A project dedicated to primary schools on the theme of fighting food waste takes students and teachers on a journey of awareness about food — as pleasure, nourishment and respect for environmental and social sustainability.
It is the legacy of Expo Milan 2015, but not only. Today the subject is extremely topical. So much so that with law 166/2016 on food waste, our country too has decided to tackle the phenomenon, which costs us at least 1 per cent of annual GDP.
It is on these premises that the Momenti da non sprecare project was born, conceived by Whirlpool Corporation and dedicated to primary schools in Lombardy and the Marche, offering a multidisciplinary approach and promoting play as a learning tool. The project's educational and training content is structured around three main thematic areas: the conscious purchasing of food, its proper preservation, and responsible and solidarity-minded consumption.
Whirlpool has provided participating classes with a kit to support teachers and students in activities both at school and at home. Each class was given a guide containing the information needed to carry out the working programme, individual copies for each child of the album La mia cucina antispreco, the purpose-designed game Nella nostra cucina non si spreca!, and a leaflet with the guide to the educational competition Talent Kitchen – storie di cucine che non sprecano, including the rules and suggestions for entries.
The children's work, produced both at school and at home and in all forms of expression and communication, will be assessed by a designated jury that will award the best entries — those that have interpreted the world of food most creatively and comprehensively, in all its facets: how to do the shopping, how to use technology to preserve food, and how to persuade people not to waste.
The winning schools will receive prizes from Whirlpool, which will also make a donation to ActionAid Italia, an international organisation that has been working for over 40 years to combat the causes of poverty, hunger and social exclusion in Italy and in more than 45 countries around the world.
Momenti da non sprecare starts from a clear premise: the food education of younger generations, so that they become agents of a new awareness and cultural shift towards an issue — food waste — whose solution can no longer wait. The project forms part of Whirlpool's social responsibility and sustainability policy, one of the pillars of which is guaranteeing access to food and promoting responsible and sustainable consumption.