Sustainable Living & Sustainable Lifestyles
Let's talk about social action for sustainability and any associated ideas.
Poll Created Sun 6 Dec 2015 9:21AM
Make dumping of food illegal Closed Thu 10 Dec 2015 6:07AM
Interesting thoughts were discussed in the climate change thread about wasteful food and produce practices in our economy. To some extent this has natural repercussions to our ability to mitigate climate change and live sustainably.
The proposal is that we implement laws similar to France that make the dumping of unsold, excess or second rate food illegal - it must either be given away charitably, or put to some form of productive use, e.g cycled back into food production via compost, animal feed, etc.
Results
| Results | Option | % of points | Voters | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
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Agree | 87.5% | 7 |
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| Abstain | 0.0% | 0 | ||
| Disagree | 12.5% | 1 |
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|
| Block | 0.0% | 0 | ||
| Undecided | 0% | 37 |
|
8 of 45 people have participated (17%)
David Pate
Sun 6 Dec 2015 9:35AM
Immoral and wasteful, outlaw wastage
Jo Booth
Mon 7 Dec 2015 4:18AM
Sounds great. Would need to provide support in food safety legislation and support schemes for 'recycling'
Hubat McJuhes
Mon 7 Dec 2015 9:01AM
I am 100% in support of the goal - but it should be achieved by supporting doing the right thing rather than simply prohibiting the wrong thing.
Pamela M Bramley
Mon 7 Dec 2015 3:54PM
Yes I like that idea of incentivising rather than punishing. To be rewarded for doing the right thing (such as tax refunds of those goods) would be attractive to businesses and not interfere with the current health and safety regulations around food.
William Asiata Mon 7 Dec 2015 10:15AM
So basically, incentivising desired actions rather than prohibiting undesired actions.
That's like deciding whether we implement tax incentives vs. infringement offences.
Motivating options: Positive discrimination vs. negative criminalisation
Intrinsically motivated-reciprocity encouraged rewards vs. Extrinsically motivated-punitively imposed regulations.
Sounds like massaging of macroeconomic parameters to me, something green market economists would promote. Anyway sounds like a great idea cheers Hubat
William Asiata Wed 9 Dec 2015 7:56PM
On a very related note, I stumbled across this petition.
Alan Forster Wed 9 Dec 2015 8:53PM
it would be great if people would just respond to "incentives"
and "the good idea" and some do but there would need to be education, incentive and regulation in current reality.
David Pate Thu 10 Dec 2015 10:58AM
A friend in OZ commented on my posting that the produce, etc., instead of being allowed to degenerate further, should be converted on-site to soup or some such which I think is a very creative solution. Perhaps local business houses could donate to each supermarket utensils, pots and pans and community volunteers could actually do the deed, assuming the chains wouldn't want to spend their staff time or money :=)
Hubat McJuhes · Mon 7 Dec 2015 8:58AM
I am in full support of making good use of unsold food.
But I believe it is the wrong way around to simply prohibit dumping it. We can't just make laws to enforce that things go the way we want it and prohibit the sum of all cations we disagree with.
I think that convincing people is better than threatening them by making them break our new, restrictive laws. Where convincing arguments are not enough, e.g. because the other party to be convinced would be companies which operate under different rationales (i.e. shareholder interests), extra guidance can be given by setting some economic incentive. For example, 10% of the original selling value could be accounted as donations against the taxes.
Also, making dumping food illegal will produce some questionalble corner cases and makes things complicated and spreads uncertainty. E.g. who really wants to enforce that too old a fish as well as the deep frozen stuff after the freezer in the shop broke down for a few hours must be fed to the poor? Who will be responsible for paying for the medical treatment for the food poisening? An incentive to donate helps making the professional and adequate decisions without putting the manager into a threatening situation.