Stop feeding the bin: We’re ready for a food waste revolution

Owen Williams

I’m the annoying one in our house when it comes to recycling. Rinsing yoghurt pots. Fishing cardboard out of the wrong recycling bin. Quietly judging my family’s black bag misuse.

Through strong recycling legislation, Wales has made that instinct feel normal. We separate food waste. We recycle properly. It’s part of our culture now.

But there’s a point where you stop and think: why are we still treating edible food as waste in the first place?

France asked that question – and then actually did something about it.

Under the Anti-Waste and Circular Economy Law, French supermarkets over 400 square metres are required to donate unsold edible food to charities rather than destroy it. They are also explicitly banned from deliberately destroying food that’s still fit for consumption. It’s not a guideline. It’s law.
And it’s rooted in a super-simple hierarchy:

prevent waste first
prioritise feeding people
everything else

The French approach is often framed as environmental policy. And to be clear, it is… but it’s also much more than that. It’s direct state intervention in a very modern contradiction: perfectly good food being thrown away while people go hungry.

By forcing redistribution into the system, France has redirected surplus food into charities and food banks, built stronger, more reliable supply chains for community organisations, and reduced landfill and emissions. In other words, it treats surplus food as a resource, not a liability.

In Wales, we wouldn’t be starting from scratch. Cymru is already one of the best recycling nations in Europe. We’ve normalised food waste separation. We’ve changed behaviour at household level. That’s the hard bit.

What we haven’t done yet is close the loop. Because once a country is carefully separating its food waste, the next logical question is unavoidable: why is so much edible food still entering that system at all?

We need a practical next-step. And a progressive government – perhaps a future Plaid Cymru-led government – wouldn’t need to copy France line-for-line. Devolution has limits.

Some elements of the French model – particularly around commercial obligations – would need careful framing within devolved powers.

But the core principle is entirely transferable. Wales could make it far harder to dispose of edible food than to redistribute it, require large retailers to prioritise human consumption in the waste hierarchy, strengthen partnerships with food banks and community groups, and create conditions for new redistribution and logistics businesses to emerge.

You don’t need to replicate every clause of French law to replicate its outcomes.

This isn’t really about supermarkets. It’s about what we tolerate. What kind of Wales do we want to be?
At the moment, we accept a system where good food is wasted, charities scramble for supply, and food poverty remains embedded in communities across Wales.

France decided that contradiction was no longer acceptable. They drew a line. We could too.

And if we did, the impact wouldn’t just be environmental — it would be felt in food banks, in community kitchens, in new local businesses and in households that no longer have to choose between heating and eating.

We’ve already changed how people think about waste. The next step is bigger — we could build a system where edible food flows to people, not bins.

That feels less like a policy tweak, and more like a statement of intent.