www.systemic-design.net

1. UniversitàdegliStudidi
ScienzeGastronomiche
Franco Fassio - f.fassio@unisg.it
CIRCULAR ECONOMY FOR FOOD
A SYSTEMIC INTERPRETATION OF THE CIRCULAR ECONOMY
THROUGHT THE HOLISTIC VIEW OF THE GASTRONOMIC SCIENCES
Nadia Tecco – nadia.tecco@unito.it
RSD6 OSLO 18th October 2017

2. Researcher
at UNISG in
Systemic Design
applied to Gastronomy
Slow Food
National Councelor
Coordinator of
Systemic Food Design LAB
Researcher
at UNITO in
Critical Food Studies
UNITO Green Office
Food working group
CIRCULAR ECONOMY FOR FOOD
application of the systemic approach
to food
in all its meanings and across the whole life cycle
www.unisg.it
www.slowfood.it

3. Gastronomic sciences is our analytical framework
Gastronomy is the knowledge and understanding of all that relates to man as he eats
Jean-Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, Physiologie du Gout, 1826
A balanced interplay of dynamic dimensions
a complex interdisciplinary approach
Gastronomic sciences
considers the organoleptic
goodness of a food product,
its cultural and historical
value and the
environmental, social,
economical sustainability

4. Good, Clean and Fair
are the core value of a
System’s food quality
Good, Clean and Fair and outlines the criteria for a new quality that the food product should
fulfil across the whole life cycle: a new holistic vision of the gastronomy developed by
the University of Gastronomic Sciences.
The Goal is to transform the people into co-producers, actors that with their choices can influence the
market’s trend.
Everything should be as
simple as possible,
but not simpler.
(Albert Einstein, 1939).

5. hand & leafmarble & meatbrain cells & universe blood vessel & lightening
fossil debris & neural net galaxy & spiral aloe
Nature
In the living world we have systems within systems: they are
related not only as a static elements’configuration, but they share common
properties and organizational principles created by the interactions of the
different parts: the whole is more than the addition of the single elements.
• it works thanks to renewable process e with complex schemes
• it uses energy and material only when it needs
• it adapts the shape according to the function
• it recycles everything because each surplus is metabolized by
the system, through the dynamics of the five kingdoms
• it reward the cooperation e create resilience
• it collects diversity
• it needs local expertise
• it stops the excesses endogenously
• it understand the power of the limits.
Thomas Torelli, 2016, Un altro mondo

6. Man
• he is composed of systems that communicate with each other,
real and virtual
• he decomposes the complexity in independent problems
between them resulting in linear models of development and
narration
• he generates non-metabolizable waste
• he destroys the diversity (cultural and natural) through the
homologation
• he evaluates global conveniences
Human vs Nature, Agnieszka Lepka
boats & rivers fingerprint & trunk bark & skin
capillaries & lightning strikes mole & stars
• he rewards competitiveness
• he generates models that are not resilient as they are
standardized
• he doesn’t listen to the feedback that Nature provides him
• he mainly produces energy through combustion processes
• he doesn’t leave to the raw material time to regenerate
• he commends the appearance before the function
• he doesn’t restrain excesses from the inside and he
doesn’t respect any limit
capillaries & soil

7. The distance between nature and men increases when we deal with food
The connection is gradually falling apart
There’s an urgent problem of
environmental degradation and resource scarcity

8. A world of food waste and loss
Never in history have we had such availability of food for mankind,
and never have we had so much waste.
A big part of production still edible rots in the fields, unsold.
The causes for this phenomenon are
• commercial (off-size products, those that are too small or too large)
• market (costs of collection exceed the prices paid to farmers)
• aesthetic (products do not look nice).
According to the FAO (Food Wastage Footprint 2014) we loss and waste about 1/3
of the world food production, 1 billion and 600 million tons of food
(about 8700 cruise ships). 80% of this quantity is still edible.
In the world, 805 million of people suffer from hunger (165 million are
children), on the other hand, 500 million are obese and 1 billion and 500
million are overweight.
The European Commission (2012) notice that every year in Europe, 50%
of food is wasted, while 79 million of citizens live under the poverty
threshold and 16 million depends on food aid.
By doing nothing, waste production will increase by 40% whithin 2020.

9. • money: in Italy, food is the second most important
item for the family balance after the house.
Every Italian spends 14.2% of his salary to buy food
and 27% of this shopping is wasted: around 6.5 euro
per week.
• life of working people in the food supply chain and
of the ecosystems involved.
• water: at a global level every year, for the food
production, we waste 250 billion litres of water
(which is the equivalent of the consumption of New
York for the next 120 years).
• soil: at a global level, the soil wasted for the food
production is 1.4 billion of hectares (30% of the
world agricultural surface).
• CO2: the amount of CO2 generated from the food
production, transformation, conservation and
transport, corresponds to 3.3 billion of tons of CO2.
What are we wasting?
Curiosity reasoning on the Life Cycle
• Every day an Italian uses on average
200 litres of water.
• How many litres of water to produce a can of
Coca Cola?
200 litres.
• How many litres to have a cup of coffee?
140 litres

10. How much money?
The Azienda Municipalizzata per l’Ambiente
of Rome, evaluates in 250 euro per ton,
the money necessary for the food
waste disposal.
If we multiply this number by the 20 million
of tons of food that became waste every
year in Italy, the Italian system needs,
5 billion euros every year
only to dispose of food waste.
While at a global level (1 billion 600 million
tons) about 400 billion euros are spent.
In 2010 FAO claimed that around 33.5
billion euros would be enough
to fight starvation around the world!
The cost of food waste
at a global level corresponds to
750 billion dollars
It has been estimated that the value of
domestic waste in Italy
is 8.1 million euros yearly

11. CIRCULAR ECONOMY: 3 principles
A bottom-up sustainable development
strategy proposed by Eu in 2014
(in China in 2002 top down approach),
aiming to improve the efficiency of
materials and energy use
A system where no products go to waste
and materials are constantly renewed.
1. Preserve and enhance natural
capital
…by controlling finite stocks and balancing
renewable resource flows
2. Optimise resource yields
...by circulating products, components, and
materials at the highest utility at all times in
both technical and biological cycles
3. Foster system effectiveness
...by revealing and designing out negative
externalities

12. 1) Design out waste
Waste does not exist when the biological and
technical components of a product are designed by
intention to fit within a biological or technical
materials cycle
2) Build resilience through diversity
Modularity, versatility, and adaptivity are prized
features that need to be prioritised in a fast-
evolving world
3) Work towards energy from
renewable sources
Systems should ultimately aim to run on renewable
energy—enabled by the reduced threshold energy
levels required by a restorative, circular economy
CIRCULAR ECONOMY: 5 characteristics
4) Think in systems
The ability to understand how parts influence one another within a whole, and the relationship of the whole
to the parts, is crucial
5) Think in cascades
For biological materials, the essence of value creation lies in the opportunity to extract additional value
from products and materials by cascading them through other applications

13. • The potential impact of these theories and
practices, which systemic design has
embraced as its guiding principles, is
enormous, including its possible influence on
food systems
• Food system determines impact on the area
and the community more than any other system
• A limit that can become a chance
especially for:
- the implications of food actions/policies on
spatial and socio-economic relationships
between different actors in the food
system and between rural and urban
areas;
- the development effects of strategies that
address the welfare and health needs
of the human and animal
population.
CIRCULAR ECONOMY for/on food
Food as a leverage

14. Systemic Design
to design
RELATIONSHIPS of material and
immaterial value
that narrate a system quality.
Holistic Survey
Analysis of the FLOW of
matter, energy and
knowledge
SYSTEMIC APPROACH Holistic Survey
Study the
structure of the
overall behavior
of interacting SYSTEM

15. The Observatory for the Circular Economy for Food
• moving from theory to practice, looks at the way by which food supply chain actors have embraced
the ideas of the circular economy
• catalogues existing national and international experiences and new perspectives of the
Circular Economy declined in the world of food
• analyses projects where the underlying principles of the Circular Economy are applied, and through the
Systemic Food Design approach gives empirical contributions to develop transition perspectives
• works to realize the Circular Economy for Food Index

16. Material, energy and knowledge
flow, interactions among systems,
creation of new connections and
relationship
Relations map, rate of resources
optimization, cost and benefit
analysis considering the different
dimensions of the Gastronomy
Methodological Steps
Data collection
Company
interview
Factsheet elaboration
Scenario analysis, identification of
the circular economy for food &
food sustainability characteristics,
strengths and weaknesses
Systemic
analysis
Identification of the common
ground of CEFF

17. 40 Case histories
Bottiglie e vasi in vetro per alimenti

18. PRODUCT
PROCESS
PACKAGING
ENVIRONMENT TERRITORY
SOCIETY
ECONOMY
RELATIONSHIP
Natural
capital
Optimise
yields
System
effectiveness
Design out
waste
Resilience/
diversity
Renewable
sources
Think in
systems
Think in
cascades
CEFF
Systemic Analysis
CIRCULAR ECONOMY
PRINCIPLES
& CHARACTERISTICS
FOOD SUSTAINABILITY
PRINCIPLES
& CHARACTERISTICS

19. Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

20. UniversitàdegliStudidi
ScienzeGastronomiche
Thank you!
f.fassio@unisg.it / nadia.tecco@unito.it