“The food waste issue is very important, but it should not be left in the hands of Greens and ecologists and people who want to change society. As businesspeople, we can do a lot by ourselves.”
Derambarsh has other critics too. Some Socialist members of parliament are annoyed with him for grabbing the media limelight, when they have worked on the issue for years.
Others point out that of the 7.1m tonnes of food wasted in France each year, according to the Ministry of Ecology, 67% is wasted by consumers themselves, and another 15% by restaurants, while shops and distributors waste 11% of the total, external.
Derambarsh, the son of Iranian exiles who was born in Paris in 1979 and spent four years in Iran as a young child, shrugs off criticism that his ideas are simplistic.
“When I was a boy I decided that when I grew up I would do something to make society better,” he says.
He has had a temporary setback though – France’s Constitutional Council, which checks whether new legislation is constitutional and if the correct procedures have been followed, has rejected the law on a technicality. It must now be redrafted which could take some time.
Despite this, Derambarsh has set his sights on Europe.
Following the success of the French petition, he has a new online petition circulating throughout the European Union. The hope is to get one million signatures from at least seven countries, which would be sufficient to launch what is known as a European Citizens’ Initiative – an official appeal to the European Commission to start legislation across the EU to ban supermarket waste.
At present the petition has just over 630,000 supporters. If it reaches the million mark, the Commission must consider the initiative – though it can decide to take no action.