Cutting food waste saves money for French supermarkets

Paris

CUTTING food waste is an appealing social goal, but experiments in France found that measures to cut the amount of food being thrown out also saved supermarkets money.

Like a number of other countries, France has recently adopted legislation that forces supermarkets to donate to charities food that is unwanted or past its sell-by date but still edible.

While retail shops and markets account for the smallest percentage of losses in the food chain, the French Environment and Energy Management Agency (ADEME) nevertheless found that they we…