How to combat food waste: good practices to follow

The festivities, in Italy above all, are accompanied by lunches and dinners, protagonists of these days; unfortunately it is also the period in which the highest peaks of waste are recorded. Below there is a series of actions aimed at reducing food waste during the holidays, but also in everyday life.

Reading time: 4 min

The company Too Good To Go, which deals with the reduction of food surpluses, has published a new research¹ in collaboration with YouGov, with the aim of investigating the habits of Italians during the Christmas holidays.
It emerged that almost 40% of Italians waste more than ¼ of food purchased and/or prepared; 86% of respondents say they waste food during the Christmas holidays.
According to the research, 4 out of 10 Italians advance more typical sweets such as panettone, pandoro and cakes (despite the high cost). The ranking is followed by bread (35%) and hors d'oeuvres such as cold cuts, snacks or pies (25%).
On the solutions to avoid waste before-during-after the holidays, instead, Italians choose more to freeze leftovers (51%), share excess food (45%) and use anti-waste recipes (43%).
Too Good To Go, which since 2019 has saved over 16,500,000 meals, shares other good practices that can be implemented to reduce the waste of Christmas leftovers as much as possible:

draw up an accurate and detailed shopping list, with the most precise planning possible of recipes and meals;
serve a smaller portion of food at the table, inviting you to ask for an encore, rather than filling the plate too much and risk that there are leftovers;
inquire about the needs and/or food preferences of its guests, so as to prepare dishes appreciated by all without the risk of wasting them;
always remember past experiences: if last year certain foods are left over, reduce the purchase/ preparation.

Two other platforms focused on the distribution of excess food:

The start-up Bestbefore, founded at the end of 2020, is trying to create a model that counteracts the waste of large-scale distribution: it buys imperfect food, end-of-stock or close to maturity and sells it with discounts of up to 70%. These are products that have packaging defects, packaging with graphics no longer in production, or with a short deadline – while specifying that these are not foods that will expire within a few days, but products with a deadline within 3-6 months. Since its launch, Bestbefore has saved about 2 thousand tons of food.
Another start-up, also established in 2020, is Babaco market: their goal is to save and sell fruit and vegetables with small defects, such as sympathetic forms or unusual measures, which are not accepted by large retailers, and therefore often destined to waste. Most of the products are supplied in bulk inside the box, to limit the use of packaging materials, primarily plastic.

As for our capital, since 2015 individual volunteers, associations, companies and public institutions are engaged in the recovery and redistribution of food surpluses, with a series of activities focused on countering the environmental and social impact of food waste.
In 2022 alone in the city of Turin 313,286 kg of food were recovered, later redistributed to about 6 thousand people. Important numbers obtained from the recovery activities of the RePoPP and Carovana Salvacibo projects, focused on fruit and vegetables and places where there is a greater risk that this becomes waste.

The RePoPP project, launched in 2016, is a social and ecological event taking place at the end of the market, and consists of an action to recover surpluses in seven city markets, which is accompanied by the on-site redistribution of unsold fruit and vegetables that are difficult to keep for the following days, and an awareness-raising campaign for separate collection aimed at both street vendors and citizens who frequent the markets. It is important to talk about the centrality of the reduction of waste, also taking into account how markets have changed over the years. During 2022, 129,403 kg of fruit and vegetables were recovered and distributed in the seven markets, with beneficiaries amounting to about 2,123 households (average monthly data).
The project Carovana Salvacibo, started in pandemic, deals with the recovery of surpluses produced by wholesalers within the CAAT (Turin agricultural centre, tr. Centro Agro Alimentare Torino) and Battaglio S.p.A., and then redistribute them to the citizens' bodies dealing with combating poverty in the most disadvantaged sections of the population. In 2022 alone, the project recovered 183,883 kg of food (mainly fruit and vegetables) and then redistributed it to 27 entities, with about 4 thousand people in need. In agreement with the main realities of the Third Sector of the city is also active project Sabato Salvacibo, a mobilization of volunteers in Italy that every Saturday recovers and redistributes the unsold of 18 city markets.

The activities to combat food waste go beyond the recovery of surpluses: in collaboration with the Central Market of Turin, from Monday to Friday, part of the food recovered from the market of Porta Palazzo is cooked by the Ecomori, mixing the traditional kitchens of Sub-Saharan Africa with the Italian one, producing in the stand "Banco Circolare" about 250 meals per week to support homeless people (the food is cooked for some dormitories and for the institutions that deal with the distribution in the street).
In collaboration with Officine Ozanam, however, part of the fruit recovered at CAAT is transformed into compost.

In conclusion, food waste has an impact on both society and the environment: it is good to recall both the importance of ensuring equal access to food, and the importance that the fight against waste has for the protection of the environment (for example, the amount of CO2 emitted into the atmosphere as a result of food waste is comparable to that produced by the great industrial powers – USA and China in the first place).
In Italy, despite the many and often commendable initiatives, there is still a lack of information and education on food behaviour and waste behaviour, both for producers and consumers, sometimes rendering actions ineffective.

¹ The complete study is not public, but in the "media" section of Too Good To Go official website is available the press release with the main evidence.

Alessia Santoro

For further informations:
Nuova ricerca di Too Good To Go: “A Natale circa il 40% degli italiani spreca più di un quarto di cibo” (Eco dalle città)
Dalle piattaforme online al recupero degli invenduti del mercato: il Natale è anti-spreco (Economia circolare)
Torino all’avanguardia nel recupero di frutta e verdura ai mercati (Eco dalle città)

Data

Wed, 01/03/2024 - 11:52