France taking dramatic steps to reduce waste, forcing big supermarkets to give unsold food to charitiesorganizations & people in need.
The national assembly voted unanimously on Thursday evening in favour of the measure, proposed by the Socialist deputy Guillaume Garot, a former food minister. “It’s scandalous to see bleach being poured into supermarket dustbins along with edible foods,” he said.
In the United States, an estimated (and astounding) 430 billion pounds of edible food goes uneaten in a year, much of it coming from our grocery stores:
With consumers demanding large displays of unblemished, fresh produce, many retailers end up tossing a mountain of perfectly edible food. Despite efforts to cut down on all that waste, in the U.S., the consumer end of the food chain still accounts for the largest share. It comes down to shoppers demanding stocked shelves, buying too much and generally treating food as a renewable resource.
Given the dire drought in California, a state which produces nearly all the fruits and vegetables in the U.S., perhaps it is time for our own government to get serious about food waste reduction and distribution—especially when a shocking 14.5% of Americans are considered "food insecure"—meaning they lack access to enough food for an active, healthy life for all household members.
The world produces more than one and a half times enough food it needs to feed the entire planet. Yet, in literally every corner of the world, people continue to go hungry. Is it just me, or does this seem incredibly messed up?
To be clear, the business of feeding the world’s people is a complicated one- it’s not simply a matter of production. Food must also be affordable and safe to eat. Agriculture production has to be prepared for weather related events, as well as armed conflict- since these types of events can interrupt production and delay distribution. Global citizens need to protect and support local farmers, particularly in the developing world, so that communities can enjoy culturally appropriate food and not have to rely on outside help to sustain themselves. Lastly, we should work to ensure that food is never wasted.
Fortunately, people across the world are united to achieve these goals. From local farmers, to civil society, to the private sector, more and more people are joining the movement to end world hunger as part of the wider mission of ending extreme poverty.
Case in point? Just this week, France pledged to crack down on food waste in supermarkets. According to the Guardian, the law bans “supermarkets destroying unsold food, instead obliging them to give it to charities or put it to other uses such as animal feed”.
Guillaume Garot, the brains behind the operation, had this to say about current conditions: “It’s scandalous to see bleach being poured into supermarket dustbins along with edible foods,” he said. Scandalous is right!
This isn’t the first time France has made headlines in this area. Last year, French supermarket Intermarché launched a campaign that also sought to put an end to food waste, but the giant chain took a different approach.
The campaign, called “The Inglorious Fruits and Vegetables”, intended to incentivize shoppers to buy produce that would otherwise be discarded by farmers for superficial reasons by selling it at a discounted price. The campaign was a hit, and now other supermarkets are getting on board too, like the UK’s Asda.
http://blink-and-c.com/The US is coming up with innovative solutions to food waste as well. Former Trader Joe’s president Doug Rauch had a crazy idea- why not collect and sell food that had has passed its “sell by” date at a reduced price so that all people can access nutritious foods? As it turns out, many dates marked “sell by” “best by” and “use by” are arbitrary, and don’t tell consumers when the food is actually unsafe to eat. To that end, he developed Daily Table, a not-for-profit retail store that serves a low-income community in Massachusetts. Two birds, one stone, solved. Genius.
Addressing food waste is just one tiny part of addressing global hunger; to truly feed the global population we’ll have to change all of the systems that keep people poor. However, these examples show that some of the best solutions are hiding right under our noses, and it’s up to us to connect the dots.
Governments across the world should make reducing food waste an urgent priority in order to save as much as £194bn annually by 2030, according to a report.
Cutting food waste leads to greater efficiency, more productivity and higher economic growth, it said, but achieving such an aspiration would involve consumers cutting their own food and drink waste by as much as half.
One third of all food produced in the world ends up as waste, with food wasted by consumers globally valued at more than £259bn per year.
But that cost could soar to £388bn as the global middle class expands over the course of the next fifteen years, according to new figures from the UK government’s waste advisory body Waste and Resources Action Programme (Wrap) for the Global Commission on the Economy and Climate.
Their new report, ’Strategies to achieve economic and environmental gains by reducing food waste’, also identifies significant opportunities to improve economic performance and tackle climate change by reducing the amount of food that is wasted at various stages in the supply chain - in agriculture, transport, storage and consumption.
It highlights how practical changes, such as lowering the average temperatures of refrigerators or designing better packaging, can make a big difference in preventing spoilage. Approximately 25% of food waste in the developing world could be eliminated with better refrigeration equipment.
In the UK, the most recent data from Wrap showed that households threw away seven million tonnes of food waste in 2012, enough to fill London’s Wembley Stadium nine times over. Avoidable household food waste in the UK is associated with 17 million tonnes of CO2 emissions annually.
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