Rete e reti per contrastare lo spreco alimentare: pratiche di consumo responsabile nell’era digitale

Abstract

National and international researches on the subject of food waste confirm that such waste are relevant even in the domestic consumption. Thus responsible and sustainable consumption turns out to be necessary in order to reduce food waste. To limit such levels of waste and set in motion surplus food re-distribution mechanisms, it’s been implemented practices, eased by enabled environment like web platform, that promote the "free gift" in the framework of a collaborative consumption. The keywords marking these online anti-food waste practices, are solidarity, sociability, trust and reciprocity, "doing together" in order to cooperate. This paper aims to develop an analysis that makes us understand how this collaborative consumption, conceptually meant in the broader framework of the sharing economy, favour re-distribution practices of surplus food. In such case the added value is represented by a social capital to the end of collective wellbeing. Practices carried out by consumers to tackle food waste by means of sharing digital platform, experiment new way of consumption, socialization, mobilization, participation, civic engagement. These processes take place in a global economy context where decentralization of the production means and free access are progressively replacing the ownership, exchange is replacing the production. The citizens-consumers interconnected, ever more aware of their privileged role of critics, are experimenting a really collaborative attitude combining their personal needs with those of society seeking, thus, new ways to live sustainably.