FUSIONS Newsletter August 2015

Newsletter 29 March 2024

The French Constitutional Council scraps food donation law

Last July, the French National Assembly adopted legislation obliging supermarkets that have a surface area of at least 400m² to donate edible and unsold food to relevant charitable organisations. The legislation also called upon retailers to sign contractual agreements with selected charitable organisations by 1 July 2016  to avoid sanctions, and furthermore forbade them from purposely rendering food surplus inedible (e.g. by pouring bleach on food within waste bins). Earlier this week, the Constitutional Council scraped the law due to infringement of French Constitution rules. 

The aforementioned provisions were voted in May 2015 as amendments within the French "Energy transition for green growth” legislation which addressed various other topics including provisions on renewables, CO2 reduction, and energy consumption at large. The Constitutional Council announced this week that the amendments, which became later paragraph II, article 103 of the Energy transition legislation (1), infringed the French Constitution as “they were not in direct relation to the provisions still under discussion and did not ensure the coordination with current texts under revision” (2). They were thus contrary to the parliamentary procedures and as a consequence, were removed from the French legislation.
The Minister of Environment, Ségolène Royal planned a meeting with representatives from the retail sector to discuss the possibility of signing an agreement aimed at improving food donation to charities (3). In parallel, right-wing MP Frédéric Lefebvre proposed new legislation to the National Assembly copying word by word the amendments scrapped by the Constitutional Council (4). Updates on the outcome of this meeting will be outlined in the next newsletter.

The Lords EU Committee calls on European Commission to combat food waste!

The UK Lords EU Committee issued the first ever “Green Card” and called on the EC to take action to combat food waste.
 
In the context of the upcoming new circular economy package, the letter invites the EC to adopt a strategic approach for the reduction of food waste within the EU. Among the five elements that the Green Card identifies, it should include a “recommendation on the definition of food waste and on data collection that would build on FUSIONS’ Definitional Framework for Food Waste”. In 2014, FUSIONS indeed released the Food Waste Definitional Framework, available in our FAQ here.
 
The Green Card was signed by the 16 chambers and parliaments from the following EU Member States: Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, France (National Assembly and Senate), Hungary, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, The Netherlands, Portugal, Slovakia, and the UK.
 
Learn more!

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Fresh face for the FUSIONS Webpage on Social Innovation!

FUSIONS launched a new version of the ‪social innovation webpage! You can now search for social innovation projects by Member State and food chain sector to learn more about our feasibility studies.

FUSIONS has set up an online and collaborative Inventory of Social Innovation Projects, which highlights projects focused on reducing food waste to optimise the sharing of good practices. Socially innovative projects are presented either by country or by food chain sectors (farming, processing, retail, and household).
 
In 2014 FUSIONS also launched seven feasibility studies to test how social innovation can be used to tackle food waste, outlining cases in which social media networks and internet platforms facilitated the movement of food surplus to needy individuals, to arranging community-based food prevention events. The panel of selected initiatives varies widely in terms of their content, audience and purpose; it stretches from raising household and child awareness (e.g. Cr-EAT-ive Schools) to social supermarkets (Advancing Social Supermarkets). The final reports will soon be available on our website.

We hope that this webpage will support you in building even more bridges around Europe!
 

Fight Food Waste, Feed the Planet conference in October 2015!

In the context of Expo Milano 2015, the European Commission organises an international conference "Fight Food Waste, Feed the Planet".
The conference will take place on 15 October 2015 at the Expo Conference Centre, in Milan.
 
"Fight Food Waste, Feed the Planet" aims to contribute to the setting of EU and global directions for food waste prevention, focusing in particular on the importance of effective inter-sector co-operation from farm to fork. The conference will gather EU and international policy makers as well as all stakeholders involved in the food chain – from industry to non-governmental organizations, the scientific community and consumers – in order to share achievements to date and foster an open and action-oriented debate.
 
Come to Milan to join in the debate on 15 October!

New FUSIONS report now published – Review of current EU legislation and policies with implications on food waste

The new FUSIONS report used a mix of qualitative methodologies (literature review, expert consultation, inventory of policies, surveys, and policy impact assessment) to review the state of EU legislative and policy tools with implications for food waste.
 
Current policy measures address a wide range of topics and include animal by-products, feedstuffs, hygiene rules, marketing standards, packaging, Ecolabel criteria, VAT, and statistics. These measures impact food waste both negatively and positively in five different ways: by implying food waste generation, addressing food waste management, food waste reduction, food use optimisation, or a combination of these implications.
 
The study proposes an assessment of challenges and opportunities of current EU legislation and policies with implications on food waste.

Be on the lookout for the September 2015 FUSIONS Member States factsheets publications, which review national policies with implications on food waste. Find out how to send in your comments on this publication in our upcoming Newsletter!

The UN Sustainable Development Goals set food waste reduction target

The 193 Member States of the United Nations reached an agreement on the draft outcome document that will constitute the new sustainable development agenda. The agenda features 17 new sustainable development goals.

Goal 12: "Ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns". Amongst this goal’s objectives, it seeks to "halve per capita global food waste at the retail and consumer level, and reduce food losses along production and supply chains by 2030".

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Learn more about FUSIONS Member HISPACOOP!

In the last three years, the consumer organisation HISPACOOP (Spanish Confederation of Consumer and User Cooperatives) carried out projects to tackle food waste and raise awareness on responsible food consumption in Spain.
 

HISPACOOP launched a wide variety of initiatives (awareness raising projects, events, etc.) In 2013, this organisation launched an awareness raising campaign to encourage consumers to learn more about responsible consumption and reduce the ongoing food waste challenge: “Sin desperdicios: aprovecha la comida”. HISPACOOP created and distributed 1 500 cookbooks “Recetas con aprovechamiento y consejos” complete with 25 original recipes on how to use and optimise leftovers! This organisation also organised 21 conferences in 2014 within several cities of Spain, to inform and educate consumers on food waste.
 
These initiatives were funded by the Spanish Agency for Consumer Affairs, Food Safety and Nutrition (Ministry of Health, Social Services and Equality).

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Get involved!

You made the first step by subscribing to our mailing list, why don’t you get involved with FUSIONS and help us tackle food waste? To do so, you can:

Become a FUSIONS Member: by doing so, you will be able to use our forum and contribute more actively to the FUSIONS community!

Contribute to the FUSIONS forum: tell us more about your socially innovative project, debate about policy drivers and barriers to reducing food waste, learn more about food waste quantification…Your contribution may be published in our next Newsletter!

Submit your own socially innovative projects to the FUSIONS team: help us promote best practices and share good ideas all across the EU!

Submit your event to FUSIONS Events page: give your event more visibility!
 
For any other queries, please contact us via email at: eu-fusions@live.com

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