Last summer, French supermarket chain Intermarché started selling aesthetically undesirable fruits and vegetables at a 30 per cent discount to help curb food waste and let people know that these outcast plants were in fact just as edible and nutritious as their flawless kin.
Today, France enacted another nationwide measure to help reach the country’s goal of cutting food waste in half by 2025.
Big supermarkets will no longer be allowed to destroy unsold food and are encouraged to donate all unspoiled excess to charities or farms instead.
The French parliament sees food waste across the country as an epidemic and is set to hand out fines of over $100,000 and potential jail time for merchants who are non-compliant with the law.
With the average French person throwing out between 20-30kg of food annually, food waste racks up a national cost of up to $30 billion each year.
We’d hate to see what these numbers look like in North America…
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