I'm French and I think this law came into vigeur in 2016. Instead of throwing food away, the supermarkets reduce prices when the sell by date is close which is great. Sometimes up to 90% reductions. The unsold produce is given to food banks or the shop is fined. It's a fantastic initiative.
Trader Joe’s has been doing that, we donate to women’s shelters, rehabs, and soup kitchens. Not just food but like flowers and candy as well. It’s pretty nice actually.
Working in a Utah store (US) we have tons of food go bad. Sometimes certain companies will take it back and give the store credit for it and so they won't reduce the price or anything. Other times they'll reduce it and sell it. The sad thing is that in Utah at least, there are strict regulations for donations, one instance that I always think of is when Cheerios (a cereal) accidentally marked a ton of boxes as gluten free when the weren't. In order to give stores their money back, Cheerios just wanted the boxes back to verify the amount and base the refund off of that. Well because the pack of cereal no longer had sufficient labelling they had to be thrown away as a shelter wouldn't accept them. Things like that or how we couldn't donate items from our bakery/deli for insufficient packaging. I saw tons of food thrown away because shelters won't take it or also the stores don't want to risk lawsuits on donations that were not legally labeled/packaged enough.
Wouldn't this just make food less valuable and make the supermarket lose money in the long run? I'm all for charity, but they'd have to be incredibly careful doing this wouldn't they?
How so? I think it might force them to order less food so they don't have so much waste, but I don't know how much wasted food a French supermarket usually has.
I doubt this would affect their produce orders as they are going to be losing the same amount of stock either way and would have the same amount of waste. I'd just think that giving away food in large quantities for long enough would mean that people would be less likely to buy goods as they know they can receive it for free, therefore food prices would drop as they are less in demand and supermarkets would have a drop in sales.
I doubt that would be the case. Community food shelfs often have a limit on how much a person, or family, can take, and the wait is usually massive. In this case, I imagine shopping at a grocery store would appeal to the convenience and cleanliness of the store, rather than the low or no-cost food shelf.
People can already receive food for free at the food banks. But that doesn't mean that most people opt to take from the food bank rather than buy their own food. Just means that low income people will have more variety and hopefully more food.
How much waste good French have!?
Do you know howHough waste food Japan have!? 4× the food to that's donated to 3rd world countries every year
Developed countries need to stop wasting resources like food and water
Won't work in America we have to much food already so we pay farmers not to grow crops. All that would happen her is the local farmers pigs will eat better. Stores aren't going to mess with some thing that loses them money. And its not a private citizens responsibility to feed the homeless that's what food stamps are for.
Do you know howHough waste food Japan have!? 4× the food to that's donated to 3rd world countries every year
Developed countries need to stop wasting resources like food and water