Apparently in France it is. Is there any other country that has this type of law implemented? Mandatory donations or something of the sort?
Apparently in France it is. Is there any other country that has this type of law implemented? Mandatory donations or something of the sort?
That would be great, here they use trash compactors to destroy the food to prevent hungry people from going through the trash and filling their bellies.
EDIT: Whole Foods in particular does this, and I think I’ve seen Walmart doing it as well. Also, I worked at a grocery store where I was instructed to destroy the food when I threw it into the dumpsters to prevent people from being able to eat it, though they were too cheap to actually buy and operate a trash compactor.
Where is “here”?
The southeastern U.S.
I hadn’t heard of that. I do know the US passed a law allowing restaurants to donate unused food at the end of the day without fear of lawsuits.
https://www.usda.gov/media/blog/2020/08/13/good-samaritan-act-provides-liability-protection-food-donations
Also there’s a new app where restaurants can sell food at the end of the day at a discount rather than throwing it away called “too good to go”.
I’m lucky to live in a southern city where we have citywide composting as well. I wish more places would do that. It’s a waste to simply landfill food scraps when you could funnel it all to the farming industry as fertilizer.
That’s great (re the citywide composting)! Companies cite fear of a lawsuit as an excuse not to donate food. Of course the reality is that they’re just protecting profits, no one has ever been sued from donating food as far as I know, and as you mention there is a law specifically prohibiting doing so.
I’ve heard of many places where it’s illegal to give food out to people.
Where I live there is no composting, the city barely recycles even.
Years ago, I worked sales at an Apple Store (like 2005) and we were instructed to destroy marketing materials when they were retired. I would mark them up with a large black marker. I didn’t consider that problematic, but I don’t like the idea of food being destroyed.
yeah, destroying marketing materials seems reasonable; destroying food because you know hungry people will eat it is evil.
Well for me it’s simple, I’ve worked places where we had to destroy food and I just didn’t. I’m lucky enough that it’s always been pretty easy to find another food service job, and I’ve told any managers that I think food waste is the only true sin, and I’m willing to lose my job over it. I know not everyone can afford to walk away from a job, but all of my managers(in two countries) have thus far found a way to look the other way. Your middle manager almost certainly doesn’t want food to be wasted either, so if you tell them it’s a moral issue, that gives them plausible deniability for not destroying it.