That's a very sensible law. It was not very surprising to read that "the average French person throws out 20kg-30kg of food a year – 7kg of which is still in its wrapping. The combined national cost of this is up to €20 billion. Of the 7.1 million tonnes of food wasted in France each year, 67% is binned by consumers, 15% by restaurants & 11% by shops. Each year 1.3 billion tonnes of food are wasted worldwide."
There was also a Maclean's article from May, in which, it was stated that a staggering 40% of the food produced in the developed world (& 30% worldwide) is never consumed. It’s food that’s discarded from farm to fork, tossed in the field because it’s not the right size or shape, cycled through stores & restaurants, & chucked out of every single family’s home refrigerator. In fact, half of the estimated US$1 trillion worth of food the UN says is discarded each year is the wilted lettuce & expired milk that’s dumped by consumers, with another 20% tossed by grocery stores & restaurants. Dana Gunders, a scientist at the US National Resource Defense Council (NRDC), found $150 billion worth of edible food ends up rotting in American landfills & producing methane, a greenhouse gas 20 times more damaging than CO2. Meanwhile, food production uses 80% of all fresh water consumed in the US. If food waste were a country, it would be the third-largest emitter of greenhouse gases in the world, after China & the US, & a major contributor to global warming.
It goes on to say that "according to the Ontario-based consulting firm Value Chain Management International (VCMI), Canadians waste $31 billion in food each year." Out of this $31 billion of food wastage, almost 47% is by consumers at home; that's almost $14.5 billion of food wastage by Canadians at home.
Ironically, unlike France & UK, Canada doesn't have a national food wastage policy where it might be mandatory for non-consumer establishments (shops, restaurants, hotels etc.) to not waste food by donating it to charities or animal farms for animal feed. Even if the government comes up with such a policy / law that will help in saving some $13 Billion in food wastage in Canada, which is in itself huge savings, the biggest chunk of food wastage would still not be resolved; food wastage by consumers at home. In France, 67% of food is being wasted by consumers at home, too.
I often see myself people wasting food in North America & Europe. They don't think twice before throwing away good food because it has passed the arbitrary expiration dates or the bread has gone a little stale or simply, a kid just doesn't want to his/her fruit & toss his/her apple/banana/peach etc. in the garbage bin.
It would be very unfair of me to only blame the people of the developed West for wasting their food. I have also seen how economic well-off people in the developing world also waste food. For instance, Pakistanis waste food by the tonnes in weddings & in restaurants. And they are followers of such a religion (Islam), in which wasting food is strictly discouraged. People in weddings will fill their dinner plates full & will eat not even half of it, & then throw the rest in the garbage, whereas, there are families sleeping hungry not even half a kilometer away from that event. Pakistanis, the purported followers of Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) who never wasted food in his life, don't even think twice before wasting very good quality food.
Nobody is teaching the general public that there are billions of people around the world who would literally kill someone for that fruit or vegetable or that stale bread or that milk or yogurt or pizza etc. People need to be shown how they themselves are throwing away their money when they throw out the food.
People in the West need to see how there are hundreds of thousands of people in their own backyard who go hungry every day because they don't have enough income to buy healthy & nutritious food for themselves & for their families. They should be shown how their food wastage is affecting their own pockets & preventing someone else from not having that food. Food donation is a huge thing in the West & hundreds of people donate food, on a regular basis or on special occasions, to charities, but that pales in comparison to how much those same people throw away food from their fridges.
There should be some kind of national advertising blitz, similar to the one showing dangers of cigarette smoking, so people can realize what & how they are contributing in this national & worldwide food wastage. Children in their schools need to be shown how other kids in their own country & abroad are going hungry while they are throwing away food, just because, they don't like the taste or look of that given food. Children could be rewarded, by their parents or school, for not throwing away their food.
As I always say, the world has enough resources to easily sustain our world population. Problem is that those resources are distributed not equally. On macro level, some countries are famine stricken while others are wasting billions in food wastage, on a micro level, economic well-off public has too much food, while their poor neighbours are sleeping hungry at night. If the whole food supply chain is made efficient to minimize food wastage, we are not only going to save enormously on critical world resources of air & water, & consequently, positively help climate change, but we will also produce only enough food which will be used by consumers.
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French supermarkets will be banned from throwing away or destroying unsold food & must instead donate it to charities or for animal feed, under a law set to crack down on food waste.
The French national assembly voted unanimously to pass the legislation as France battles an epidemic of wasted food that has highlighted the divide between giant food firms & people who are struggling to eat.
...
Supermarkets will be barred from deliberately spoiling unsold food so it cannot be eaten. Those with a footprint of 4,305 sq ft (400 sq m) or more will have to sign contracts with charities by July next year or face penalties including fines of up to €75,000 (£53,000) or 2 years in jail.
“It’s scandalous to see bleach being poured into supermarket dustbins along with edible foods,” said the Socialist deputy Guillaume Garot, a former food minister who proposed the bill.
In recent years, French media have highlighted how poor families, students, unemployed or homeless people often stealthily forage in supermarket bins at night to feed themselves, able to survive on edible products which had been thrown out just as their best-before dates approached.
But some supermarkets doused binned food in bleach to prevent potential food-poisoning by eating food from bins. Other supermarkets deliberately binned food in locked warehouses for collection by refuse trucks to stop scavengers.
The practice of foraging in supermarket bins is not without risk – some people picking through rotten fruit & rubbish to reach yoghurts, cheese platters or readymade pizzas have been stopped by police & faced criminal action for theft. In 2011, a 59-year-old father of six working for the minimum wage at a Monoprix supermarket in Marseille almost lost his job after a colleague called security when they saw him pick 6 melons & 2 lettuces out of a bin.
Pressure groups, recycling commandos & direct action foraging movements have been highlighting the issue of waste in France. Members of the Gars’pilleurs, an action group founded in Lyon, don gardening gloves to remove food from supermarket bins at night & redistribute it on the streets the next morning to raise awareness about waste, poverty & food distribution.
The group & four others issued a statement earlier this year warning that simply obliging supermarket giants to pass unsold food to charities could give a “false & dangerous idea of a magic solution” to food waste. They said it would create an illusion that supermarkets had done their bit, while failing to address the wider issue of overproduction in the food industry as well as the wastage in food distribution chains.
The law will also introduce an education programme about food waste in schools and businesses. It follows a measure in February to remove the best-before dates on fresh foods.
The measures are part of wider drive to halve the amount of food waste in France by 2025. According to official estimates, the average French person throws out 20kg-30kg of food a year – 7kg of which is still in its wrapping. The combined national cost of this is up to €20 billion.
Of the 7.1 million tonnes of food wasted in France each year, 67% is binned by consumers, 15% by restaurants & 11% by shops. Each year 1.3 billion tonnes of food are wasted worldwide.
The Fédération du Commerce et de la Distribution, which represents big supermarkets, criticised the plan. “The law is wrong in both target & intent, given the big stores represent only 5% of food waste but have these new obligations,” said Jacques Creyssel, head of the organisation. “They are already the pre-eminent food donors, with more than 4,500 stores having signed agreements with aid groups.”
The logistics of the law must also not put an unfair burden on charities, with the unsold food given to them in a way that is ready to use, a parliamentary report has stipulated. It must not be up to charities to have to sift through the waste to set aside squashed fruit or food that had gone off. Supermarkets have said that charities must now also be properly equipped with fridges & trucks to be able to handle the food donations.
The French law goes further than the UK, where the government has a voluntary agreement with the grocery & retail sector to cut both food & packaging waste in the supply chain, but does not believe in mandatory targets.
A report earlier this year showed that in the UK, households threw away 7 million tonnes of food in 2012, enough to fill London’s Wembley stadium 9 times over. Avoidable household food waste in the UK is associated with 17 million tonnes of CO2 emissions annually.
There was also a Maclean's article from May, in which, it was stated that a staggering 40% of the food produced in the developed world (& 30% worldwide) is never consumed. It’s food that’s discarded from farm to fork, tossed in the field because it’s not the right size or shape, cycled through stores & restaurants, & chucked out of every single family’s home refrigerator. In fact, half of the estimated US$1 trillion worth of food the UN says is discarded each year is the wilted lettuce & expired milk that’s dumped by consumers, with another 20% tossed by grocery stores & restaurants. Dana Gunders, a scientist at the US National Resource Defense Council (NRDC), found $150 billion worth of edible food ends up rotting in American landfills & producing methane, a greenhouse gas 20 times more damaging than CO2. Meanwhile, food production uses 80% of all fresh water consumed in the US. If food waste were a country, it would be the third-largest emitter of greenhouse gases in the world, after China & the US, & a major contributor to global warming.
It goes on to say that "according to the Ontario-based consulting firm Value Chain Management International (VCMI), Canadians waste $31 billion in food each year." Out of this $31 billion of food wastage, almost 47% is by consumers at home; that's almost $14.5 billion of food wastage by Canadians at home.
Ironically, unlike France & UK, Canada doesn't have a national food wastage policy where it might be mandatory for non-consumer establishments (shops, restaurants, hotels etc.) to not waste food by donating it to charities or animal farms for animal feed. Even if the government comes up with such a policy / law that will help in saving some $13 Billion in food wastage in Canada, which is in itself huge savings, the biggest chunk of food wastage would still not be resolved; food wastage by consumers at home. In France, 67% of food is being wasted by consumers at home, too.
I often see myself people wasting food in North America & Europe. They don't think twice before throwing away good food because it has passed the arbitrary expiration dates or the bread has gone a little stale or simply, a kid just doesn't want to his/her fruit & toss his/her apple/banana/peach etc. in the garbage bin.
It would be very unfair of me to only blame the people of the developed West for wasting their food. I have also seen how economic well-off people in the developing world also waste food. For instance, Pakistanis waste food by the tonnes in weddings & in restaurants. And they are followers of such a religion (Islam), in which wasting food is strictly discouraged. People in weddings will fill their dinner plates full & will eat not even half of it, & then throw the rest in the garbage, whereas, there are families sleeping hungry not even half a kilometer away from that event. Pakistanis, the purported followers of Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) who never wasted food in his life, don't even think twice before wasting very good quality food.
Nobody is teaching the general public that there are billions of people around the world who would literally kill someone for that fruit or vegetable or that stale bread or that milk or yogurt or pizza etc. People need to be shown how they themselves are throwing away their money when they throw out the food.
People in the West need to see how there are hundreds of thousands of people in their own backyard who go hungry every day because they don't have enough income to buy healthy & nutritious food for themselves & for their families. They should be shown how their food wastage is affecting their own pockets & preventing someone else from not having that food. Food donation is a huge thing in the West & hundreds of people donate food, on a regular basis or on special occasions, to charities, but that pales in comparison to how much those same people throw away food from their fridges.
There should be some kind of national advertising blitz, similar to the one showing dangers of cigarette smoking, so people can realize what & how they are contributing in this national & worldwide food wastage. Children in their schools need to be shown how other kids in their own country & abroad are going hungry while they are throwing away food, just because, they don't like the taste or look of that given food. Children could be rewarded, by their parents or school, for not throwing away their food.
As I always say, the world has enough resources to easily sustain our world population. Problem is that those resources are distributed not equally. On macro level, some countries are famine stricken while others are wasting billions in food wastage, on a micro level, economic well-off public has too much food, while their poor neighbours are sleeping hungry at night. If the whole food supply chain is made efficient to minimize food wastage, we are not only going to save enormously on critical world resources of air & water, & consequently, positively help climate change, but we will also produce only enough food which will be used by consumers.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
French supermarkets will be banned from throwing away or destroying unsold food & must instead donate it to charities or for animal feed, under a law set to crack down on food waste.
The French national assembly voted unanimously to pass the legislation as France battles an epidemic of wasted food that has highlighted the divide between giant food firms & people who are struggling to eat.
...
Supermarkets will be barred from deliberately spoiling unsold food so it cannot be eaten. Those with a footprint of 4,305 sq ft (400 sq m) or more will have to sign contracts with charities by July next year or face penalties including fines of up to €75,000 (£53,000) or 2 years in jail.
“It’s scandalous to see bleach being poured into supermarket dustbins along with edible foods,” said the Socialist deputy Guillaume Garot, a former food minister who proposed the bill.
In recent years, French media have highlighted how poor families, students, unemployed or homeless people often stealthily forage in supermarket bins at night to feed themselves, able to survive on edible products which had been thrown out just as their best-before dates approached.
But some supermarkets doused binned food in bleach to prevent potential food-poisoning by eating food from bins. Other supermarkets deliberately binned food in locked warehouses for collection by refuse trucks to stop scavengers.
The practice of foraging in supermarket bins is not without risk – some people picking through rotten fruit & rubbish to reach yoghurts, cheese platters or readymade pizzas have been stopped by police & faced criminal action for theft. In 2011, a 59-year-old father of six working for the minimum wage at a Monoprix supermarket in Marseille almost lost his job after a colleague called security when they saw him pick 6 melons & 2 lettuces out of a bin.
Pressure groups, recycling commandos & direct action foraging movements have been highlighting the issue of waste in France. Members of the Gars’pilleurs, an action group founded in Lyon, don gardening gloves to remove food from supermarket bins at night & redistribute it on the streets the next morning to raise awareness about waste, poverty & food distribution.
The group & four others issued a statement earlier this year warning that simply obliging supermarket giants to pass unsold food to charities could give a “false & dangerous idea of a magic solution” to food waste. They said it would create an illusion that supermarkets had done their bit, while failing to address the wider issue of overproduction in the food industry as well as the wastage in food distribution chains.
The law will also introduce an education programme about food waste in schools and businesses. It follows a measure in February to remove the best-before dates on fresh foods.
The measures are part of wider drive to halve the amount of food waste in France by 2025. According to official estimates, the average French person throws out 20kg-30kg of food a year – 7kg of which is still in its wrapping. The combined national cost of this is up to €20 billion.
Of the 7.1 million tonnes of food wasted in France each year, 67% is binned by consumers, 15% by restaurants & 11% by shops. Each year 1.3 billion tonnes of food are wasted worldwide.
The Fédération du Commerce et de la Distribution, which represents big supermarkets, criticised the plan. “The law is wrong in both target & intent, given the big stores represent only 5% of food waste but have these new obligations,” said Jacques Creyssel, head of the organisation. “They are already the pre-eminent food donors, with more than 4,500 stores having signed agreements with aid groups.”
The logistics of the law must also not put an unfair burden on charities, with the unsold food given to them in a way that is ready to use, a parliamentary report has stipulated. It must not be up to charities to have to sift through the waste to set aside squashed fruit or food that had gone off. Supermarkets have said that charities must now also be properly equipped with fridges & trucks to be able to handle the food donations.
The French law goes further than the UK, where the government has a voluntary agreement with the grocery & retail sector to cut both food & packaging waste in the supply chain, but does not believe in mandatory targets.
A report earlier this year showed that in the UK, households threw away 7 million tonnes of food in 2012, enough to fill London’s Wembley stadium 9 times over. Avoidable household food waste in the UK is associated with 17 million tonnes of CO2 emissions annually.
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