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FOOD WASTE: START OVER FROM FOOD EDUCATION

“Food is fuel. You get picky about what you put in the tank, your engine is gonna die. Now shut up and eat your garbage.” No great philosopher behind this quote, it’s simply from the movie Ratatouille and it suits us if we think that every year according to FAO, 1,3 billion tons of food is wasted. And if we don’t care much about food, in Italy this waste is making people lose around 13 billion euros per year, around 25 euros each month per family. Money are thrown away and food is wasted, and complaining won’t do much about it. Something concrete must be done and apparently, in Italy something is moving…

Italy and the food waste law

France is the true European pioneer of the food waste law, but Italy decided to take a step forward too by approving on March 17 the first law to deal with the food waste challenge. The promoter of this law, the PD (Democratic Party) deputy Maria Chiara Gadda, explained that “Compared to the French law, that focuses on penalization, the Italian one focuses on incentives and bureaucratic simplification and it allows to overcome many difficulties that donors can find (…) Punishing wasters is not so helpful: this is all about encouraging donations”.  Data show that 57% of the wastefulness is produced by food producers, distributors and restaurants, but the remaining 43% happens daily at our house. There is the need to re–educate people on the food’s value.

Love-Food-Not-Waste-poster1

Information first

Gadda declared: “It’s not a coincidence that the law talks about education too. The involved ministries will start cultural programs and campaigns to raise awareness. Moreover, radio and television should include in their shows schedule a special space to talk about these themes”. And if during the 60’s RAI had Maestro Manzi teaching to Italian illiterates on national television, now they want to do something similar. The food world is not just about the food chain, but there are other fundamental elements. Have you ever thought about how much energy is wasted to bring food on our tables? Once again, technology can help…

FoodCloud

Tech and Food-Sharing 

There are many solutions already, like “Feeding Forward“: an app developed by a group of Berkeley University students that fed more than 600 thousand homeless in the city of San Francisco. It is easy: it connects restaurants, supermarket and food producers with associations and NPOs to feed the ones in the need of food. And someting similar exists in Europe too. From 2013 there is a food sharing app, “FoodCloud”, that in Ireland connects supermarkets with no profit associations. The tech world can help us with innovative solutions, but it is just with real and shared awareness that we could really move a step forward…

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