What if the fight against waste prevents us from questioning the overproduction of food ?

Today, the avai­lable food pro­duc­tion of France and the Uni­ted States amounts to more than 3,500 calo­ries per day per per­son – whe­reas needs are esti­ma­ted at around 2,000–2,500 calo­ries. But these figures are rare­ly quo­ted by those who fight against waste, whe­ther they are indus­tria­lists, asso­cia­tions, or politicians.

Marie Mou­rad stu­died the sub­ject in France and the Uni­ted States, and in her the­sis high­ligh­ted this poten­tial­ly nega­tive effect of poli­cies to reduce loss and waste. “In both coun­tries, large-scale dis­tri­bu­tion and food indus­try firms, in conjunc­tion with the Minis­try of Agri­cul­ture in France and envi­ron­men­tal asso­cia­tions in the Uni­ted States, have pro­du­ced esti­mates focu­sing on the per­cen­tages of pro­ducts thrown away, sec­tor by sec­tor, without ques­tio­ning either the quan­ti­ties pro­du­ced, or the nature of the food concer­ned. They thus pro­mote a defi­ni­tion of waste as a pro­blem of opti­mi­sing exis­ting pro­duc­tion, dis­tri­bu­tion, and consump­tion, and favour the use of exis­ting sur­pluses rather than their reduc­tion at the source.”

As she shows, during the 2010s, com­pe­ti­tion deve­lo­ped bet­ween the dif­ferent uses of sur­plus food. See­king to use unsold food pro­ducts, com­pa­nies are streng­the­ning the chan­nels for dona­ting consu­mable food to food aid asso­cia­tions, gene­ra­ting finan­cial rewards (usual­ly tax incen­tives) for donors.

Some sus­tai­na­bi­li­ty mana­gers of food com­pa­nies are also set­ting up recy­cling and sales of non-consu­mable mate­rials, in part­ner­ship with waste treat­ment com­pa­nies. Foun­ders of start-ups and asso­cia­tions are sei­zing the oppor­tu­ni­ty of these deve­lop­ments to deve­lop inter­me­dia­ry acti­vi­ties that streng­then exis­ting chan­nels and create new chan­nels for pro­ces­sing and real­lo­ca­ting sur­pluses. “These deve­lop­ments reveal a mecha­nism that could be des­cri­bed as the re-mar­ke­ting of sur­pluses,” empha­sises Marie Mou­rad. Their new mar­ket value is part­ly based, para­doxi­cal­ly, on their de-mar­ke­ted (not sold) or non-mar­ke­ted (not inten­ded to be sold) character.

Ano­ther per­verse effect of the fight against waste as it is cur­rent­ly orga­ni­sed is that tax deduc­tions are most often cal­cu­la­ted accor­ding to the weight of dona­ted food, which encou­rages people to favour quan­ti­ty over qua­li­ty. For example, in the Uni­ted States, but also in France, soda cans are trea­ted as food : dona­ting them is pro­fi­table for com­pa­nies, even though it is harm­ful to the bene­fi­cia­ry popu­la­tions, which are alrea­dy suf­fe­ring from mal­nu­tri­tion, over­weight or obesity… 

On the other hand, no mea­sures are being taken to curb retai­lers’ ever more temp­ting offers of pro­mo­tions that encou­rage consump­tion, on shelves that are gene­ral­ly much more visible and bet­ter pre­sen­ted than those where goods that are almost out of date are sto­cked and the­re­fore offe­red at a lower cost. 

Ano­ther pro­blem in the fight against waste is the need – and the dif­fi­cul­ty – of acting on seve­ral fac­tors and/or actors at the same time. Bar­ba­ra Red­ling­shö­fer, a resear­cher at INRAE, has just com­ple­ted a the­sis on food loss and waste in cities and has stu­died public poli­cies aimed at redu­cing food waste in the Paris region. She found that there are many public poli­cies that offer levers for action, such as awa­re­ness-rai­sing cam­pai­gns, tax incen­tives for food dona­tions, and the sor­ting of bio-waste and its com­pos­ting or methanisation.

These cam­pai­gns are part of poli­cies rela­ted to food, waste, or ener­gy, at various admi­nis­tra­tive levels. But they are not very well coor­di­na­ted. For example, a “com­post plan” is not coor­di­na­ted with actions to com­bat waste and may even impli­cit­ly legi­ti­mise thro­wing away food by asso­cia­ting com­pos­ting with a posi­tive gesture.

Most food waste is cur­rent­ly trea­ted by inci­ne­ra­tion, thanks to an effi­cient col­lec­tion and treat­ment sec­tor that needs to be fed… with waste ! Although the legis­la­tive fra­me­work pro­vides for the expan­sion of food waste col­lec­tion and recy­cling, we are far from achie­ving the objec­tives. “We need to arti­cu­late and create syner­gies bet­ween these dif­ferent poli­cies ins­tead of mana­ging them in silos,” empha­sises Bar­ba­ra Red­ling­shö­fer. “Other­wise, there is rea­son to fear that they will remain ineffective.”

The Ter­ri­to­rial Food Pro­jects (TFPs), which aim to relo­cate agri­cul­ture and food in the ter­ri­to­ries, should the­re­fore take account of this type of inter­ac­tion from the outset.

Fur­ther­more, she empha­sises the extent to which indi­vi­dual beha­viour towards waste is diverse and com­plex and needs to be ana­ly­sed at the level of hou­se­holds and their acti­vi­ties, and the­re­fore beyond indi­vi­duals. “There are of course indi­vi­dual sen­si­ti­vi­ties that are more or less recep­tive to this issue. But depen­ding on the com­po­si­tion of the hou­se­hold, the occu­pa­tion, the hob­bies, the sup­ply of shops in the neigh­bou­rhood, prac­tices can differ.”

For example, contra­ry to popu­lar belief, a large fami­ly wastes less per per­son than a couple without chil­dren, because they have more oppor­tu­ni­ties to offer cooked lef­to­vers. Ano­ther example is that, depen­ding on whe­ther people have time to go shop­ping during the day or not, they may fill their fridge as clo­se­ly as pos­sible to their needs, or on the contra­ry, they may stock up, some of which may end up in the bin. It will be impor­tant to ana­lyse how the deve­lop­ment of tele­wor­king will affect waste.

It can be assu­med that it is easier for a per­son who works from home to do the dai­ly shop­ping than for someone who has an hour’s com­mute to the office. Also, aspi­ra­tions to eat “heal­thi­ly” may conflict with wan­ting to waste less, as eating “heal­thi­ly” is often asso­cia­ted with eating pro­duce, par­ti­cu­lar­ly fruit and vege­tables, as fresh as possible.

“This field of research on hou­se­hold food prac­tices and their deter­mi­nants is recent, but when we see the mul­ti­pli­ci­ty of inter­ac­ting fac­tors, we alrea­dy know that we will have to find dif­ferent levers of action, and not think in silos as we tend to do today, tar­ge­ting each cate­go­ry – consu­mers, dis­tri­bu­tors, pro­du­cers – sepa­ra­te­ly,” concludes Bar­ba­ra Redlingshöfer.

“There is some good news, howe­ver : awa­re­ness of waste is gro­wing and the mobi­li­sa­tion for ‘ugly’ pro­ducts, for example, is bea­ring fruit,” empha­sises Marie Mourad.

On the issue of use-by dates, Too Good to Go has made real pro­gress by having 62 com­pa­nies sign a pact to reduce food waste due to use-by dates. Thus, 3,000 pro­duct ranges raise consu­mer awa­re­ness of the Mini­mum Dura­bi­li­ty Dates (MDD) with “Observe, smell, taste” pic­to­grams to encou­rage them to use their senses, and more than 600 anti-waste shelves have been deployed to sell pro­ducts with a close or excee­ded MDD. Proof that it is pos­sible to get around cer­tain regu­la­to­ry obstacles.

Final­ly, some advice given to hou­se­holds, if fol­lo­wed, has pro­ven effec­tive : such as making shop­ping lists before going to the shop avoids impulse buying, mea­su­ring out the quan­ti­ties to be cooked accor­ding to needs and lear­ning to cook with lef­to­vers pre­vents the bins from filling up too qui­ck­ly. One example is that of Great Bri­tain, which car­ried out real work in the field, mobi­li­sing local players as close as pos­sible to fami­lies, orga­ni­sing cooking work­shops and trai­ning to streng­then their abi­li­ty to manage their food better.

In France, asso­cia­tions such as Familles rurales car­ry out equi­va­lent actions throu­ghout the coun­try, as close as pos­sible to the households.