France Now Requires Supermarkets to Donate Unsold Food to Charity.

Why doesn't the United States follow suit?

Throughout college, I patched together an assortment of jobs to help cover my living costs and other school-related expenses [see also: the exorbitant cost of college textbooks]. Although my primary job was working as a peer writing consultant, I picked up additional shifts just about everywhere: mopping dining hall floors, refilling the all-you-can-eat buffet in another dining hall (not a small task, given that it was the dining hall closest to the student athlete dorm), catering for weddings, working the cash register at an on-campus market, and giving campus tours to perspective students and their families.

But my very first job on campus — a cook for a restaurant named Panache — provided my first real-world glimpse into a rather unsettling reality: food waste in America.

Every Friday at the conclusion of the dinner shift, we were instructed to discard whatever food remained. Full loaves of bread, slabs of deli meats and cheeses, an array of fresh fruits and vegetables, and sheets of brownies were all marched over to the nearest waste bin and promptly thrown away.

Each trip to the trash delivered its own punch to the stomach: I felt waves of guilt over the abundance of perfectly edible food going to waste. I pacified my conflicted conscience by sneaking the occasional loaf of bread or box full of brownies back to my dorm to share with friends. After all, it would have just ended up in the trash.

Without a doubt, there were others in town that would have benefited more from our excess. But I felt as though my hands were tied: I once inquired about the possibility of donating the food to a local food pantry — volunteering to transport the food myself — but was left with little more than the impression that there were too many hurdles to clear, rendering any such effort nearly impossible.

So, at the end of every Friday shift that semester, I took my marching orders and dumped tray after tray of perfectly edible, nutritious food into the garbage.

Food waste in America: A $165 billion problem

Every year, Americans throw away an estimated $165 billion of food — or up to 35 million tons. That’s a jarring amount of waste, especially considering that more than 1 in 7 Americans — or more than 48.1 million people — lived in food insecure households in 2014. And 15.3 million of these individuals were children.

According to a 2012 report by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), cutting down food losses by just 15 percent would provide enough food to feed more than 25 million Americans annually. And yet, Americans are throwing away more food than ever before.

Food waste takes place in many contexts: in our homes, nearby farms, restaurants, supermarkets, and grocery stores. According to the NRDC:

• American families toss one-quarter of the food and beverages they purchase, costing the average family of four anywhere between $1,365 to $2,275 each year. For context, the cost of feeding a family of four in 2013 was roughly $146 to $289 a week.
• Households and food service operations — which include restaurants, fast food chains, caterers, etc. — lost an estimated 86 billion pounds of food in 2008.
• That same year, in-store food losses in the U.S. totaled an estimated 43 billion pounds.
• Each year, approximately 7 percent of produce planted in America is not harvested. Some of the items are left behind simply because they fail to meet standards for shape, size, and color — in other words, an ugly potato was simply too ugly to sell.

With so much waste taking place in America, can more be done to address food waste and ensure that quality food reaches those who need it most?

The French certainly think so — and they’ve starting by combating food waste in supermarkets.

Bon appétit: France takes a major step toward combating food waste

Last week, France became the first country ever to ban supermarkets from tossing or destroying unsold food. (One common practice among French stores was to douse discarded food in bleach, allegedly a safety measure to prevent food poisoning among those collecting food from garbage bins. But as George Dvorsky wrote in Gizmodo, it’s more likely that the food was spoiled with bleach to dissuade people from foraging the discarded food entirely.) Instead, France’s new law directs supermarkets that are larger than 400 square meters to donate unsold food to charities and food banks. As Angelique Chrisafis reported in The Guardian, the law — which received a unanimous vote in the French Senate — will allow charities to hand out millions more free meals to those in need each year.

So why doesn't the United States follow suit?

Last summer, John Oliver took to Last Week Tonight to deliver the perfect take down of food waste in America, detailing the many economic, environmental, and social consequences of our food waste problem. Importantly, Oliver debunks some of the most common myths preventing many from donating excess food, including that donors can be held liable if, say, someone became ill after consuming donated food. (As it turns out, donors are protected under the Bill Emerson Good Samaritan Food Act.)

But Oliver also shed light on one critical factor that prevents many businesses and farmers from donating unsold food: cost. Jon Levine succinctly summarized the problem in Mic last week:

Despite the enormous cost of food waste (both in those who go hungry and the effects it has on the environment) throwing away food is easier and cheaper than the effort required to donate. So while it may seem cruel to let food spoil rather than donating it, letting it spoil is ultimately better for a store’s bottom line.

So it stands to reason that, given the composition of today’s Congress — which so vehemently opposes any semblance of government attempting to regulate business, regardless of any associated social benefit—federal policymakers are likely to reject a law similar to the one recently passed in France. But what if, instead of requiring supermarkets and grocery stores to donate unsold food items, we instead provided them an incentive to do so? Would that be a more palatable alternative?

As Oliver discusses in his Last Week Tonight segment, such incentives already exist in the form of tax breaks — but with a debilitating caveat:

Large corporations already get one. But annoyingly, that same break for small businesses is not a permanent part of the tax code, meaning that Congress has to keep renewing it. And that’s a problem, because family farms or local restaurants may not know if they are going to get that break at the end of the year and therefore whether donating foods will be financially viable for them. It’s a ridiculous system which probably prevents a lot of food from being donated.

There is no silver bullet to eliminate America’s food waste problem, and addressing the problem will require individuals, farmers, and businesses to become more cognizant of wasteful practices and to take proactive steps to help reduce their own waste on a local level. But ensuring that excess food reaches those who are struggling with hunger — rather than needlessly sending it off to landfills — will also require measures that make donating food financially feasible for those who want to donate but simply cannot afford to do so.