Italy also wants to legally tackle food waste

Following the French government’s example, the Italian government now intends to create legislation to process unsold food as well. The goal is to facilitate how companies can donate food.

Tax benefit

The new legislation will simplify food donation procedures, but will add additional hygiene and origin checks in order to avoid abuse. Wrongly labeled food and medicine can also be donated thanks to the new legislation, as long as the wrong labels do not impact the product’s expiration date or materials that can cause an allergic reaction.

Not only supermarkets can benefit from this legislation, as the hospitality industry will also be able to use the new law. It should become easier to give customers a doggy bag with their food, which limits food waste according to the Italian paper La Repubblica. Companies can also get waste tax benefits if they donate certain amounts of food. The more food is donated, the higher the waste tax benefits will be.

A large majority of the Italian parliament has already approved the proposal, which now needs to pass the Senate – although that should not pose any problems. A recent study showed that Italy wastes 5.6 million tons of food every year, worth 13.5 billion euro.