Grocery stores dump gallons & gallons of organic milk, dump tons of beautiful nutritious food etc about to expire. Is there a way to make a law where consumers buy at own risk, can’t sue grocer and grocer gets some incentive, tax break etc to not waste food? If we can give them an incentive & protection we might prevent the waste of tons & tons of food that was raised w lots of hard work, investment, etc and feed hungry, struggling Americans… it might be better to do the sale in place… (not transfer to another seller) to preserve food quality, safety.
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I work for a large grocery chain, and the amount of “distressed” and expired food thrown away is appalling! If not a sell, maybe a big incentive or tax break to local food banks? Maybe even get restaurants on board with food that expires before it is put in their recipes?
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Feed humans, but feed animals with this too. Compost this, etc.
End this wasteful society.
If there isn’t some kind of private service for the recycling of this food, there ought to be a municipal responsibility.
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May I ask Susanah, what you saw? I just have seen in from the sidelines…
There are so many people who have trouble affording food… I see seniors holding food they want and thinking hard if they should get it or not… I talk to people a lot. People are hurting… especially the older men I’ve talked to who worked their whole lives, served their country and can’t afford their grocery list… There has to be a way to fix all the sinful waste and let people buy it without having to go to a foodbank to save the transport cost, waste of fuel to move it
Hi, Eamon! yes, I wish we would… all you list… gotta say though, I wouldn’t want genetically modified food, pesticide heavy products being put through reuse as much… I wish we could stop/curtail intro of those questionable for health “food” products into cycle until we know how it might effect humans, animals and soil… Truly wouldn’t want too much government involvement to recycle, even city government… that’s why I was thinking if it could just go direct to consumer/farmers… less fuel to transport those products, need to keep refrigerated, lost time when they need to be moved… am surprised food waste is still happening on such a grand scale
Food quality is indeed a problem nutritionally and medically speaking. If we switched to banning pesticides altogether that would be fine by me.
These solutions need to be multi-disciplinary in the sense that they must look at every road-block in the pipeline and innovate a custom plan and new design/new function that makes the old pipeline seem redundant.
Good luck!
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I was thinking the same thing. The same thing with physical goods too, like Home goods, dollar tree, Michael’s, target,…etc etc. They destroy the items before throwing them in the garbage…why???
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Sarah, I didn’t know they do that… wow, thanks, just does not make sense…at all… maybe they get a tax write off for losses?.. you’d think we could rewrite it so they still get enough benefit, are legally not responsible for product if imperfect, etc. … but everyone else benefits too by reusing/recycling and not having product go straight to landfills…
Good Samaritan Act is in place but only distributes to Not for Profit Organizations in regard to food. Remove restrictions from Good Samaritan Act so that food industry retailers can give food away for free without being penalized.
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This could be expanded to animal food as well. Stores who load their dumpsters with animal food/feed because it’s about to expire or the manufacturer just changed the packaging, could be incentivized to donate the items instead to local shelters/ rescues/ animal sanctuaries , communities etc with a bigger tax break of some sort. Keeping millions of tons of unnecessary trash out of landfills.
We need to stop giving tax incentives for throwing useable items like these away…. Companies are destroying and/or throwing out products on purpose to be able to write them off as a total loss, versus donating because it makes their bottom line more attractive.
Penalties could help curb these wasteful practices, but you catch more flies with honey so if the items are useable and they need them off their shelves, encourage them to do the right thing and donate the items and propose a more attractive percentage back in tax breaks than is currently used for donations.
If we had an environment section , this could extend to all companies , for a lot of products other than foods… there are plenty of people in shelters or who are just struggling and in need in our country that could use the blankets , clothes , shoes and food these stores throw away.
Only useable or still edible items, no recalled items. Foods past their ‘best by’ date, depending on type could still be used with personal discretion or for livestock feed.