During the final conference of the EU Project LIFE-Food.Waste.StandUp – held in Rome last 20th September 2019, the competition OSCAR “LIFE-Food.Waste.StartUp” took place: it involved start-ups operating in the framework of food waste and surplus management, proposing activities with a positive impact on food processing, retailers, catering and charities for food donations.
Five innovative projects got awarded: Bella Dentro, Food For Good, BringTheFood, Myfoody – Anagramma Srl and the Istituto professionale di Stato per l’Enogastronomia e l’Ospitalità alberghiera “Vincenzo Gioberti” of Rome.
The startup Bella Dentro, active in the horticultural Italian sector, represents the first project pursuing the goal of fighting against food waste, merely depending on aesthetic and not quality standards. Since the beginning of its activity in April 2018, Bella Dentro team (only two people working with one Apecar) has recovered 35.000 kg of fruit and vegetables, which then would have been wasted.
Run by Federcongressi&Eventi, in collaboration with Banco Alimentare Onlus and Equoevento, the Food For Good project aims to recover, after events with banqueting, food surplus: uneaten food is thus donated to charities (e.g. foster homes, soup kitchens for the needy, refugee charities etc.). This initiative, included as best practice in the EU platform of food losses and waste, made it possible to recover 122.000 ready meals and about 6.800 kg of bread and fruits.
BringTheFood is an App run by Fondazione Bruno Kessler, designed for charities to collect and redistribute cooked and expiring products, but also production surplus. Since its beginning, this service (guaranteed by the collaboration with several gathering networks as Banco Alimentare of Trentino-Alto Adige, Rete Ricibo of Genoa, ReteSolida Project of Padua) has recovered 97 tons of food surplus from restaurants and 1535 tons of processing surplus.
Myfood is a useful App indicating offers from supermarkets involved in the initiative of expiring foodstuff or products with packaging defects: it allows to raise awareness among retailers and consumers on the fight against food waste. The Start Up from Milan follows a “blue economy” approach, by which what risks to be wasted may be value-generating and can still be used: they ensure a better management of food surplus risking to become waste, turning them into useful resources for stakeholders.
Last but not least, students from the State Professional Institute for Enogastronomy and Hotel Hospitality “Vincenzo Gioberti” in Rome engaged themselves in creating shot videos to introduce recipes “against food waste” with virtuous measures for the valorization of food surpluses.