The European Union is taking that old adage “waste not, want not” to heart.
What happened: The EU proposed its first legally binding targets to reduce food and textile waste, with measures aimed at big food companies and fast fashion purveyors. The bloc’s food and textile sectors respectively produce 60 million tonnes and 12.6 million tonnes of waste annually.
- EU members will have to reduce total food waste by 10% by the end of 2030 from average baseline levels and ensure the donation of unsold safe-to-eat food.
- Members must also cut textile waste by 30%. Textile producers operating in the EU (whether EU-based or not) will be required to pay for recycling their discarded products.
In Canada: There’s no overarching federal law in place to reduce food or textile waste, the former of which is a particularly pressing issue. Instead, it’s handled on either a provincial or a municipal level, which has led to a mismatch in how well different areas are managing it.
- For example, P.E.I., Nova Scotia, and B.C., which have either provincial or city-level laws banning food waste from landfills, lead the country in the rate of waste diverted.
Why it matters: Food waste is a global issue, and Canada is one of the worst offenders. Recent research estimates that 46.5% of all food produced here ends up in the trash, which costs an avoidable $58 billion annually and contributes loads of planet-warming methane.—QH