"If it's not perfect, nobody will buy my apple." Aesthetic imperfection, overproduction, thoughtless purchasing: even the enormous food waste problem has its own supply chain, but there are those who have managed to work within its links to change the course of things. Green Storytellers, the TV series born from the ground up thanks to crowdfunding, returns to Infinity+ with its second season to tell the stories of the protagonists of a revolutionary act: saving food.

Restoring food's full dignity — it's the people who are asking for it through crowdfunding

As with the first series dedicated to the Planet, the project by storytellers Marco Cortesi and Mara Moschini meets and exceeds the goal of the campaign launched on Produzioni dal basso, once again securing Infinity's co-financing. Six episodes with a clear, effective and motivating style to introduce 18 Italian realities — including Michelin-starred chefs — that fight food waste starting from mission number one: raising awareness of an issue with a colossal impact.

In the age of food made to be eaten with the eyes, which dominates Instagram with over 218 billion images under the hashtag #foodporn, the FAO figure is that, worldwide, one third of all food produced is wasted. It's a striking figure, but it only minimally conveys the true scale of the issue, because throwing food away means wasting, upstream, all the resources used to produce it, and also polluting downstream when disposing of it.

Resources wasted to produce food that no one will eat

Green Storytellers, food rescue cites a great deal of data: "Of all the energy used in the global food system, 38 per cent is used to produce food that no one will eat." In terms of environmental resources exploited and then wasted, we are talking about "1.4 billion hectares of land, almost 30 per cent of the world's cultivable area, and 250 cubic kilometres of water resources, a quarter of all the water used in irrigation.

Furthermore, still according to the FAO, while two billion people are overweight or obese, 700 million suffer from food insecurity. The paradox is that a quarter of all food wasted would be enough to feed them." Whichever way you look at it, we are faced with a ruinous and distorted system that must be rebuilt.

Saving food makes you feel good

Beyond the fight against food waste, all the protagonists of the series share another common thread: the need to "find the right place in one's life and in the community." A big idea explained in simple words by Antonio di Giovanni who, in Florence, grows mushrooms using coffee grounds — a by-product still rich in nutrients that he collects every day from the local cafés.

Grown using the Japanese method, with mycelium inoculated into tree trunks, the shiitake mushrooms of Azienda agricola Guà in Cavedine, Trentino, become one of the sought-after ingredients in the cuisine of Senso, the restaurant of chef Alfio Ghezzi, two Michelin stars, who through fine dining chooses to give value to the people who work in the local area.

Hunger is a problem of access to food, not of availability

In the episode dedicated to the city of Bologna, the contribution of Andrea Segrè could not be missing — professor of International and Comparative Agricultural Policy at the University of Bologna and founding president of Last minute market which, in Emilia-Romagna alone, in 2020 linked up 146 supermarkets, recovering over one million kilograms of unsold food that would have ended up in landfill in order to distribute it to charitable organisations and associations.

"We just need to go back to what our grandmothers used to do," comments Segrè. "Buy what you need, make the best use of the fridge to preserve food and use up leftovers. A few simple habits that we have lost. We have finally come to realise that increasing production makes little sense, because the problem of hunger is a problem of access to food, of economic poverty that then becomes nutritional poverty."

The commitment to food is one that unites generations and embraces vulnerability

In Bari there is Antonia, 87 years old, who together with the other volunteers of Avanzi popolo 2.0 distributes food donated by local traders to around 80 families in the surrounding neighbourhoods. In Florence, meanwhile, with Disco soupe, adults and children cook recovered food together, strictly dancing in a true celebration. Because joy is an extraordinary driving force. In Rovereto, the allotments of Mi coltivo are tended by young people with disabilities and vulnerabilities, while in Bari, Semi di vita lets the land do the redeeming, putting former prisoners or young people in the care of correctional institutions to work. "Because a tomato doesn't judge — anyone can grow it."

Then there are men who take their careers to great heights, where the combination of food and nature can unfold more spontaneously: one example is chef Juri Chiotti, who at 25 earns a Michelin star — one of the youngest ever to do so — only to leave the dining rooms of luxury restaurants and go on to manage a mountain refuge at over 1,800 metres above sea level. Today you can find him in the Val Varaita in Cuneo, at Reis cibo libero di montagna, where the focus is on production — which means effort and responsibility — rather than consumption.

The aesthetics of waste

We are so removed from the land that we think of the virtually identical courgettes we find in the supermarket as a natural, almost inevitable outcome, rather than the result of a relentless selection process applied precisely to conform to our aesthetic standards as consumers. Because if a courgette has a defect — in shape, colour, size or blemishes — we simply do not buy it. Green Storytellers shines a bright light on this aspect, also putting some staggering figures on the table: "A third of the fruit and vegetables produced in Europe is wasted in the field, left unharvested because it does not conform to the standards demanded by the consumer. We are talking about 50 million tonnes of produce that ends up being destroyed."

"Bella dentro" and the flaws that are in the eye of the beholder

Restoring value to food means paying for it, even when it has been abandoned. As well as producers and distributors — large and small — who donate unsold products to be redistributed and consumed, there are those who have built a business by investing in the opposite mechanism: collecting and paying a fair price for what is left in the field because it is imperfect, and selling it by celebrating its very defects.

The brand "Bella dentro. Il gusto del buon senso" belongs to Camilla Archi and Luca Bolognesi, and on their Facebook page you can savour the beauty of an asparagus striking an awkward pose and that of a pair of cucumbers that look like flip-flops. It is the revenge of the excluded, restoring our awareness of our own short-sighted choices.

Following the path of bread and arriving at beer

Take an ancient Egyptian recipe and some stale bread: that is how the premium craft beer of Turin-based startup Biova Project was born — "bread's last chance before it gets thrown away," as president Emanuela Barbano explains. Because we throw away a great deal of it: 13,000 quintals a day; 20 per cent in the domestic sphere and up to 50 per cent in large-scale retail.

Telling the story of waste, working alongside those on the front line to prevent it

The portrait that emerges from Green Storytellers food rescue does not leave you indifferent, because the many bad habits depicted are ones we recognise in ourselves, and it is impossible to deny it. "The greatest challenge was coming to terms with a world that is very complex to tell through images," the series' creators Marco Cortesi and Mara Moschini explain to LifeGate. "In this second season, we no longer had the wonder of the Dolomites, the beauty of the Tyrrhenian Sea or other postcard-perfect settings in front of us."