Arash Derambarsh, the French politician who spearheaded the fight against food waste in his country, is now aiming to take the recently passed law to a global level.
Lawmakers in France voted to ban supermarkets from throwing away leftover food. Stores that are more than 4,300 square feet in size will have to sign contracts with various charities to have them take discarded food, or the store must pay fines worth 75,000 euros ($82,000 in U.S. dollars).
If the food is no longer worth eating, it will be utilized for animal feed or compost, according to Agence France-Presse.
Derambarsh was inspired to make the law based on his own personal experiences, wherein he struggled to feed himself when he was still a law student.
This experience, Derambarsh says, is what drove him to concoct a plan that would help diminish world hunger by simply making supermarkets stop throwing away their leftover food.
"You can say it's naive, you can say it is idealistic, but what I am proposing is realistic," Derambarsh told the AFP.
Derambarsh successfully convinced French MPs to implement the law after it garnered more than 200,000 signatures for the petition he launched on the website change.org, as well as support from celebrities in just the span of four months, The Guardian reported.
