Spain’s food waste law: what it changes for you at home

The short answer: Spain’s food waste law, Ley 1/2025, applies to businesses in the food chain: farms, manufacturers, shops, restaurants, caterers and food banks. It doesn’t apply to households, so you can’t be fined for throwing food away at home. What does change for you: restaurants must let you take home what you don’t finish, at no extra cost, except at all-you-can-eat buffets.

The law was published in Spain’s official gazette, the Boletín Oficial del Estado (BOE), on 2 April 2025. Here is what it covers, what it asks of the businesses you buy from, and what it means in your own kitchen.

Who the law applies to

Article 2 sets the scope: the activities of the “agentes de la cadena alimentaria”, the agents of the food chain. Article 3 lists them: primary producers, manufacturers and distributors, retailers, hospitality and catering, organisations that distribute donated food, and public administrations.

Households aren’t on that list. No article sets duties for private homes, and the fines in Article 21 apply to infringements by those agents. Claims that you can be fined for throwing out a yoghurt aren’t based on the law.

Even among businesses, the main duties have limits. The obligations in Article 6, explained below, don’t apply to:

• microenterprises: fewer than ten staff and annual turnover of €2 million or less (Article 3);
• establishments of 1,300 m² or less, unless a company’s sites under the same tax number add up to more (Article 6.4);
• small farms (Article 6.7).

What businesses now have to do

A priority order for surplus food

Article 5 sets a hierarchy. Prevention comes first: buying and producing to real need, and turning unsold food that is still fit to eat into other food. Surplus that can’t be prevented goes, in order of priority:

1. donated or redistributed for people to eat;
2. animal feed;
3. by-products for other industries;
4. and only then compost or biogas.

A plan, and donation agreements

Under Article 6, businesses covered by the law must have a food-waste prevention plan and must try to set up donation agreements with food banks or charities. A contract clause that forbids donating food is void. These duties apply one year after the law’s publication, so from April 2026 (final provision 20).

Restaurants: you can take your leftovers home

This is the part you’ll notice. Article 8 says restaurants and other food-service businesses must let customers take away the food they didn’t eat, at no extra cost. They must say so clearly and visibly, preferably on the menu. Article 10 makes it one of your rights as a consumer.

The details:

• Buffets are excluded, along with similar formats where the amount of food isn’t limited.
• The containers must be suitable for food and reusable or easily recyclable. If the restaurant uses single-use plastic, a separate law on plastic packaging (Ley 7/2022) may require a charge for the container. That is the one exception to “no extra cost.”

Shops: encouraged, not required

Article 12 asks food retailers to improve information on imperfect produce and to sell it. Beyond that, the measures are voluntary. Shops may promote products near their best-before or use-by date, run lines of “ugly” fruit and veg, and display information on how to read date labels.

Best-before dates

Article 14 asks the Government to encourage producers to set best-before dates as long as quality and safety allow, and asks all administrations to teach people how to read use-by and best-before dates. That is the same distinction we cover in use by vs best before.

Fines, for the businesses covered

Article 21 sets fines of up to €2,000 for minor infringements, €2,001–60,000 for serious ones and €60,001–500,000 for very serious ones. Spain’s regional governments can raise those amounts in their own laws.

What it means in your kitchen

Nothing in Ley 1/2025 is mandatory at home. But the hierarchy in Article 5 is a good plan for a kitchen too, and you don’t need a plan document to follow it:

1. Prevent. Buy to what you’ll actually use. Check what you already have before you shop.
2. Use it. Cook first whatever is due soonest. If you won’t get to it in time, freeze it before the date.
3. Share it. A neighbour, a colleague, a community fridge.
4. Compost the rest, where your council collects it.

It matters most at step one, because, across the EU, homes are where most food waste happens. EFSA reports that households generated 54% of the EU’s food waste in 2021, about 70 kg per person. That isn’t a judgement. It’s a sign that the biggest gains are in the place we have the most control over.

Where Nudgey fits

Step one is the hard one, because you can’t use what you’ve forgotten you have.

Nudgey keeps your fridge, freezer and pantry in one list, sorted by what to use first. You photograph your receipt and it fills in what you bought. Before something is due, you get a nudge, at most one a day. And it shows you recipes that use what you already have.

Nudgey is coming soon to iPhone. It starts with a 7-day free trial, then it’s a subscription. Your inventory stays on your phone.

This post summarises the law as published in the BOE. It isn’t legal advice. If you run a food business, read the full text or ask your regional authority.

Sources: BOE — Ley 1/2025, de 1 de abril, de prevención de las pérdidas y el desperdicio alimentario (in Spanish) · EFSA — Reducing consumer food waste