Local Headlines

Sacchi di pane fresco gettati nell'immodizia

Bags of fresh bread thrown in the trash

Leggo, giovedì 2 settembre, p. 20

The city was up in arms about the wasteful gesture on the part of the supermarket on via Gattamelata, Eurospar. Last Wednesday afternoon, they threw away kilos of fresh bread. This was probably because they did not sell everything that was baked in the morning and all food stores are closed on Wednesday afternoons. The local poor and homeless steadily arrived at the public trash container in question and took advantage of the boon.

I have seen homeless pilfering from that exact trash spot for years. There are two men in particular that gather their fruits and vegetables there just about everyday. There must have been more poor coming by that particular day, with the overflowing bread. In general, I have never seen anyone upset by these people going through the trash. The sight is an affirmation that poverty exists and that we are a wasteful society nowadays, throwing away things that are still usable and edible. It's an old and sad story...

In Italy, tons of unused bread ends up as rubbish from bakeries, food markets and individual houses. In January, the Corriere della Sera reported that Italy averages 24,230 tons of bread ending up in the waste bin a month. Not everybody uses their day-old bread. We can buy pane gratttugiato (bread crumbs) for very cheap, and even if Italian grate up the old crusty bread, there is only so much they can use of it at once. It's an interesting dilemna. Fresh is great but can be wasteful. Long-lasting is convenient but can be terrible as far as taste and health is concerned. We already consume enough preservatives in other food stuffs, right?

Veneto bread does not last as long as some other varieties on the penisola. I remember the bread I ate in Tuscany and other more southern areas of Italy would last up to a week. You just cut off slices as you go. The crust is thicker and must protect the bread from the air better. Here the bread shapes are all rather small and have thin crusts. Most of the bread is sandwich size: mantovani, zoccoletti, francesini, ecc.

F is buying some as I write. We just better make sure we finish off what we buy today. Panini are in order for lunch.

Impressive Recycling

The recycling system is one aspect of the new surburb where I live, just outside of Padua, that has been most noticeable. Its autonomous government administration takes recycling very seriously.

Things were a bit different in Padua. I used to just take my recycling bucket to the two giant bins that asked me to divide into the following categories: yellow for paper products and blue for tins, plastic and glass. Sometimes there was also a small brown bin for umido (organic waste). Then at a nearby spot, you could open the big metal trash bins for all other non-recyclable trash. The plastic bins, especially for paper, would get emptied about once every 2 weeks and you hoped that the bin wasn't already overflowing 5 days before the trucks came by.

A picture from a former post:



Now in Noventa, I've been presented with a near rainbow of recycle bins.
YELLOW for paper
ORANGE for plastic
BLUE for tins, cans and glass
GRAY for non-recylables
GREEN for organic
BROWN for grass and plant clippings

I don't understand why everything is colored differently except the 2 blue and gray containers that almost look the same color, especially after dark. You need to read the fine print on the bin to understand the difference. Did they run out of available colors? What about trendy purple, for example? The tins could go there.


Anyway, they are all lined up at the foot of my building or hidden within the property of each of my neighbors' individual houses. You have to put the correct bins out on the right days, according to the official calendar provided by the city. This is nothing different from many American towns, I presume. But there is barely enough space in the lousy 2 bins we have for the non-recyclables. This is especially when I consider I live with another 8 families. The paper bins get filled in record time, too, but we have 3 of them.

Not only do we have the above-listed divisions, but my new town has yet another category: bins for used diapers. There are so many young families brimming with children, and inevitably their thousands of pannolini (diapers), that you see these special containers dotting the municipality.



This system is in stark contrast to places like Naples, which had its citizens burning excess trash that was overflowing in the streets from the lack of pick-up at the normal city on-street trash bins. This was big news and considered a national disaster in 2008. Information also came out that very little recycling was done at all in that area, therefore aggravating the situation of general trash collection for the city. There was just too much trash and awful trash management (maybe due to the Naples' mafia involvement in waste removal?).

Meanwhile we are here in the Northeast, dividing and dragging out bins to the streets after dusk almost every night. So far F and I haven't had to do it for our building but we will be on duty for the whole month of September. That will be "fun", I'm sure. In the end, we'll be doing our civic duty.