Parliament has definitively adopted a law against food waste. It prevents supermarkets from throwing away food and making unsold items unfit.
“Our fight against food waste officially becomes a law of the French Republic! Thank you “. This is the tweet posted yesterday by the elected municipal official of Courbevoie (Hauts-de-Seine), Arash Derambarsh (LR), who has become in a few months the national figure in this fight against supermarkets.
Parliament has indeed definitively adopted on Wednesday a series of measures to fight against food waste, the Senate having unanimously voted a bill to this effect, after the National Assembly. The bill includes provisions intended to prevent supermarkets from throwing away food and making their unsold items unfit for consumption. These provisions were added in May to the law on energy transition, but the Constitutional Council then censored them for procedural reasons. The new bill was brought to the Assembly by the deputy of Mayenne Guillaume Garot (PS).
Concretely, it is now forbidden for large and medium-sized surfaces of more than 400 m² to throw away unsold food that is still edible. In the year following its promulgation, the law also requires businesses to sign an agreement with one or more associations “specifying the terms according to which foodstuffs are transferred to them free of charge”. Distributors are also prohibited from “deliberately making their unsold food which is still edible unfit for consumption”, for example by bleaching them, under penalty of a fine of 3,750 euros with “posting or dissemination of the decision”.
Kilos of food wasted every day
To justify this fight, Arash Derambarsh has tirelessly recalled in recent months that “on the one hand, we have a middle class that has more and more economic problems. Indeed, from the 10th of each month, millions of French people are under water after having paid their rent and their charges. In addition, there are more and more homeless people on our streets. On the other hand, every supermarket wastes more than 20 kg of food every day. This is unthinkable with the current economic crisis! “, He lamented on many TV shows.
The fight against food waste will now be part of food education during schooling. And companies will be able to include their anti-waste actions in their “Social and Environmental Responsibility” (CSR) report. But in this everyday fight, many French people are already convinced. A petition on change.org to say “stop food waste”, initiated by Arash Derambarsh, had collected in France more than 200,000 signatures.
Food waste: the law passed, supermarkets will be able to feed less bins https://t.co/GOMase8ZZj pic.twitter.com/ZjiZT5AYlf
– Pourquoidocteur (@Pourquoidocteur) February 4, 2016
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