France has made it illegal for supermarkets to waste food, and Italy is offering tax breaks when businesses donate leftovers. Some U.S. states are tackling waste. In the past two years Massachusetts and California banned businesses from wasting food.
Internationally, the UN has made cutting food waste one of its sustainable development goals, adopted by world leaders and signed onto in 2015. The goal is to cut retail and consumer food waste in half by 2030. A policy that addresses food waste is so far lacking in Canada. Although activists, charitable groups and entrepreneurs have rolled out initiatives designed to help. The federal government says that food waste is part of the food policy that they will be updating within the next year or two. Agriculture Minister Lawrence MacAulay told CBC News this week:
“In 2017, we will be open to discussions in public right across the country. Anybody involved — nutritionists, food groups, retailers, perhaps seniors homes, whatever — anybody that can add to the policy is [who] we want to hear from.”
See A $31B problem: how Canada sucks at reducing food waste:
In Canada, $31 billion worth of food ends up in landfills or composters each year, according to a 2014 report from Value Chain Management International.
It’s part of a global problem where 1.3 billion tonnes of food gets thrown out each year, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. Yet 850,000 Canadians use food banks every month.
CBC Marketplace spent six months investigating the food thrown out by supermarkets. Marketplace staff found dozens of bins full of food behind two Toronto-area Walmart locations. See: Walmart vows change amid concerns over food waste.
Here is a direct video link.
This type of systemic waste and inefficiency must be changed through new tax incentives that encourage sustainable, smart food behaviors and discourage wasteful, destructive ones. In a world of finite resources, and an epidemic of ill health and reduced productivity born of bad diets, we can’t afford these dumb, health-destructive models to continue.
Forty-seven per cent of food waste is happening in the home. Individuals must take back responsibility and care to manage the food they prepare and consume. Little is more important for the health of our families. Just on a pure cash flow management basis, consumers that are under-saved and carrying the highest household debt levels in history, can’t afford to waste half of their food budget or destroy their health through poor choices.
;
