OCTOBER 28, 2021: European Day Against Food Waste

What we do at Fumagalli Danilo

How POMnatura, our e-commerce service for consumers, we have enthusiastically joined the ToGoodToGoproject—an app founded in Denmark and now widespread throughout Europe, boasting 5 million users, and the first to bring together all food and restaurant businesses that can offer food nearing its expiration date (fresh, ultra-fresh, or packaged) at a significantly discounted price. Every day, on the platform of Fumagalli Danilo Srl at Via Ferrante Brioschi, 39 in Vergo Zoccorino (MB), you can pick up our ToGoodToGo Magic Box, a service that’s been incredibly popular with private customers—who have picked up more than 2,500 boxes in just one year, actively contributing to the fight against food waste.

Our 6,000-square-meter refrigerated platform is under constant monitoring, just as the cold chain is ensured from the base to our customers’ address. No food waste can therefore occur during storage and delivery.

Finally, the inevitable waste we generate during the cutting process for fresh-cut produce—one of our value-added services—is of excellent quality. We therefore use it for pet food, partnering with companies that specialize in the production and sale of pet food.

 

Why we do it. Let’s look at the data released by the FAO

Every year, about 14% of the food produced is wasted along the path from harvest to sale, and once purchased, an additional 22% is lost in retail, 17% in households, and 5% in the foodservice sector. Our fruit and vegetable sector accurately reflects this picture provided by the “Food Waste and Food Footprint: Impacts on Natural Resources” —the 2021 report prepared and published by the FAO, which, for the first time, measures not only the economic value of food waste (750 billion dollars per year for 1.3 billion metric tons of food) but also the impact that waste has on the environment, including the climate, water resources, biodiversity, and so on.

The good news is that a new awareness, both on a personal and corporate level, is emerging for everyone to do their part, both for obvious moral reasons (the paradox is that still 870 million people in the world do not get enough to eat) and for economic reasons, because waste does not benefit anyone. It is not for nothing that the most virtuous figure, among those mentioned above, is the one referring to the catering sector: since it is a budget and sustainability item for the enterprise, there is the utmost care in keeping it under control. Let’s learn from them!

Further good news to serve as an incentive to do better comes from Italy, which wasted 11.78 percent less in 2020 than the previous year.

How can we do to further reduce waste?

The above-mentioned FAO report, consistent with the UN 2030 agenda that sets out to halve waste by 9 years from now, gives guidance on how to effectively reduce food waste, here is a brief vademecum:

For farms: the greatest loss occurs at the storage stage, if facilities are not adequate such as space and refrigeration, but also if there is a lack of expertise to manage the balance between supply and demand more wisely. It is clear that in agriculture we cannot produce “on demand,” as many sectors, including industrial ones, are beginning to do, but we can take better care of sales forecasts so that excessive natural resources are not wasted on growing products that will remain unsold. Thoughtful farmers are creating virtuous circles of great impact, such as recycling food waste to produce biogas in specific plants.In fact, uncontrolled disposal of food produces methane, one of the most environmentally damaging gases.

For food processing and distribution companies: the best decision to make when faced with unsold food is to put it back into circulation to benefit people who cannot afford to buy it, by forming ongoing partnerships with recognized organizations, so that the assistance they receive is predictable rather than sporadic (or even excessive during certain times of the year, such as the Christmas holidays). If the unsold food is not suitable for human consumption—even due to issues such as shelf life, logistics, or the cold chain—it can be used for animal feed.

For consumers: don’t fill pantry and refrigerator impulsively, but do your shopping by planning your choices, not discarding fruit and vegetable products with defects that are purely cosmetic. Recycle “refrigerator bottoms” by relying on one’s own creativity or the many anti-waste recipes found online, relying on common sense when faced with an expiration date (also subjectively assess the state of the product).

 

Tasty anti-waste recipes

Online, you can find many recipes developed by Italy’s greatest chefs—from Cracco to Sadler, from Bowerman to Oldani—but we’d like to highlight the pioneer of this movement, Lisa Casali, who many years ago developed a philosophy for creating eco-sustainable food; you can find her here.

 

Curiosities in the field

A virtuous anti-waste example in agriculture? We learned about what’s behind SPIREAT, the zero-waste organic Italian spirulina that takes the energy to heat the water in the growing tanks from the farmer’s biogas plant that houses greenhouses on his land. Magnificent alliance, for now in the Cremasque soon to be in Sicily.

Have you heard of BELLA DENTRO? It’s the award-winning initiative of a couple who one day decided to combat the enormous waste of fruits and vegetables that farmers are unable to sell due to cosmetic reasons—first by raising awareness, then by opening retail locations in Milan and launching a small production line of processed products (juices, chips, etc.).