That's harsh
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France to make destroying unsold food illegal/giving to charities mandatory
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That's harsh
The Technomancer
card-carrying scientician
I like this quite a bit in concept
In practice I fear its going to be a logistical nightmare
In practice I fear its going to be a logistical nightmare
Funky Papa
FUNK-Y-PPA-4
Pretty shitty. One of my friends worked at McD during his uni days and at the end of the day the manager would allow to gobble on the few remaining sandwiches and fries.
I thought the same, but it shouldn't be so hard to coordinate a drop off with the local charities. Food banks are more or less centralised, so instead of taking the food to the trash at the end of the day, they could leave them at the cargo bay and allow somebody from the food bank to take it with a van.
Good. One of the worst experiences I had while working in a supermarket deli was watching management having a homeless dude escorted off of the premises for asking for a piece of chicken on the same night that we were in the process of throwing away hundreds of dollars worth of prepared meals including the same chicken.
It'd be food past the sell by/best by date, which aren't the same thing as an expiration date.
I think many try THIS much at least, going by grocery store experience. Sometimes things just fall to the floor or you don't really know HOW it is, but just because a human can't eat it doesn't mean a plant can't use it.
Necromanti
Member
It has always seemed misguided to me that efforts against food waste have almost always been targeted at consumers rather than those supplying the food to begin with. Not that they can't both be addressed, but it seems counterintuitive to prevent the loss of droplets when oceans are being wasted.
Dammit! Came in to post this.
You change its name to Target.
frankie_baby
Member
Most food past expiration date is ok to eat
This whole system has resulted in nothing short of insanity.
"Fire for the man who build the first fence"
What is the point of working so hard at this agrarian farce when: Almost half of the world's food thrown away, report finds
This would not even be justifiable if there were absolutely zero starving people on the face of the Earth. We all know that's not the case.
"Fire for the man who build the first fence"
What is the point of working so hard at this agrarian farce when: Almost half of the world's food thrown away, report finds
This would not even be justifiable if there were absolutely zero starving people on the face of the Earth. We all know that's not the case.
hydragonwarrior
Member
Agreed on this. That one muffin you pitched out, nestled inbetween heaps of garbage could inevitably sit in a landfill somewhere once it's mummified underground, not used at all toward replenishing the soil.
Happening all over the planet, not just France.
Happening all over the planet, not just France.
They'll need to, considering the food shortages caused by obese Americans hoovering everything up. Am I doing it right?
For this to work here, you would need to remove the liability from the donator (correct word usage?) and put it on the charity to verify the safeness of the food.
Only the charity can be liable for this to work.
Has nothing to do with this, has everything to do with liability. The world isn't that dark of a place that people are destroying food on purpose in spite of the hungry & starving.
Only the charity can be liable for this to work.
Has nothing to do with this, has everything to do with liability. The world isn't that dark of a place that people are destroying food on purpose in spite of the hungry & starving.
Cyber Caesar
Member
Mr. Giggles
Member
Well done France.
More countries should do this!!
More countries should do this!!
BattleMonkey
Member
How does the food get to where it needs to be? I know it's been an issue with alot of supermarkets in the US, they will give their food to charity, but they can't give all away and a large reason is because they don't have a way to get it to where it's needed safely.
Supermarkets would then need to start staffing delivery guys and have cold storage equipment to transport many foods. Various bread banks for example who do pick up donations from supermarkets, can only take bread and canned foods for example cause they don't have a way to transport cold items that can spoil, or must be maintained at a certain temp by the FDA. Most charities can't afford to pick up everything they need, or the proper equipment. And restaurants and markets aren't going to start buying specialized vehicles and drivers to pay to deliver the tossed out stuff to where it goes.
Supermarkets would then need to start staffing delivery guys and have cold storage equipment to transport many foods. Various bread banks for example who do pick up donations from supermarkets, can only take bread and canned foods for example cause they don't have a way to transport cold items that can spoil, or must be maintained at a certain temp by the FDA. Most charities can't afford to pick up everything they need, or the proper equipment. And restaurants and markets aren't going to start buying specialized vehicles and drivers to pay to deliver the tossed out stuff to where it goes.
When Lowblaws are just about to throw away their foods, they mark it down to a dollar or so. Cooked chicken breast for 3$, brown bananas,cauliflower,tomatoes for a dollar. I just freeze them or eat it during the week. Expiration date? I just sniff the damn container.
Same thing in workplaces where food is serve. The leftovers are sometimes crazy. I can bring food home and not have to cook for days. Some have a little fridge where you can buy the food for 1$ and bring home. Better than just dumping it out.
Same thing in workplaces where food is serve. The leftovers are sometimes crazy. I can bring food home and not have to cook for days. Some have a little fridge where you can buy the food for 1$ and bring home. Better than just dumping it out.
Actually it would mean that charities could come and pick up the food at some supermarkets.
It's up to charities to be able to transport the food.
Before supermarkets would have been sued if charities came and picked up food.
Bedameister
Member
Good job France. Now it's time everybody does the same. Wasting that much food is one of the biggest issues that we should adress.
BattleMonkey
Member
In France? Odd. In the US it's common, I know several supermarket managers and they regularly have charities do food pick ups, but again they usually can only take things like breads, sweets, canned foods, etc. Anything that requires refrigeration they can't take as the charities don't have proper transportation for cold foods. They are also limited in amount they can take by available volunteer staff and size of the transportation these charities have. Supermarkets still end up having to toss out tons of stuff that could be taken.
In France that how it was, unsold food couldn't be picked up by charities.
Before that food was to be tossed and bleached so that it couldn't be picked up AT ALL.
Hexa
Member
How is this going to work exactly? What if the charities don't have the infrastructure for it for a specific store?
I've worked with a group at my college that would check unsold food to make sure it was reasonably fine and then help get the food from the diners and other food places on campus to charities, but they didn't actually have the man power to accomplish this by themselves, and sometimes when there weren't enough students working food still went into the trash. How would situations like that be handled?
Also, would this be allowed to be written off in taxes?
I've worked with a group at my college that would check unsold food to make sure it was reasonably fine and then help get the food from the diners and other food places on campus to charities, but they didn't actually have the man power to accomplish this by themselves, and sometimes when there weren't enough students working food still went into the trash. How would situations like that be handled?
Also, would this be allowed to be written off in taxes?
Good for France! I kind of laugh at the (old, and hopefully disproven by now) concept of an invisible hand controlling the economy when we hear time and time again of practices such as these to artificially remove goods from circulation, which in turn create an imbalance in the supposedly self-regulating market of offer and demand.
Well, given free market, giving away surplus production would actually increase offer while demand probably doesn't go up, resulting in lower prices. Of course that'd still have to happen on a grand scale rather than just at a couple of supermarkets at a time, but a good example of this would be when milk companies were dumping their products by the truckload on the streets, both as a sign of protest and also to artifically inflate milk prices (or keeping them from falling).
Well, given free market, giving away surplus production would actually increase offer while demand probably doesn't go up, resulting in lower prices. Of course that'd still have to happen on a grand scale rather than just at a couple of supermarkets at a time, but a good example of this would be when milk companies were dumping their products by the truckload on the streets, both as a sign of protest and also to artifically inflate milk prices (or keeping them from falling).
I work retail in Sweden and we don't throw away food at all in our store. We aren't allowed to give it to people though (or take it ourselves), but the food is sorted into organic waste for bio-gas and all dry products like bread are used to make ethanol-gas. It's something at the least.
GameAddict411
Member
This should be a law in every country.
Hoho for breakfast
Member
Good stuff. Should be this way everywhere. Vive la France!
Yeah pretty much. This should've been law for the longest time.
This is a wonderful idea, and to be honest I'm amazed something similar hasn't been implemented many years ago. The amount of food that goes to waste in the supermarket I used to work in every single day from the deli is utterly disgusting to see, and to think that that's just one single store in one tiny country. I hope many more countries adopt this soon but I doubt they actually will for a while. Good on you France, though.
lazer_bean
Member
I'm not too sure about it but I think not long ago France reduced the budget allocated to charities, including those which give food to people in need.
I guess this would be a way to even things out.
Charities' budget won't go up but maybe supplying won't cost them as much as it used to.
I don't see how it can change the number of people who need those charities to eat.
I don't have a problem with the idea but there may be an added problem not considered with making it mandatory. I used to work at a food bank and the amount of expired junk people donated was astounding. It's like they cleaned out there cupboards without any thought at all and this goes for businesses as well. We would discard as much as we could but I know things would get through from workers who don't pay attention. This may make the chances of people getting sick higher if people/businesses think they can't throw anything away. Being poor should not mean receiving substandard garbage. If there were better ways to detect this stuff, i'd be all for it.
hydragonwarrior
Member
I think charities observe if the food was expired prior to giving it to the families (otherwise I think the charity would be liable for giving them bad food). If the food is expired, even better that the food can be used as compost and moved back into the environment.
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