France Outlaws Supermarket Waste

[liuzhou]

France has passed laws making it illegal for large supermarkets to dump edible food.

 

Report here.

Edited May 22, 2015 by liuzhou (log)

[LindaK]

Last year, Massachusetts adopted a similar law that bans the disposal of commercial organic wastes by businesses and institutions that dispose of one ton or more of these materials per week. That includes not only supermarkets but organizations with large catering operations, like universities and hospitals. It has to be reused or composted, it's not allowed in landfills.

 

By chance, the Boston Globe had an article this morning about one interesting result of this policy: a non-profit grocery store that is opening in a low-income neighborhood that has poor access to grocery stores.  The founder is the former president of Trader Joe's.

 

Nonprofit grocery store set to open in Dorchester

 

 

edited to correct typo

Edited May 22, 2015 by LindaK (log)

[rotuts]

good for them !

[Edward J]

I spend a good deal of my time deliveing to various grocery store chains, and see what goes in and out. 

 

All the stores have a policy of giving away scratch & dent canned goods to various charities, most have a policy of giving away overripe fruit and veg to soup kitchens, dairies will take back product with expired dates, and I don't know about meat. 

 

The one thing that left me scratching my head was at one store I delivered to and saw a big tub full of bagged items--ju-jubes, candies, nuts, etc.  These were bagged by customers at the self-serve bins and were found lying about in various parts of the store.  I was chatting up the reciever, and he told me that by law they had to dump these directly in the garbage--they could not guarantee that the items were not contaminated, and that this was an ongoing issue between them and the health inspector.

[rotuts]

very interesting  makes a certain sort of sense   this day and age  

 

even if its wasteful  

[Deryn]

What I hate is when stores try to sell the 'well past their prime' (sometimes inedible - for instance, green sprouting potatoes, or herbs that are going yellow and are wilted to the point they cannot be revived, or meat that has been relabelled so it appears the expiry date is still days away, or meat that has been 'marinated' to hide that it is already expired) products to me, at full price (or even a higher price in the case of the marinated meats) because they lose too much 'profit' by giving it away or dumping it in the garbage or compost.

 

Where ever it is dumped, no 'dumping' solution solves the problem I just described. I would much rather see stores learn how to better manage their inventories and storage methods than have to continue dumping much at all or worse yet, as mentioned, trying to unload it on me for a price.

 

While I also prefer that stores, when they must 'dump', ensure that the food goes to compost rather than to just the regular garbage, I am equally sure that costs for the paying consumer will rise with each new regulation and we will then pay again if we want the resulting compost for our own gardens. And I have no doubt that if 'edible food' is donated to charity (which is also a good thing, don't get me wrong) that the store takes a tax deduction somehow and yet we also pay for that donated food in some manner when we buy our full price produce/meats. Conundrums of modern life.

Edited May 23, 2015 by Deryn (log)