i've been seeing my friends share a link to
this article and others like it. it's about a guy who forced French supermarkets to donate food waste to charity by law. fair enough, you might say: but i see a number of problems with this approach
but first, some background. supermarkets routinely over-order, because heaven forbid that they might run out of Cameron's Fairtrade Sundried Tomato Soup with Free Range Guinea Pig Thighs so the customer has to choose something different. they can do this mainly because they screw their suppliers, who generally speaking are the ones who pay for all their BOGOF promotions and the like. read Joanna Blythman's book "
Shopped: The Shocking Power of British Supermarkets" for an in-depth expose of how suppliers get screwed, and more
this leads inevitably to some items passing their 'sell-by', or 'best before', or 'use before' date, or whatever they might call it. and as you probably know, they throw this food out in bins that are almost always locked and behind high railings. most of them also actively destroy the food so as to stop '
freegans' taking it
[btw: there's also a large amount of 'upstream' waste in the supply system, before it even reaches the supermarket, but that's another question]
anyone can see just how plain wrong that is. it's reminiscent of what John Steinbeck described in
this passage of The Grapes of Wrath:
"The people came for miles to take the fruit, but this could not be. How would they buy oranges at twenty cents a dozen if they could drive out and pick them up? And men with hoses squirt kerosene on the oranges, and they are angry at the crime, angry at the people who have come to take the fruit. A million people hungry, needing the fruit—and kerosene sprayed over the golden mountains."
so the kind and thoughtful Arash Derambarsh got his idea on to the French statute books, and fair play to him - it's a well-meant gesture and i'm sure he's a really great bloke
however: the dynamic it introduces isn't very good, if you look at the bigger picture. here's why
- the overall objective should be to stop wasting food at all stages of the production, delivery and consumption process. some food waste is inevitable, such as carrots mashed by the harvester, dead chickens, sick pigs and half-rotten potatoes, but making edible food waste of this type part of a system of relief for poor people embeds the waste into the system, introducing a counter-incentive to eliminating avoidable waste altogether
- the nutritional quality of this out-of-date food is necessarily poorer than fresh food. clever technologists may be able to disguise many of the effects of ageing on food, but the nutrients deplete quickly. why should poor people have sub-standard food? it's conceivable that some people would be forced to rely on this sub-standard food - and it's a fact that poor people's eating habits, for various reasons, are known to be the cause of health problems. everyone has a right to proper nutrition but this adds a dynamic that means some of the poorest and most vulnerable, who probably are in need of decent nutrition more than so many others, will be eating what the rest of us consider inedible. there's a reason for those sell-by dates, remember
- he's stopped supermarkets from destroying the thrown-away food with bleach, and made them give it to charities instead. personally, i think charities are a Very Good Thing: when they're small, and local, they can respond flexibly to changing local needs. however - and here i must admit that i don't know much about how French charities operate - supermarkets usually prefer to deal with a few big entities rather than small, local ones, and many of those charities (in the UK, at least) appear to be businesses in all but name, with their own interests. in fact, many businesses set up charities as part of a combined PR/Branding and Corporate Social Responsibility drive, and they don't always do it out of the kindness of their hearts, as the subtext of
this article implies. i'm sure you can see that the interests of a large charity, on which many people depend for their jobs, means that it will in one way or another ensure its own existence. what would these charities do if there was no food waste? surely we want to stop wasting food, not making it a necessary part of someone's business model? i think it would be better if people could simply take the food that would otherwise be thrown out. it cuts the charity and the perverse incentive it introduces out of the loop altogether
- this is nothing but a sticking plaster on a much bigger sore: the one of inequality. you can be sure that the PR departments will be busy so people forget the real issue, which is people not having enough to eat. many people might just come to accept poverty as 'just one of those things' and the corporate PR will no doubt dish up messages which salve the conscience of those who can see the problems but don't do anything: the fact is that food banks and people relying on charity in some of the richest countries in the world is a crime of neglect. a Danish writer once described Denmark as "a country where few have too much, but fewer too little". i wish you could say the same about the UK
so, dear Arash Derambarsh: i'm sure you, and the others who have been inspired by your actions, have the very best intentions - i just don't think that the road you've chosen leads to where we need to go
<shameless plug>btw: i work here. our total food waste amounts to about a carrier bag full for every 200 customers</shameless plug>
