Abstract:

Food waste is a problem of highly developed countries, which mainly affects food consumers and distributors. The FAO estimates show that around 1.3 billion tonnes of food are wasted in the world annually, which is 1/3 of the amount of food produced. In Europe wasted food reaches up to 50% of total food production and amounts to approximately 90 million tonnes. The average European throws away 20-30% of bought food. About 9 million tonnes of food are wasted annually in Poland. Due to the environmental, economic and social consequences of this situation, the problem is growing and is becoming the subject of regulation at international and national levels. One of such regulations is the Act on Counteracting Food Waste adopted in Poland on July 19, 2019.

The aim of this article is to analyse and evaluate the above-mentioned act, to indicate its strengths and potential areas for improvement. Using the elements of the SWOT analysis the compliance of the act with EU regulations, transparency, comprehensibility and completeness of the presented definitions, system - the range of legal and fiscal instruments used in the act, its scope, social utility as well as organizational and financial consequences of its introduction were taken into account. The regulations of the act were compared to the law in selected EU countries - the Czech Republic, Italy and France.

The law in Poland regulates primarily the obligations of sellers in terms of reducing food wastage. Thus, it promotes positive actions in the field of counteracting food waste at the stage of its distribution, while omitting the stage of obtaining and producing food. Its introduction has both positive and negative social, organizational, environmental and economic effects. Monitoring of the effectiveness of the act application is necessary as well as further development of its regulations. That would enable the effective introduction of solutions increasing social awareness, and thus reducing the amount of wasted food.