grant application, said the state was enthusiastic about the project, but there had not been enough time to demonstrate Islandwide support.

“People in the state know that we need this more than any other municipality, because we have to take everything off by ferry and our carbon footprint is huge,” Ms. Waldman said. She planned to apply again in the next funding round and is hopeful the grant will be awarded. But with a new governor in office, there is some uncertainty.

Meanwhile, Ms. Waldman hopes to begin working with a couple of Island farms to get them permitted to accept organic material from the community. Morning Glory Farm is currently the only Island farm that has such a permit.

Some smaller farms, including the Farm Institute in Katama and the Island Grown Initiative’s Thimble Farm on the Tisbury-Oak Bluffs line, run their own composting programs, which serve partly to educate the public.

The Farm Institute’s small-scale compost operation nourishes the farm fields and 20 community gardens, and also helps teach kids in the farm’s summer camp program about food waste and composting. Campers helped build three of the farm bins and during the summer learn how to aerate and layer the compost.

Farm manager Rebecca Sanders said Stop & Shop had contacted the farm last year looking for a compost site. “We were considering it, and then just decided it was too much for us, that we didn’t have the staff and the equipment,” she said. Another concern was the potential residue from non-organic produce, although Ms. Sanders said most things break down in the composting process.

Thimble Farm produces between 300 and 500 pounds of compost each week (a relatively small amount) and has completed one full cycle since Island Grown Initiative bought the farm in 2012. All the organic material that enters the system comes from the farm’s greenhouse, although a larger operation is in the works for the kitchen and slaughterhouse that are planned for the farm.

As with the Farm Institute, Island Grown Initiative plays a largely educational role. Executive director Keith Wilda said interest in composting has been stirring in the community and that the organization will happily provide information and resources related to the subject.

“I’m hearing that there needs to be some kind of larger compost facility on the Island, to deal not so much with the regulations today but with new regulations coming out,” he said, referring to the likelihood of the ban extending to households. “A very important part of the new composting regulations coming out is that not only students but adults are also aware of how to separate compost,” he said.

Mr. Wilda recently provided Bruno’s with some information related to composting. “That’s kind of what we want to do at IGI,” he said. “We are willing to help with the model; we can’t be the solution to the model.”