it's food, not profit

So, what is this planet for? What is its purpose?
Does everything we see exist so that somebody
can make profit from it?

If we agree to work for rich people or institutions
in exchange for pieces of shiny paper, or coins,
we then should be able to thrive and help others
to thrive as well. This is especially true of the
purveyors of the food that we eat, the supermarkets.

In Canada, there has been a law for decades that
allows soup kitchens to pick up restaurant leftovers
and use them to feed the poor. However, supermarkets
that are now international behemoths that stash their
profits in the Caymans, are not proper community
members. I've written of the giant sucking sound
when supermarkets in the UK take our money
and send it to London, on its way to the Carib.

Well, at least, these rapacious institutions that
deal in our basic necessities should give their
old food to the poor. Well, we have stories
here in the UK where dumpster divers were
charged with break and enter, where Tesco
locks its dumpsters so that people cannot
access the perfectly edible garbage that
their central planning committee forces them
to throw away, lest the name Tesco be
besmirched.

Anyway, here is a story of a literal nobody
who had some ideas and got elected. Here
is what he did to improve the law in France
forcing stores to surrender their surplus food.

checkit:  Guardian
Man who forced French supermarkets to donate food wants to take law global

Arash Derambarsh, a local councillor who kickstarted fight against food waste in his Paris suburb, wants to convince more countries to follow France’s example
People shop in a supermarket in southern France.
People shop in a supermarket in southern France. Photograph: Rremy Gabalda/AFP/Getty Images
Kim Willsher in Paris
Monday 25 May 2015 13.42 BST
Last modified on Tuesday 26 May 2015 00.40 BST

Arash Derambarsh said it was “scandalous and absurd” that food is wasted and in some cases deliberately spoiled while the homeless, poor and unemployed go hungry.

Derambarsh – a municipal councillor for the “Divers Droit” (diverse right) in Courbevoie, north-west of Paris – persuaded French MPs to adopt the regulation after a petition gained more than 200,000 signatures and celebrity support in just four months.

The amendment was approved as part of a wider law – the Loi Macron – that covers economic activity and equality in France and is expected to be passed by the national assembly on Tuesday, entering the statute books shortly afterwards.

It will bar supermarkets from throwing away food approaching best-before dates and deliberately poisoning products with bleach to stop them being retrieved by people foraging through bins.

Now Derambarsh wants to convince European countries and the wider world to adopt similar bans. “Food is the basis of life, it is an elementary factor in our existence,” he told the Guardian.
Arash Derambarsh with food collection
Arash Derambarsh began his drive to fight food waste and food poverty in Courbevoie. Photograph: Bertrand Guay/AFP

“I have been insulted and attacked and accused of being naive and idealistic, but I became a local councillor because I wanted to help people. Perhaps it is naive to be concerned about other human beings, but I know what it is like to be hungry.

“When I was a law student living on about €400 a month after I’d paid my rent, I used to have one proper meal a day around 5pm. I’d eat pasta, or potatoes, but it’s hard to study or work if you are hungry and always thinking about where the next meal will come from.”
France to force big supermarkets to give unsold food to charities
Read more

Derambarsh started his campaign by collecting and distributing unwanted food from his local supermarket. “Every day we’d help around 100 people. Half would be single mothers with several children, pensioners or public workers on low salaries, the other half would be those living on the streets or in shelters,” he said.
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Derambarsh is planning to table the issue – via the campaign group ONE, founded by U2 singer Bono – when the United Nations discusses its Millennium development goals to end poverty in September as well as at the G20 economic summit in Turkey in November and the COP21 environment conference in Paris in December.

An estimated 7.1m tonnes of food is binned in France each year – 67% of it by consumers, 15% by restaurants and 11% by shops. The figure for food waste across the EU is 89mtonnes while an estimated 1.3bn tonnes are wasted worldwide.