On National Food Waste Awareness Day, data from the Waste Watcher Report show a 25 per cent drop compared to the previous year. Credit goes to individual awareness and to a host of projects and initiatives, from supermarkets to wedding banquets.
Between 2018 and 2019, the real cost of food waste in Italy had been calculated at 15 billion euros. Of these, almost twelve were wasted in homes, amounting to a total of over 2 million tonnes of food thrown away (almost 37 kg per person), primarily fresh fruit and vegetables, bread, cheeses and dairy products. The rest was lost in the fields (7.8 per cent), in industry (6.5 per cent) and in distribution (7.4 per cent). But the news now is that, for the first time in ten years, food waste by Italians appears to be declining: the latest Report by the Waste Watcher Observatory from Last Minute Market/Swg points to a trend, for 2020, of 25 per cent less than the previous year.
The 2020 Report was presented on 5 February on the occasion of the seventh National Food Waste Awareness Day, which this year is celebrated under the banner of waste prevention for the health of the environment and of people, with the slogan "Stop food waste, feed the planet". The study, based on perceived waste, shows that in 2020 the average weekly cost of waste per household stands at 4.91 euros, for a total of approximately 6.5 billion euros (compared to 6.6 euros per week and 8.4 billion euros in total in 2019). So while it is true that there is still a great deal to be done about waste, it is equally true that things are improving. "In 2014, one in two Italians said they threw food away almost every day," explained Andrea Segrè, founder of Spreco Zero-Last Minute Market. "In 2019, only 1 per cent of respondents said they bin food on a daily basis."
Alongside growing consumer awareness (7 in 10 Italians believe there is a clear connection between food waste and the health of the environment and of people) and the good practices adopted by each of us, waste is also being reduced thanks to the growing number of initiatives and projects that promote the fight against food waste, that make it possible to recover surplus food, or that devise new ways to reuse scraps.
To mark Food Waste Awareness Day, in Turin, a new initiative by Repopp will be launched — the project founded in 2016 to reduce waste, combat food waste and promote social integration in the Porta Palazzo neighbourhood: on 5 February, chef Davide Scabin from the Michelin-starred restaurant Combal.Zero in Rivoli will cook a soup from discarded fruit and vegetables from the Porta Palazzo market. The dish will then be distributed free of charge in front of the Mercato centrale. The initiative will be repeated periodically: the Sentinelle dei rifiuti and the Ecomori, a group of asylum seekers, will collect the food scraps; these will be stored at the Mercato centrale and, finally, the Lorenzo de' Medici cooking school, on the first floor of the Mercato centrale, will make its fully equipped kitchen available to cook them and serve the soup once a month.
Also on 5 February, Too Good To Go, the anti-food-waste app that allows supermarkets, restaurants, hotels and bakeries to sell surplus food online at reduced prices, is promoting the awareness campaign #IlCiboNonSiButta. With this hashtag, a call to action is being launched inviting users, companies, associations, schools and citizens to share and talk about their actions against waste on social networks, large or small. Food influencers such as Sonia Peronaci, athletes such as Olympic champion Federica Brignone, and several supermarkets have already joined the campaign.
Speaking of supermarkets, the "Buon fine" project in which Coop has been engaged for years made it possible in 2019 to recover 6,190 tonnes of food and direct it to 948 voluntary associations across Italy that support people in need. Coop's donation model, unlike others, involves fresh and very fresh products for 70 per cent of its volume and operates on a zero-kilometre basis, because from the 661 sales outlets involved, the identified destination — from canteens to shelters — is reached immediately through the widespread network of associations and thanks to the joint efforts of employees and members.
When it comes to recovering food and preventing it from ending up in the bin, ideas are plentiful — and Italians, as everyone knows, are never short of creativity. For example, in 2016, in the Marche region, the non-profit association Foodbuster was founded to recover food left over from weddings, parties and corporate events and deliver it to the nearest social canteens. Last year, meanwhile, in Puglia, in the Valle d'Itria, Why Nok was born — a movement that wants to combat waste in the fields and recover all the fruit and vegetables that are discarded before even reaching the shelves because they do not meet certain aesthetic standards. Why Nok's first objective will be to create a network between farms and restaurateurs, starting from the Puglia region.