One week to save EU action on food waste - taking the fight to Poland

Unless we stop them, the European Council could destroy plans to halve EU food waste in the next week. We’ve discovered Poland is the key block - Please take action, tweet them in Polish: ow.ly/8Iod30h6gRy or in English: ow.ly/gJRx30h6qf5 or take our other actions below.

We have some bad news and some good news.

On 27th November, there was a landmark meeting between the European Council and Parliament to battle out plans to halve EU food waste by 2030. We’ve received worrying indications that the talks are going really really badly, and the European Council may defeat the European Parliament’s targets to halve EU food waste, unless we can turn the situation around! See some coverage of the talks, with quotes from This Is Rubbish here: https://www.euractiv.com/section/circular-economy/news/wasted-opportunity-eu-stalemate-on-food-waste-reduction/

The final decision on the next 13 years of EU food waste is likely to be on Sunday 17th December, so we have one week to save the future of EU food waste!

The good news is that thanks to your actions emailing France and Italy, we had a breakthrough call with France this week where they revealed that France, Italy and 6 other EU countries at the European Council are backing the European Parliament’s farm to fork targets to halve EU food waste by 2030! This is a huge step forward.

We’ve discovered that Poland and Eastern European countries are currently the main block within the Council – if we can convert Poland, the other Eastern European countries are likely to follow suit, and we can turn the negotiations around.

We have one week left to convince Poland to back the targets. Can you help?

We’ve translated tweets, videos and facebook posts into Polish to maximise impact – let’s show Poland’s Environment Ministry we care.

Take action:

1) Tweet at the Polish Environment Ministry:
In Polish: ow.ly/8Iod30h6gRy
In English: ow.ly/gJRx30h6qf5

2) Post this message on the wall/post comment sections of the Polish Ministry's facebook page!
Here’s their page: https://www.facebook.com/MinSrodowiska
And here’s some suggested messages to post in Polish or English – feel free to write your own message instead:

In Polish:
Jestem wielce zmartwiony(-a) faktem, że polskie Ministerstwo Ochrony Środowiska blokuje unijną próbę ustanowienia unijnych celów zmniejszenia odpadów żywnościowych o połowę do 2030 oraz ustalenia hierarchii odpadów żywnościowych. Polska zasługuje na coś lepszego - marnotrawienie żywności to nie tylko strata pieniędzy, emisja gazów cieplarnianych, marnotrawstwo wody oraz gleby oraz szkodzi naszemu środowisku. Każde euro wydane na ograniczenie marnowanej żywności oszczędza nam 13 euro, które w sumie mogłyby zaoszczędzić polskiej gospodarce miliardy. Zupełnie zdatne do spożycia jedzenie nie powinno być marnowane, skoro mogłoby nakarmić wiele głodujących ludzi w Polsce. Polska mogłaby bez problemu obniżyć ilość odpadów żywnościowych z pomocą UE oraz przy użyciu metod, które się sprawdziły w innych krajach UE.
Tu możesz znaleźć oświadczenie kampanii: http://ow.ly/fJl530h6iEo
Oraz uzasadnienie biznesowe: http://ow.ly/rALR30h6iHn
https://www.facebook.com/thisisrubbishmovement/videos/1956694767904949/

If English:
I’m deeply concerned that the Polish Ministry of the Environment has been blocking EU action to set targets to halve EU food waste by 2030 and a food waste hierarchy. Poland deserves better- wasted food is wasted money, carbon emissions, water and land, harming our environment. For every 1 Euro invested in reducing food waste, 13 Euros are saved, which could save the Polish economy billions. Perfectly edible delicious food should not be wasted when it could be fed to hungry people of Poland. Poland could easily cut food waste with support from the EU and by using tried and tested techniques already proved successful in other European countries. See the proposals I’d like you to support, and the 10 Polish organisations who do the same, here: http://ow.ly/fJl530h6iEo And the business case here: http://ow.ly/rALR30h6iHn https://www.facebook.com/thisisrubbishmovement/videos/1956694767904949/

3) Donate to the campaign – we’re running this on zero budget, and any support you can give would hugely help us halve the 88 million tonnes of food wasted in the EU every year: https://www.thisisrubbish.org.uk/donate/

Whether you’ve taken any of our actions, donated, or supported us in any way - a huge thank you to all you amazing food waste activists!