Great idea and many of our USA restaurants and store chains already do this. Panera just recently announced their conversion to donate vice destroy, Wal-Mart hugely donates closed dated -- even freezing some things until pick-up dates -- and they have pick ups almost daily for items to take to Food Bank, locally.
Things that are questionable, I know for a fact, is put into a dumpster that is a compactor to prevent dumpster divers from eating. I work within my local Wal-Mart for an independent company & have asked about the damaged/over aged produce for my chickens/pigs. Nope, they are required to weight, document and destroy in compactor. Shame really.
I can't remember the figures now, but in England insane amounts of food goes to waste annually. It's wonderful to hear about steps being taken to cut down on some of this in other countries. Hopefully Britain will catch on and follow suit?
I was watching a TV show yesterday where the CEO of a company went undercover and worked in one of his stores. He was horrified at the amount of food that was tossed-especially since there were supposed to be programs in place to donate the food to charity.
Well, I hope he implemented some changes after seeing that! I hate food wastage, having been poor at times in my life, I know well how it feels to go hungry and as a result do not waste anything that can either be eaten by me, my son, the chickens, the neighbourhood pig, or the wild birds.
With Walmart stores it is at the discretion of the individual managers whether to donate or destroy. I drove a distribution truck for a couple years delivering from one of the stores to needy people in our community. Local stores destroyed their outdated, but half a state away a manager allowed pickup and distribution to needy families through church and non profit organizations.
About time and needs to happen here in the US. I get tired of hearing about how it's necessary to do factory farming to provide "food for the masses" , all the while knowing that much food is piled up and rotting due to being "blemished" upon harvest and so much meat and dairy is thrown out at supermarkets when it goes past its sell by, so much food is wasted in restaurants it's shameful.
I see so much waste of building materials as well, when many are homeless or would love to have materials for building or upgrading their homes. A couple times a month I stay in a hotel and occasionally watch HGTV...it's staggering to see the waste of materials on those shows! Fixer Upper surprises me the most...don't like those kitchen cabinets? Not modern enough? Why don't we just bust them up on "Demo Day" with a big sledge hammer instead of taking out these perfectly beautiful cabinets and donating them to Habitat for Humanity?
Big dumpsters just filled with salvageable lumber, fixtures, cabinets, baths, etc. It's shameful to know we live in a country that throws away such things.