Anti-food wastage action garners attention in EU

Earlier this month, MEPs voted 600 to 48 to bring forward laws to end unfair trading practices by supermarkets, many of which lead to overproduction and food being wasted.

In a separate report by the parliament’s environment committee, binding laws to halve food waste across the continent by 2030 were also demanded after the European commission did away with food waste targets from a draft law last year.

“While 800 million people in the world go hungry every day, nearly 100 million tonnes of Europe’s food is wasted each year. This is a paradox of our time that is no longer bearable. At last, we have the opportunity to structure our legislation to prevent food waste in the EU,” Simona Bonafe, the report’s author, speaking to the Guardian.

Reportedly, the EU currently has no legally binding food waste targets but Slovakia’s environment minister Norbert Kurilla was adamant that they were needed.

“The sooner we start to have ambitious targets for food waste the better,” he told the Guardian.

Campaigners say that a third of the world’s food is lost between the farm and the plate, at an economic cost of $940 billion (€851 billion) a year.

“There is definitely a rising momentum for legislation on the food waste issue. Voluntary measures will not bring any change. They are ice breakers for mind-sets but for real change, we need a proper obligation,” the European Environmental Bureau spokesman Piotr Barczak said.

Earlier this year, France became the first country to ban supermarkets from throwing away unsold food, punishing them with fines of up to €75,000 if they refused to donate it to food banks or charities instead.

The law was the result of a grassroots campaign led by the French councillor Arash Drambarsh, who is now close to obtaining 1m signatures for a petition calling on the commission to extend the ban across Europe.

“This law authorises immediate food distribution,” he said. “Before, you could keep it in the freezer. Now you can stand in front of the supermarket before it closes the door and take it to poor people. More than 300 associations have done that since the law was passed.”