Food waste, 'volunteering is not enough, we need professionals and facilitation'

"The Italia system for combating food waste, based exclusively on permanent free volunteering, is by now close to collapse and is incapable of managing volumes of surpluses that, if properly valorised, could be transformed from an environmental and social cost into a lever for economic and employment development": to say this is Diego Ciarloni, president of the Marche-based voluntary association Foodbusters, who, on the occasion of the National Day for the Fight against Food Waste, carried out a lucid analysis of the criticalities of this sector in Italia and of the interventions needed for a paradigm shift.

The report emphasises the need to build a systemic, structured and circular welfare model to combat food waste, so that Italy decreases the amount of food thrown away - more than 5 million tonnes in 2025, estimates Waste Watcher, with a countervalue of 13.5 billion euro, we are still the worst in Europe, albeit 10% less than last year - actually halving it by 2030, as predicted by the EU.

"We need a reform of the recovery models that is supported by dedicated fiscal instruments and that includes the professionalisation of operators and the overcoming of the logistical precariousness of voluntary organisations, moving from the concept of marginal favour to that of professional social work,' Ciarloni explains. 'The recovery of surpluses must evolve into a system of social and environmental protection, where rewarding taxation, the professionalisation of personnel and the availability of public logistics infrastructures work together to create a real circular food economy'.

Foodbuster's report identifies the problems and proposes solutions, also starting from the almost ten-year experience of this association, which continues to rely on the commitment of volunteers and to clash with bureaucratic and logistical barriers. In fact, although the Gadda law promotes recovery through tax incentives and bureaucratic simplifications, its effectiveness is often thwarted at the local level by the lack of strategic vision of municipalities, which consider associations mere beneficiaries of occasional subsidies instead of operational partners and which still unevenly apply the possibilities offered by the law, such as the reduction of the Tari (local tax) according to the quantity of food donated and duly certified. Among the report's proposals is also the introduction of an obligation for municipalities with more than 30,000 inhabitants to provide stable operational headquarters for volunteer organisations specialising in food recovery and the extension of bonuses to third sector organisations that manage recovery.

Another front where a change of approach is needed is school catering. "Although we and others are regularly invited to talk about food waste in classrooms, these meetings rarely turn into operational activations," says Ciarloni. In fact, the structural implementation of surplus recovery in canteens remains the exception. Studies conducted as part of the Reduce project show that almost 30 per cent of the food prepared in Italian schools is not consumed: 17 per cent is left on the plates, while 13 per cent is uneaten food that is thrown into organic waste instead of being recovered for social purposes.