End food waste in Canada!
End food waste in Canada!
Why this petition matters
Every year, $31 billion of food ends up in a landfill in Canada alone. This isn't just stale bread and mouldy produce. This is good to eat food of all sorts. Produce, dairy, grain, protein, and everything outside of those.
Yet, nearly one million Canadians rely on food banks each month, and about four million Canadians are "food insecure", of which 1.5 million are children.
In 2015, the French government passed a law forbidding supermarkets from wasting and deliberately destroying food that can still be eaten. Instead, supermarkets have since been required to donate all unsold food products to charity such as food banks.
A similar anti-food waste law can and should be implemented in Canada, nationwide. As it is, Quebec has a programme to recuperate unsold food from supermarkets, although it is not yet required for big surface stores to establish partnerships with organizations for redistribution. Having a programme on a federal scale that takes this program a step further is not inconceivable. It is doable, and it is already being done in communities worldwide.
In addition to the people who would be positively affected, food waste contributes greatly to climate change. Reducing food waste would benefit our environment.
This petition urges the Government of Canada through the Hon. Marie Claude Bibeau, Minister of Agriculture, to create a federal program to combat food waste. The program will:
- Bar supermarkets from intentionally destroying and wasting unsold, still edible food
- Require Canadian supermarkets to give unsold, still edible food to Canadian food banks
- Require Canadian supermarkets to give wrongfully packaged or damaged, still edible food to Canadian food banks
The law passed in France began with a simple petition not much different from this, on this very website. That petition received over 200,000 signatures. Our goal is to obtain 100,000 and to gain national attention to this very real issue. With your support, we can make a difference, and we can show our government what matters to us.
We need you. We need your voice. We need your support. Please sign and share this petition to bring change and to bring this law into Canada!
Use the #WhyWasteFood and #FoodDeservesBetter when sharing or discussing this campaign on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter!
--
Learn more:
