Food waste

 

The creation of delicious food from simple food leftovers is an art that Italian women have been handing down from one generation to another. Classic examples of this custom is the “panzanella toscana” or the “pizza di pane”, recipes which were born to reuse stale bread. In all Italian regions numerous and various plates originated in order not to waste food. But since the post war period the tendency to save money and to reuse food have been decreasing. World food waste has increased enormously, because from the one hand food prices have been lowering, from the other hand people have less time to dedicate to grocery shopping and to cooking.
Who is used to make a shopping list before going to the supermarket? How many people do you see entering the supermarket with the phone in their hands or
Chi di noi è abituato a fare la lista della spesa prima di entrare in un supermercato? Quante persone vedete entrare al supermercato al telefono, in a rush, not even close to be focused on what they are buying? Almost anybody makes grocery shopping using a weekly consumption plan, analysing the quantity of food to buy considering their real necessities. The result of these behaviours is the purchase of unnecessary products or excessive amount of them. Who has never thrown away a jar of jam, forgotten in the fridge for days? Not to mention some sauces which are sold in xxl size and are often abandoned after the first time we use them.
Do you have any idea of how much food is wasted?
Well, in Europe on average annual food waste is around 180 kg of food per capita. At the top of this terrible table there is Hollande, where every person generates 579 kg of annual waste, while in Italy the amount of food per capita waste is “only” 149 kg.
Food waste happens mainly at home, where for each kilogram of food, 420 grams are wasted. But consider that in whole food supply chain for every kilogram of food further 390 grams are wasted.
Global data are even more worrying: 1,3 billion of tons of food intended for man are wasted every year. It means that a third of the whole world food production intended for man ends up in the garbage.
These data are appalling not only from an economic point of view, but also from a social perspective. It has been calculated that food waste in Italy alone could feed almost 44 million people. In the United States on average annual waste for a family of four could feed for one year a family in a developing country.
Another sore point of waste is pollution. According to the WWF Italy report “Quanta natura sprechiamo” (“How much nature we waste”), in 2012 in Italy have been used 1.226 million cubic metres of water for the production of food that has never been consumed. The same quantity of water could have been used to satisfy the annual demand for water of 19 million Italians. Again, in 2012 in Italy in order to produce and transport food which has never been consumed we created 24,5 million of tons of carbon dioxide and 230 thousand tons of reactive nitrogen.
Only in the last years, also because of the economic crisis, food waste in Italy has been slightly contracting. Still, the reduction is too low considering the amount of food we consume. This decrease is the result of the awareness Italians have started to have about the problem, according to Eurisko 2013 report.
The awareness of the food waste problem has been one of the milestones which motivated us to create Bivo. Bivo wish to give a contribution to fighting food waste. How much food have we wasted in our life because we didn’t have time to consume it?

Data used in this article comes from:
-Lo spreco alimentare: cause, impatti e proposte; Barilla Center for Food and Nutrition; 2012.
-Il libro nero degli sprechi; A. Segrè, L. Falasconi; Edizioni Ambiente; 2011.
-Quanta natura sprechiamo; WWF Italia Ong-Onlus; 2013.
-Indagine GfK Eurisko – Gli Italiani e lo spreco alimentare; 2013.