"Sustainability is today synonymous with the future. It means anticipating and interpreting the complexities of the present in order to build a tomorrow with a lower impact, more conscious and inclusive. Our university has been leading this challenge for years, thinking of sustainability as an integral part of teaching. We are certain that only with a green approach will we be able to push the accelerator of innovation," declares Giovanni Lo Storto, director general of Luiss Guido Carli. And it is for this reason that the Roman university has been, again this year, the scientific partner of the website Non sprecare for the awarding of the eponymous prize. A recognition that tells stories of excellence in our country, stories of sustainable development, of circular economy, of economic growth aimed at genuine social progress, of responsibility and renewal. But above all it tells the stories of the projects and ideas of citizens and associations capable of generating a positive impact on people's lives, especially at a difficult moment like the one we are going through.

Luiss Guido Carli @UniLUISS

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Al via l'appuntamento con la XI edizione del #PremioNonSprecare. Il progetto di Antonio Galdo, organizzato in collaborazione con #Luiss, promuove iniziative e pratiche economiche, ambientali e sociali che favoriscano la sostenibilità. Segui la diretta:
youtube.com/watch?v=iyTVos…

♥ 3💬 1 26 nov 2020 · Apri su X →

"The Non sprecare prize, now in its eleventh edition, is dedicated this year to people. A choice we had made before the pandemic broke out, and one that has become very timely in this battle against the virus," adds Antonio Galdo, director of the Non sprecare website and of the related prize. "We listened to the stories of people who waste nothing of their lives and who bet, without great fanfare, on a sustainability made up of concrete choices." Among the various accounts, we have chosen to bring you that of Valentina Loponte, vice-president of the association Io potentino onlus and director of the Magazzini sociali project. The two organisations she represents, committed to fighting food waste and combating poverty in Basilicata, are the winners of the associations category, one of the six categories provided for.

How do the two organisations you lead collaborate?
Io potentino is a non-profit organisation founded in Potenza in 2010 as a cultural association. On 5 December we turned ten years old. In 2014 we founded Magazzini sociali, a project to combat poverty through the recovery of food surpluses. From that moment we began working to recover and redistribute in the city of Potenza products withdrawn because they were unsold or had packaging defects, from shopkeepers, bakeries, fruit and vegetable shops, as well as from the end of events, local festivals and food and wine itineraries. The products we collect we in turn redistribute to people who choose to join the initiative, and to do so we immediately networked with the charitable associations that were already providing support to people in economic difficulty in the area. From 2014 to today we have recovered around 45 tonnes of food surpluses and more than 400 families from the regional capital have joined our project.

From unsold bread you also produce beer, is that right?
This beer idea – which, I want to point out, is not the only one in Italy made from bread – arose when we noticed that the most wasted food, and therefore the one we received in the greatest quantities, was bread itself. And so the beer produced using unsold bread was born, which we called La166, after the anti-waste law 166. Our intention is for it to be just the first in a series of products under the La166 brand: for example, we would like to produce jams using waste fruit. The proceeds, once production costs are deducted, are reinvested entirely in our Magazzini sociali project.

It is no coincidence that you won the Non sprecare prize. We were struck by the reason you received it, namely for your "ability to look to the least, to people living amid hardship, loneliness and poverty". How did that make you feel?
Every day, through our activities, we try to break down the concept of the poor person who must be helped — in fact, those who join our initiative are essentially joining a circular economy project. Because unfortunately — we have been saying this for many years and now the pandemic has sadly proved us right — poverty, at least from our point of view, is something that can affect anyone; it is no longer tied only to situations of "hereditary" hardship, that is, young people who in turn live in poverty because they come from disadvantaged families. It is something that can also strike a person who loses their job, as has unfortunately happened with coronavirus, or perhaps family units in which an illness arises that carries costs and therefore drains the economic resources that were there until that point; or again we are talking about single mothers, women living alone, separated fathers.

So we break down the idea of the poor person to be pushed to the margins. We prefer instead to talk about people who join this project. So much so that we also try to work towards an understanding that food surpluses themselves should not be destined solely and exclusively for those with a food need, but also for those who want to be mindful about not wasting, about respecting the environment, about producing less waste.

Then it is obvious that knowing that our activity is predominantly able to help those experiencing a primary difficulty such as access to food is something that fills us with particular pride, because it is not an easy activity. Every day we face real difficulties, perhaps little known but deeply rooted. 400 family units is a very significant number when you consider that Potenza has around 70,000 inhabitants.

So with the pandemic you witnessed changes in society and in people's needs?
Our numbers doubled. New target groups appeared, if we can call them that — people who would never have imagined having to turn to associations like ours. It was not an easy situation, and it still isn't.

In the 2021 Michelin Guide, a new accolade called the green star was introduced, awarded to restaurants that, among other things, fight to reduce food waste. Is this, like other similar initiatives, proof that something in the restaurant world is finally changing?
Absolutely yes. All initiatives that can in some way encourage awareness of food waste and the right to food for everyone, as well as fiscal incentives from institutions, are very useful. I can see the difference in our own work too: we started in 2014 with a bakery and sporadic donations, then expanded until we had a widespread network of donors, including commercial operators who have become more mindful — both in terms of sourcing products and in terms of donating.

Furthermore, we are the lead organisation for one of the four projects approved in the Basilicata region for the creation of a logistics centre for food surpluses, where they will be stored and where research will also be conducted on eating habits and food movements, in collaboration with the University of Basilicata. This too shows how, within our region, awareness of food waste has taken root to the point of sustaining projects with public funding.

From your perspective, what are the most effective solutions for tackling food waste? Should the focus be more on individual citizens, or on overhauling the entire system?
I strongly believe in the power of the individual. When each citizen manages to become aware, they can then, with the right attitude, bring about changes on a broader scale in a ripple effect. This is one of the reasons why, from the very beginning, we have sought to engage with schools too, and to explain to young people that preventing food waste is something that starts with the everyday actions of the individual.