Derambarsh told The Guardian that he first tried to tackle the problem himself by distributing unsold food from his local supermarket in Courbevoie. “Every day we’d help around 100 people. Half would be single mothers with several children, pensioners, or public workers on low salaries, the other half would be those living on the streets or in shelters.” Derambarsh told me by phone that he did all this on the street outside the supermarket after it closed for the night—an experience that inspired him to turn his campaign into national law.

Now Derambarsh is hoping to globalize his movement. He said he plans to return to Change.org within the next week with a call for an international law that mirrors the new French legislation. In coordination with the advocacy group ONE, he plans to present the issue to the European Union, United Nations, the G-20 forum of major economies, and the upcoming UN climate-change conference in Paris known as COP 21.

Any campaign to reduce food waste is likely to resonate in a world where as much as half of all food produced is never eaten. The problem stems from multiple inefficiencies and weaknesses along the supply chain, and it manifests itself differently in different regions; in developing countries, over 40 percent of waste occurs before the supermarket, while in industrialized countries over 40 percent occurs in the supermarket or the home. As the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) points out, leaving food uneaten not only squanders valuable resources, but also endangers the environment due to the methane that the leftover food emits in landfills.

At the core of Derambarsh’s campaign, however, is the human cost: Food that is tossed out is a meal that a hungry person will never be able to enjoy. The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization reported on Wednesday that the number of undernourished people in the world had dropped considerably over the past 25 years despite global population growth. Even so, that leaves 795 million people without enough food to eat. For reference, about one in seven Americans lack reliable access to food, and an extra 15 percent in saved food could feed over 25 million Americans, according to the NRDC. The retail sector in the United States accounts for approximately 10 percent of the available food supply, suggesting that a law similar to the one just passed in France could make a difference in reducing U.S. food insecurity.

Still, a solution for France may not be appropriate for other countries. Across the channel in the United Kingdom, for instance, the retail sector accounts for only 1.7 percent of total food waste, according to the British charity WRAP, far below France’s 11 percent. This low percentage is at least in part due to a concerted effort by retailers, rather than the government, to develop more sustainable supply chains. British waste-reduction measures aren’t necessarily helping feed the poor, though—of the 250,000 tons of waste that U.K. supermarkets produce, less than 40,000 tons is redistributed to people.