Food waste is one of the big "sins" of the modern world, especially in the Occident where every year the equivalent of 2.06 trillion of euro is trown into the trash.
Leftover food on your dish and then thrown in the garbage, food bought and then left in the fridge for weeks, tons of fruit and vegetables discarded by the industry because they are aesthetically not conform to the eye of the consumer. In our beautiful country, we waste 0.5% of GDP, ie around 8 billion euro. According to the Observatory on waste in Italy on average 17% of purchased fruit and vegetables, 15% of fish, 28% of pasta and bread, 29% of eggs, 30% meat and 32% of dairy products are trashed. For an Italian family that means a loss of about 1,693 Euros per year *.
In the wake of France, where it became a crime for companies to waste food, Italy is taking on an anti-waste law that will allow easier access to supermarkets, restaurants and food businesses to donate foods that are not needed or are advanced. But if the French law is based on a mechanism of penaltiy for those who waste, the Italian aims to ease the bureaucracy and to encourage donations making them more affordable then to waste.
The provision relating to the indigent table, which works to connect charitable organizations to productive realities, will be increased by EUR 2 billion, but will start also two other funds by 1 million euro each, one for the 2016-2018 biennium which will finance research projects with the aim of studying new types of packaging-waste, the other to promote the use, in catering, doggy bag to take home the leftovers. Among the innovations that the proposal wants to introduce is also the simplification of the statement that the giver has to make and the incentive to the redistribution of confiscated foods, with discounts proportional to donations of the tax for refuse **.
Until the law passes the approval of the Senate, citizens have begun to get involved and Huffington Post, in cooperation with Change.org, has launched worldwide the Global Waste Campaign to raise awareness on the subject and propose concrete solutions.
Until July 28, we therfore are all invited to think and to propose solutions that go in the direction of the cancellation of food waste. Here (Italian only) you can cast campaigns and collect signatures to call upon a more conscious use of food.
