Morocco Considers Fines to Combat Rising Food Waste Crisis

In the explanatory statement, the initiators of this bill indicate that Moroccan families threw away more than 4.2 million tons of food in 2022, compared to 3.3 million tons in 2021, which represents an increase of about one million tons.

These data come from the 2024 report of the United Nations Environment Programme on the food waste index, which reveals that a Moroccan wasted 113 kilograms of food in 2022, far exceeding the 91 kilograms of 2021. These waste products affect the economy of the kingdom in a difficult global context where most countries are struggling to ensure food security and achieve self-sufficiency.

The RNI’s bill therefore aims to fight against the waste of still edible food, with the involvement of all the stakeholders concerned, namely producers, manufacturers or processors, meal distributors, restaurants, hotels, caterers and food merchants.

It also provides for a series of measures to put an end to this practice, in particular donating unsold and still edible food to vulnerable people (students, homeless, elderly, etc.) or transforming it into animal feed or fertilizer. The text also proposes the imposition of a financial fine on people who waste food.