When we buy a product rather than another for convenience and usefulness, or pleasure (it costs less and is more useful or we love it more), we use our knowledge (information) in the best way. But do we have the slightest idea whether the product we have chosen is environment-friendly, it is not the result of child labour, has a longer life, and so on?

To help us understand the environmental, ethical, social and economic consequences of a consumption choice is one of the purposes for which the Library of the School of conscious consumption was born. It collects about 1,800 volumes (Catalogue updated in April 2018) which can be freely accessed and borrowed (http://www.cr.piemonte.it/web/per-il-cittadino/biblioteca-della-regione/biblioteca).

 

A section of the library is dedicated to the fight against waste and here is a list of the books we host. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We cYeart perceive it as such simply because it is water that we literally "eat", contained in the food we consume, which comes from all over the world. "The water we eat," tell us, with a multidisciplinary approach, about the water issue and its for economic, social and political implications. It ideally wants to act as a bridge between those who carry out academic and scientific research and those interested in the great issue of environmental sustainability. This book offers multiple interpretations through the work of the greatest Italian and world experts./span>

(From the website ibs.it)

 

 

 

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THE OTHER SPENDING (L'ALTRA SPESA)

 

(From the publisher's site)

 

 

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AMERICAN WASTELAND

 

 

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INVITATION TO A HAPPY SOBRIETY

 

 

 

 

 

"I wonder if it is true that we want to get better, when every day we do everything to get worse. That is, we do one thing only: obey blindly to the market, to the techno-economic frenzy that dominates the world. More work, more quickly, more anxiously. For what? Just wondering is a miracle, because there is no time to ask ourselves"

 

In this books experts have united to draw a line from the point where we are to the one we must reach in the near future, within a generation, so that there might still be joy and justice.

It is necessary to change our life so that life on Earth might slowly regenerate.

 

 

(From the publisher's site)

 

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THE CHALLENGE OF A HUNDRED THINGS

 

 

 

In 2008, Dave Brown, a family man like many others, has decided to avoid the nagging urge of consumerism eliminating the superfluous and adapting to live with only one hundred things . He had no idea that from this spark a real movement would be borne: his initiative has attracted almost immediately the interest of the media and has become an example followed by many.

The challenge of the 100 things is a reaction to consumer culture, inducing a constant desire to buy things, never giving a real sense of satisfaction. Dave Bruno tells interesting anecdotes and practical advice to get rid of the superfluous to live a more meaningful life. The challenge of the 100 things is a golden opportunity to reflect on the positive effects of the rejection of consumerism and test them in real life.

www.la sfidadelle100cose.it

 

(From the publisher's site)

 

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FARM CITY

 

 

 

"My farm is located in the slum, in dead end street." This is the intriguing beginning of a biographical story by Novella Carpenter, the daughter of a pair of hippies. Welcome to the Ghost Town slum, the seediest parts of Oakland, California, where Novella moved with her husband Bill. Crumbling buildings, wrecked cars, piles of garbage piled up along the streets, underground economies, fallow plots. This is a humanity matted and explosive: Yemeni shopkeepers, graffiti artists, prostitutes and drug dealers, Vietnamese families, adolescents, African Americans, building speculators, Buddhist monks and the Black Panthers, Latinos football players, homeless people, a mix of races, cultures and experiences, a set of aberrations that, in some way or another, hey found a way to live together. Fascinated by the idea of food self-sufficiency Carpenter gets from an abandoned plot, overrun with weeds and buried under the garbage, first a kitchen garden, then a real farm.
Not only salad tomatoes then, but also turkeys, geese, chickens, ducks, pigs. The book is a fun chronicle day by day, full of anecdotes, meetings, practical tips, culinary excellence, of how Carpenter succeed, with much effort and more than a mishap, to realize the dream of her life. Nevertheless, on another level, it is also a profound reflection on all those things that we sacrifice, more and more today, on the altar of the fast life.

 

 (From the publisher's site)

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ECOCOOKING (ECOCUCINA)

 

 

 

Did you know that artichoke leaves have a delicious flavour? And that nothing of the pumpkin should be thrown away, not even the peel? To avoid waste is a growing need, even in the kitchen, an area in which the concepts of sustainability and conservation are gaining more and more acceptance. Lisa Casali is back on a theme particularly dear to her and shows us a new approach, based on a simple premise: you can make nice and tasty dishes by using scraps of food, the parts that are usually removed because they are considered inedible. Not only discarded parts are often the richest, from a nutritional standpoint, than the 'noble' parts, but also with them, you can make colourful and imaginative recipes, full of flavour. A tasty cuisine and in harmony with the environment, ranging from appetizers to the main course. It can transform any time of day and any occasion: from office lunch menu to holiday recipes, from a snack to a birthday party. A book full of ideas that will not lack in recipes, making the most of vegetables and fruits, showing both sides A and B of food.

 

(From the publisher's site)

 

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COOKING WITH (ALMOST) ZERO IMPACT

 

 

 

 

Cooking in a sustainable way is easy: we can reduce our impact on the environment simply through small daily actions. Every choice made in a responsible manner is an important step towards a more careful and mindful way of life.

Cooking with a low environmental impact is also good for us because it gives us the opportunity to eat in a more healthy and tasty way.

In this book you will find many tips and tricks to respect the environment in the kitchen, beginning with the choice of ingredients and ending with the cooking methods. And to put into practice the principles of a sustainable cuisine here are so many tasty recipes that creatively use the parts of the foods that we use to eliminate: tomato skins, fish bones and pumpkin seeds have never been so tasty!

 

 

(From the publisher's site)

 

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100 POUNDS LESS

 

 

 

Inspired by a theatre show that has received considerable acclaim, “100 pounds less” tells how we can reduce to almost zero, the amount of waste we produce every day at home and at work. Alternating scientific investigation with stories and anecdotes, Roberto Cavallo sifts through the actions that make up our daily lives, and for each one tells us what to do to decrease the amount of garbage that might be produced. From detergents on draught to tap water, from advice to produce compost in one’s own home to the use of eco nappies; from offices that save paper and electricity to zero waste birthday parties... The results are certainly going to surprise us, because if it is true that the rubbish bin is always ready to take advantage of all our carelessness to fatten at both the environment and our wallet expense, it is also true that reducing waste is easy and advantageous, and it can be fun as well.

 

(From the publisher's site)

 

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HANDBOOK OF THE CONSCIOUS CONSUMER

 

 

 

Is consuming an induced automatic reaction or a rational choice? It is in any case a necessity, but you may choose to do so "in style". So, what drives us when, just to name a few, we fill the shopping cart, we decide how to move or choose our holidays, might be not all that incessant advertising but a more well-reasoned choice;  one taking into account not only our tastes and our self-satisfaction, but also respect for people, environment and animals. Consuming is not just buying. Sometimes you think that ethical choices only concerns the type of products you buy or where you buy them. This is certainly important, but we must not lose sight of the fact that consuming, at times, does not entail the act of purchasing. To mindfully consume also implies  sharing, exchanging, reusing. This manual is intended to help the reader navigate the intricate world of consumption. Learn how to read a label, differentiate waste properly, replace polluting products with "do it yourself" detergents are just some of the practical tips that make up this work.

 

(From the publisher's site)

 

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CLOUDS AND FLUSHES

 

 

 

Water is the '"blue gold" of the third millennium, capable of sparking off conflicts as is already happening for fossil oil. It is not infinite, though nearly one billion people do not have enough to meet their basic needs, in the of the developed Western countries it is often wasted with great indifference. The main thesis of this book is that it is possible to reduce significantly domestic water consumption and the consequent pollution, without sacrificing the level of comfort that we have long been accustomed to.

To do this it is necessary to start a small "revolution" which, more than technical and political, is first of all a cultural one.

Who said that to flush a toilet you have to use drinking water? And why have we abandoned the practice of accumulating and reusing the rain? Clouds and flushes analyses the strategies that have been adopted over the centuries for water management both at home and in the city and shows how to use it in a smarter way (...).


(From the publisher's site)

 

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ZERO WASTE

 

 

 

A house without a rubbish bin, a city without a rubbish dump. It can be done!

This manual explains why waste prevention is better than its disposal: all the individual and collective practices for a life without garbage. The challenge today is not only to recycle, but to "prevent" waste: reducing or eliminating waste and replacing short-lived objects with durable ones.
And, like Gandhi, to become "cleaners of ourselves" in our home or office. Foreword by Paul Connett Rossano Ercolini, historical figures of the Zero Waste strategy.

(From the publisher's site)

 

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HOW MUCH IS ENOUGH?

 

 

 

(...) The irresistible ascent of consumerism in our lifestyles is the fastest and most important change that the human species has ever experienced in everyday life. Within a few generations, the richest fifth of humanity has become motorist, tele viewer, shopping centres haunter and  buyer of "disposable" items.

The paradox is that while the consumer society has proved to have a formidable ability to harm the environment, it has not succeeded in making us satisfied with ourselves. It is as if consumerism had given us in indigestion, gorging ourselves on material goods we have revealed all of our social, psychological spiritual problems.

On the other hand the opposite extreme, the misery of over one billion people, is morally odious and even more damaging to the human spirit, as well as to the environment: think of the starving farmers who survive by burning or cutting forests. If Earth and man are suffering from both ‘too much’ and ‘too little’, we ask ourselves How much is enough? What is the Earth’s threshold for sustaining our consumption demand? When the increasing amount of goods produced and consumed stops being a value added to the quality of life? (...)

Durning’s conclusion is that the fate of humanity and the "natural kingdom" are intimately connected, and depend largely on us, consumers in the rich countries. We can reduce the use of environmentally destructive goods and cultivate our intangible needs instead (family and social relationships, gratification at work). Alternatively, we can abdicate our responsibilities for the poorest among humanity and the environment, let our lifestyle annihilate the Earth.

(From the publisher's site)

 

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KEEP AN EYE ON WASTE

 

 

 

A way out of the crisis is possible. It is a practicable path, paved with good sense and simple but effective gestures, like reusing shopping bags, choosing rechargeable batteries and biodegradable materials, using one’s creativity to the benefit of energy saving. In these pages, Cristina Gabetti offers the reader a vast and amazing assortment of recipes for a more sober life, but especially a life more in harmony with the world we inhabit: "There is a great stir out there but it seems only a bunch of useless words if you do not come into play. That is it ‘to play the game’. I give you actual cases to draw inspiration from. "So: keep an eye on waste!

 

(From the publisher's site)

 

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JUST A LITTLE

 

 

 

Just a little, it doesn’t take much to change the world, step by step. So it takes little to live well, happy and without waste. After Do not waste, Antonio Galdo returns to the necessary (and possible) change in our consumption and development pattern, recounting the great ideas that could save the planet, but also the everyday behaviours that improve the world around us. If the global crisis could make everyone poorer it might be worth discovering sobriety. If pollution and exploitation of natural resources are threatening our future, perhaps we need to understand that we can live better with less. If our days are beset with work, traffic, stress, maybe we can go back to a more balanced relationship with time and the space surrounding us. How can we free ourselves from dependence on fossil oil? How can we make better use of the technological tools we have, without being ruled by them? How to get back to the pleasure of normality, without ending up obsessed by degrowth? A book of stories from around the world, on the frontier of innovation, but also of the individual dimension of our daily choices.

(From the publisher's site)

 

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DO NOT WASTE

 

 

 

A world upside down that is changing much faster than we could have imagined just a few years ago. A Great Crisis, pitiless cruel, is coming down on the shoulders of the weakest. A tumultuous transformation that is hitting us all. This is the Big Opportunity, which forces us to rethink, in a single blow, our economy, politics and society; the ways of producing and consuming; the development pattern and the shopping cost. And the simple but necessary categorical imperative, "Do not waste" is our compass towards a new era whose outline we can hardly decipher at the moment. Because "Do not waste" means not only reducing unnecessary expenses, avoid throwing away food, turning off the lights in the house when no one use them. It means also, and above all, responsibly choosing new lifestyles that fuel new economic growth. Inciting policy to regain its supremacy with respect to markets and merchants, in defence of democracy and equity.

(From the publisher's site)

 

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FEEDING THE HUNGRY

 

 

 

The surplus generated in the agro-food chain - in Italy 6 million tons, 17% of food consumption per year - are a challenge for those who are wondering about how to alleviate food shortage for those who are committed to helping those who suffer from it. It is an increasing number of people, which makes the situation even more dramatic in the face of a crisis that is not likely to be resolved any time soon. When surpluses are not recouped to meet the feeding needs of people, they become a waste, at least from a social point of view. At the same time, not all surpluses are rid of at source; they are, therefore, an opportunity to reduce food insecurity. This volume presents the results of a first attempt to provide an overview of the phenomenon of food surpluses and waste in the various stages of the Italian agro-food chain. Based on more than 100 case studies conducted in the primary sector, in the processing, distribution and catering and on a survey on 6,000 households, it identifies the causes for food surpluses estimates values ​​of surplus and waste, for the different sectors and at national level. The volume also presents the methods of management aimed at reducing waste and allocating the surpluses to the network of food banks and charities.

(From the website of Ibs)

 

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SOBRIETY

 

 

 

We are faced with an distressing dilemma: more economic growth to come out of poverty or less economic growth to save the planet? Is there a way to combine equity and sustainability. The solution lies in the fact that rich people should be converted to sobriety, or accept a more frugal, cleaner, slower, personal and collective lifestyle; inserted into the natural cycles, to leave the poor all the resources and environmental spaces they need. From a full-scale protest to the proposal for a new lifestyle that leads us to avoid all the waste filling up our daily lives.

 
(From the publisher's site)

 

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FOOD MOVEMENTS UNITE!

 

 

 

The diet dominated by multinationals is destructive from an environmental point of view, unstable from a financial point of view, unfair from a social point of view. Food Movements Unite! not so much a criticism of this regime, as a common strategy, a window on the thinking and actions of food movements - large, highly diversified and pleasantly creative - that flourish and grow everywhere, struggling to restore democracy in our food systems to replace the oligarchy of corporations with a vision of hope, equality and sustainability.

(From the publisher's site)

 

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FOOD REBELLIONS!

 

 

 

 

Food Rebellions! is an analytic resource for anyone interested in understanding the global food crisis; it is also an informative handbook for those who want to do something about it. The first part contains a concise and clear analysis of both the immediate and underlying causes of the crisis. There are specific examples of the way in which the peoples of the global South and the underserved communities of the industrial North have lost control of their food systems and how this is translated into the underlying vulnerabilities at the base of the current crisis. In the second part are analysed and criticized the solutions proposed by major financial institutions and those for aid and development; brought to light the unverified assumptions and undeclared agendas behind these initiatives. Examples are following, from around the world, of the'' fight for spaces and places" among these projects and the attempts from below to establish both a production and distribution of food that are proper , agro ecological and controlled at the local level. The conclusion of the book proposes steps, policies and concrete actions to resolve the food crisis and lead the food production systems on the road to food sovereignty.

(From the publisher's site)

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ECOLOGY OF SAVINGS

 

 

 

How to put into practice the theories of "happy degrowth", the Transition movement and apply them within our small family circles and lives? The recipe for Giulia Landini consists of seven ingredients that cYeart be missed in the new ecologist’s baggage: vinegar, baking soda, citric acid, lemon, sourdough, Internet connection, sneakers. So begins a hilarious journey through the self-production households, cooking with leftovers, the benefits of recycling and barter, the importance of sharing and building district networks.

(From the publisher's site)

 

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A WAY OUT OF THE CONSUMER SOCIETY

 

 

 

Latouche resumes here all the main themes and arguments of his reflection on the need to abandon the path of unlimited growth in a planet with limited resources. It is not, in his opinion, to oppose a development good to bad, but to get out of development itself, its logic and its ideology. For this you first need to "decolonize imagination," a task of historic significance where is fundamental the dialogue with the masters of the "libertarian" tradition, from Ivan Illich to André Gorz Cornelius Castoridias.

The same current crisis can be seen, according to Latouche, as "good news", if it will open your eyes to the unsustainability of "progress" achieved so far by the Western countries. According to Latouche, in fact, the path to a peaceful decline in the first place goes through the realization that development is a human invention, that the relationship between man and nature can be reshaped into a 'convivial' dimension, in accordance with the law of entropy and in the name of what he calls " frugal opulence ", less material consumption  and more inner wealth, the less "well-being" and more "good life".

(From the publisher's site)

 

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LIMIT

 

 

 

 

Challenging the limits is the imperative of our time. Forcing possible, passing the sign, trespassing in the etymological sense. Paradoxical destiny, that of words. In the name of transgression just yesterday we made ​​fun of the prohibitions imposed by authority and bourgeois respectability, we aspired to social equity. Centuries earlier, the great movements of thought had engaged in battle with the handed on values ​​, opening thus the way to modernity. But "to trespass" today is the emblem of the domain, because it lurks in a model of planetary development that respects only one rule: ignore any natural boundary, geopolitical, ethical, anthropological and symbolic, assimilating the idea of a traditionalist impediment to be rid of, to open to the markets. The sin of excess, severely punished by the ancients, has turned into precept; the Promethean rage has overtaken the spirit of subversion. Serge Latouche won’t have any of it. For years, he has been preparing a viable alternative to the combination of growth-limitlessness. It is called degrowth and its strategic concept is the limit. Synonymous with deprivation in a developmental perspective, the limit appears here as the real strength that can hold us back from the abyss. To the self-destructive arrogance of free-trade universalism and to the pervasiveness of its cultural characteristics - the lowering of  for political regimes, legal principles, gestures, beliefs, images to exportable goods - Latouche counters with eco-compatibility, limited sovereignty, plural identities, ties that create society. Everything around which a limit can be drawn. Hoping it's not too late.

 

(From the publisher's site)

 

 

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DISPOSABLE

 

 

 

Planned printers block, after eighteen thousand copies, or computer out of use at the two years deadline, we are not faced with a strange electronic memory worthy of science fiction, but rather the most recent manifestation of a phenomenon that is an integral part of the growing society. It's called "planned obsolescence" and is systematize with the way we produce, consume, think and live. It means that the objects on the market have a calculated fragility, so much that the duration of the warranty often coincides with their actual life. Impossible to repair them. They have to be discarded and immediately replaced with others, again and again. Of this sick limitlessness, which sucks us deeper into the downward spiral of overproduction, turbo consumption and enormous waste, Serge Latouche is now the more consistent accuser. With his ability to pierce the twisted logic of a catastrophe economy, he puts in sequence the historical and fraudulent antecedents of the '"disposable way”, he unmasks its symbolic logic and indicates a way out: prosperity without growth, a frugal but not pauperizing perspective, able to decolonize our minds from the imperialism of goods, and resume the human pace of durability, reparability and recycling.

(From the publisher's site)

 

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HAPPY SOBRIETY

 

 

 

What is the meaning of "happy sobriety"? The answer is clear: having less than the superabundant; having and doing what is really needed and nothing more; having the space between things, the comma between the words, the pause between two breaths. In a word, to get better. For sure, it is a getting better that would help the rest of the world to get better. Of course, to consume less or in a more prudent way would reduce waste, save resources, pollute less, it would redistribute wealth at least in part and heal some macroscopic imbalances. Yet here we are only interested in happiness. Here we just want to make children and young people experiment a simple, almost trivial truth: things are often cumbersome and prevent us to feel good and have fun. That is: removing things might boost the fun. Removing things would make us better, happier. Most of all: removing things makes room for other ones, which can make us much happier.

This book comes from the experience of the authors. Everything in these pages, not only to read but also to use or rather, to play, has been tested several times with many groups of children, teenagers, adults. It would be nice to repeat it anywhere, to return school to its educational role, central within its own territory. Just like a journey, we start from the idea of limit then, passing through the desire, get to the wishes, finally, pulling the strings of our reasoning, we come to the happy sobriety. Are you ready?



(From the publisher's site)

 

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LET'S GET READY

 

 

 

Never so many crisis all together: climate, environment, energy, natural resources, food, waste, economy. Still the catastrophe threat does not scare anyone. What can be done? It takes a new collective intelligence. Stop to the debates between politicians uninformed or with conflictual interest. If we wait for them it will be too late, if we sort it out on our own it will be too little, but if we work together we can really change. The author tells about his path to resilience, that is the ability to calmly face a most uncertain future, and indicates the political program he would vote for. The change must start from our homes (more insulated), from our habits, which must be healthier and more economical (from water consumption to transport, from waste to renewable energy sources, from the kitchen garden to civil commitment). Today we can no longer expect miraculous solutions: better then to keep your brain on and the lights off except when they are needed.

(From the publisher's site)

 

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ENOUGH!

 

 

 

Over the past two centuries, man has put in place a simple but brilliant survival strategy: abundance. Whatever he needed, the trick was to try and get more and more: a higher rank, a larger amount of food, money, or information. And never satisfied, trying again and again. Only in this way he managed to overcome famine, epidemics and natural disasters. But today, thanks to modern technology, we actually live immoderately: we have much more than is ever possible to use, enjoy, afford. Nevertheless, we continue to ask for more, with the result that, in order to follow this instinct, we end up getting sick, become stressed, fat, angry and get into debt. Not to mention the impact on the environment. Now is the time to stop. The warning signs are everywhere: the economic and ecological crisis, the spectre of recession, job and emotional insecurity. Yet the media - and even the governments of Western countries – keep telling us: "Buy! The worst will be over." That's why, says British journalist John Naish, you should begin to develop a sense of contentment for what you already have, in stark contrast to a consumer culture urging us to always have new material and social needs.

(From the website ibs.it)

 

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LEFTOVERS PEOPLE (untranslatable pun intended, from a popular song with socialist-communist roots)

 

 

 

 

There is a cooking that avoids precooked and '"disposable" food, not recognizing the simple execution of a nice recipe or the preparation of an occasional meal. It is the one proposed in this book, including recipes, tips and stories. A cooking that becomes a way of being and living, employing a quality choices, care and economy, providing a rationalization of space and an investment of time and energy not at all occasional.

A cuisine where the surplus is not just a scrap, but a food in its own right, useful to supplement, enrich or transform a meal, adding to the sense of taste a most deep and abiding teste for respect and prodigality.

Up to the point of expressly creating leftovers.

 

(From the publisher's site)

 

 

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HOW TO GET RID OF THE SUPERFLUOUS AND LIVE HAPPILY LIVE

 

 

 

Piles of useless items in the garage and in the closet; piles of paper on your desk; piles of e-mail without response; never worn clothes are all things that convey a sense of suffocation that contribute to stagnate our energy. Getting rid of the superfluous and live happily helps just let go of the past and everything "pulling us back" to finally create the conditions for new energy, new opportunities, a clear vision of life and relationships. It works: "" making space" on the outside allows you to do it inside!

But beware, this is not to Just like a "spring cleaning" by throwing away all that is cumbersome, useless or even harmful around us, we can also eliminate the negative influences, freeing our energy potential. Getting rid of the superfluous and live happily is a real handbook of self-defence, against the negative consequences of the accumulation of useless objects:

 

• The fear of change represented by piles of ‘odds and ends’ 
• The mental junk:   criticism, negativity, intransigence
• How to make space in your room, on the desk and in your life
• Understanding what is useful and what is not
• Recognizing the defence mechanisms that lead to accumulation 
• Let the energy flow

(From the publisher's site)

 

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THE FOOD OWNERS

 

 

 

 

About one billion people worldwide are undernourished. Another billion are obese. Almost a half of the world's population lives on a daily basis the problem of poor nutrition. The other half suffers from the typical problems associated with overabundant nutrition and consequent dysfunctions: diabetes, overweight, cardiovascular problems. It is a paradox? Only apparently, Raj Patel argues, because this situation is the inevitable corollary of a system that allows only a handful of large corporations to profit from the entire food chain worldwide. The food owners is an investigation that reveals, for the first time, the underhand dealings of the current war for control of food resources: a veritable world tour that goes from the increasing in suicides among Asian farmers to the unfortunate consequences of the agreement trades between Mexico and the United States; from the emerging movements of the landless in Brazil to the failure of many African agricultural production; up to the sophisticated techniques of consumers manipulation of  in the rich North.

 

(From the publisher's site)

 

 

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HUNGER SHARPENS ONE’S WITS

 

 

 

Who said that only the rich cuisine is good? The thorough investigation of Andrea Perin in this volume collects fifty dishes drawn from the recipes of food defence of the Great War. The recipes are an opportunity to tell about the culture and taste of Italian lower classes at the beginning of the twentieth century, discovering how cuisine was used as a mean to take distance from power. Among the dishes and anecdotes unravels a narrative about the flavours and the fantasy of a cuisine made up with poor food, far from tedious mythology of the "beautiful cuisine of good times gone by." The author along with his friends has tested all fifty recipes, leaving the judgment on the taste as the last word of the publication.

(From the publisher's site)

 

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MOTHER EARTH

 

 

 

Produced primarily to be sold and stripped of its true meaning, the food ends up eating us. From object of attention and pride, it has become a monster that devastates the countryside from a social and ecological perspective and creates iniquities everywhere. Only if the food communities will be able to choose what and how to produce and distribute, it will be possible to stop the great machine that is eating both the Earth and us. Here is the new edition of Mother Earth by Carlo Petrin, with its articles that have sparked debate throughout the media.

(From the publisher's site)

 

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WITHOUT VICES AND WITHOUT WASTE

 

 

 

There are moments in history when it is necessary to look back to the past and its traditions, to find a proper way to deal with even the most mundane of daily changes. In the long and rich history of Italian cuisine the recovery of the craps at the end of the preparation of a dish or of what is not consumed on the table, it is typical routine both within the humblest households and in the very elaborated menus. The extreme variety of our local recipes is certainly also the result of the great talent that, over the centuries, has been employed to reuse in new dishes all that remains available to those who clears the kitchen at the end of a meal. Fabio Picchi has made the recovery of the great Italian tradition, also the popular one, the focus of his work. In the scrap less kitchen he introduces the reader to a very ancient art almost completely forgotten, the art of wasting nothing. Among memory, personal history and recipes, Picchi brings back in our homes the deep meaning in the houses and all the small and big secrets of a lost knowledge, which is of such great interest today.

(From the website of Feltrinelli)

 

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VOLUNTARY SIMPLICITY

 

 

 

Advices aplenty for everyday life (home, travel, shopping, eating) to apply the principles of respect for the environment, simplicity of life, low consumption ... Sustainable development and fair trade are the new frontiers for a 'conscious humanity Too much cement ... Too many cars, too much food, too much waste, too many disposable products do not create a better world. The "voluntary simplicity" is a simplicity of life consciously chosen by millions of people around the world, it means eating in a balanced way, respecting the environment and enhancing personal autonomy. This book explains how to do it, day after day.

(From the website macrolibrarsi.it)

 

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THE END OF FOOD

 

 

 

Osservando gli scaffali dei supermercati è naturale supporre che la macchina che muove il sistema alimentare contemporaneo funzioni benissimo. Come mai, però, siamo sempre più esposti a possibili infezioni e intossicazioni? E come mai questa sovrabbondanza, che in Occidente ha portato obesità e diabete a livelli preoccupanti, non ha risolto il problema della fame nel mondo?

Roberts ha analizzato il “problema cibo” – una delle emergenze del prossimo futuro – per anni, visitando stabilimenti di multinazionali, fiere agricole in Cina, impianti di confezionamento della carne e catene di supermercati.

Il quadro che emerge, con il progressivo impoverimento delle risorse naturali, i cambiamenti climatici in atto e previsioni fosche sull’aumento della popolazione mondiale, è quanto mai preoccupante: «Ci troviamo forse alla fine di quella che un giorno sarà definita l’“età aurea” del cibo: quel breve, quasi prodigioso periodo durante il quale ciò che mangiavamo sembrava semplicemente divenire di Year in Year più abbondante, più sicuro, più nutriente. In una parola, migliore».

 

(Dal sito dell’Publisher)

 

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THE LETTUCE REVOLUTION

 

 

 

The food market, from seeds marketing to the distribution of edible products, is in the hands of a few powerful multinationals companies and large supermarket chains. A globalized system that has cut the price of what we put in our plates, but at what cost? In advanced countries, we get sick of food and tons of food are wasted, while in poor countries, almost a billion people continue to die of hunger. Perpetuate this model and expand to meet the changing eating habits of millions of Chinese, Indian or Brazilian people is not sustainable.  This is foretold by scientists, visionaries and activists. Most of all, this is understood by more and more people who organize and act to change things from the bottom. A global movement of city farmers who grow tomatoes on the roofs and strawberries in the collective, conscious consumers who buy without additional costs and form purchasing groups. Are we dealing with the latest obsession of the bored metropolitan elite or really these phenomena are helping to rewrite the food economy of the planet?

(From the publisher's site)

 

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JUST ENOUGH (HOW MUCH AND WHEN)

 

 

 

It's time of say ‘enough is enough’ and move towards a new good citizenship, ecological, ethical, economic: this book explains how and why.

The vision of a society of sufficiency is the centrepiece of this "letter" to a student, which in reality, Andrea Segre addresses to all of us.

The logic of growth and debt has led to a deep economic and environmental crisis and to social inequalities that are no longer tolerable. Just enough is a real bill to build a new world, based on the awareness of natural and human limits, ruled by a revolutionary "economic ecology", and finally lived - by a homo civicus practicing a sustainable and responsible lifestyle of and. An appeal to future generations: to pass from a false well-being to an authentic well-living and to a fairer.

 

(From the publisher's site)

 

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COOKING WITHOUT WASTE

 

 

 

Potato peelings, wilted salad, spinach stalks, sour milk, fish heads ... this list of ingredients - which could go on and on - sounds a bit 'like a magic potion, in a sense it is, for two reasons. First, because cookery scraps can be turned into delicacies, suffice to know the formula, that is, the many, delicious and surprising recipes in this book. Second, because using them will not only do ourselves good, but it will be good for the world. As Andrea Segre explains with competence and  a wealth of reasons, to reduce waste in the kitchen, at the table and, even before, while doing the shopping, is both a beneficial and responsible behaviour; a way to look at food as a result and part of a global process involving soil, water, energy resources and human ones, and respecting it as was done in our grandparents’ kitchens. Where pear cores and stale bread, plum stones and meat bones were ingredients and with reason, and did not go to waste.

(From the publisher's site)

 

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PRAISE TO WASTE

 

The text is a "lesson" that rotates around to the terms waste and sufficiency.

Waste from negative act can turn into an actual occasion, from which the praise, to overcome the crisis and fears that animate our time.
It is, nonetheless, necessary to understand in this course the logic of sufficiency.
To support the formula of the title, Professor Segre, shows a series of images, experiences, interdisciplinary readings, word games leading towards cooperation and development, the economy of the gift, of sobriety and simplicity. Praise to waste is intended as a guide for the economy of sufficiency, a lifestyle within everyone’s reach.

Enclosed is a dvd with the text read by the author, with notes to the text, with hyperlinks and films on the Last Minute Market experience.

(From the publisher's site)

 

 

 

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THE BLUE BOOK OF WASTE IN ITALY: WATER

 

 

 

Every day we use large amounts of water for drinking, cooking and washing, but the one we use, in an indirect way, to produce the food we eat is so much more. Behind the meals we consume on a daily basis there are huge amounts of water: 3,600 litres for a diet based on meat and 2,300 litres for a vegetarian diet.

As long as the food we produce is used to feed us all - or almost - it can be justified, but we can say the same thing when we are using water to produce food that, for mere commercial reasons, will never reach our table? To throw away 200 grams of red meat is equivalent to waste 3,000 litres of water, mainly used to feed the animal; to throw a cup of coffee is like throwing away 140 litres of water. A real waste in the waste.

The Blue Book of waste in Italy: water, survey edited by Last Minute Market created as part of the campaign "One year against waste", offers a documented, detailed and updated analysis, to shed light on our lifestyles and consumption patterns and spur us to change them.

 (From the publisher's site)

 

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THE BLACK BOOK OF WASTE IN ITALY: FOOD

 

 

 

Since 1974 food waste in the world has increased by 50%. 40% of the food produced in the United States is thrown away. In Sweden each household throws away 25% of the food purchased, on average. In Italy, every year, before the food reaches our plates, it is lost for an amount that could meet the food needs of three-quarters of the Italian population for the entire year, ie of 44,472,914 inhabitants. Food waste has been underestimated for too long, studied too little and poorly documented. Only in recent years, the persistent global economic crisis and the growing alarm about climate change, has heightened the attention to this problem. The purpose of The Black Book on waste in Italy: food  is to analyse the food chain and to develop an estimate of the wastes and an evaluation of the economic, environmental, nutritional and social consequences generated by the management of surpluses. The result? To consume less, but mostly better, is possible, you just have to want it.

(From the publisher's site)

 

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THE GREEN BOOK OF WASTE IN ITALY: ENERGY

 

When we think about energy waste,  for most of us what comes to mind are the standby of appliances or energy saving light bulbs. Only a few think about food as a possible cause of inefficiency. In fact, the agricultural and food industry consumes and wastes huge amounts of energy, even to dispose of those wastes that we so casually pick up from the table and throw in the trash.

In 2010, the agricultural production left in the fields of our country would have been enough to heat 400,000 Class A apartments of 100 square metres each for an entire year. This single fact is enough to give a measure of the inefficiency and waste of our agricultural and food industry, and at the same time shows the amount of resources we could use, even from an energetic point of view and, insanely, still do not take advantage of.

 

(From the publisher's site)

 

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LAST MINUTE MARKET

 

Last Minute Market is apparently so simple as to seem trivial: the discovery of hot water. To recover what is still useful and donate it to those in need. Less waste, less garbage, less pollution, more sustainability, more food, more health, more savings, more investment, more solidarity. The egg of Columbus, the hot water precisely: with the only real merit of having made it warm so that you can wash your hands without being burned. This is, after all, the Last Minute Market, as you will read in the story of its genesis and its growth, in the testimonies of some of the partners who have made ​​the project a solid reality, and in the part dedicated to the working of the Last Minute Market within the various fields where it has acted and acts.

(From the publisher's site)

 

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LESSONS IN ECO-STYLE

 

Antidote to the careless, frantic and wasteful world, who has forgotten that you consume to live and not the other way round, this book offers three short lessons, full of suggestions and concrete examples, devoted to consumptions, growth and lifestyles. A handbook that reminds us all how to consume less and better, to reduce waste and the amount of packaging in the way of our shopping, to defeat the myth of growth at any cost, to enhance our ecological intelligence and turn waste into a resource, in the name solidarity and reciprocity. Above all, this book suggests a simpler, more equal, more sustainable lifestyle, for those who believe in a society based on sufficiency and not on the imperative of abundance, in a light and transparent economy, in an eco-science respectful of the relationship between man and environment. To avoid wasting, along with water, tomatoes and yoghurt, our lives too.

(From the publisher's site)

 

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WASTE

The crisis is challenging the consumption habits of our society and we need to change our horizon. Andrea Segre’s proposal turns the negative into a positive, identifying in the fight against waste the opportunity of a turnaround before the deep and growing inequalities become devastating. Its cultural revolution is simple: you take the word WASTE (which in Italian is worded SPRECO) dividing it into two parts: the SPR is the negative side, the ECO positive one. The new target? It’s to reduce the excess to increase the ECO, from the small house (eco-nomy) to the big house (eco-logy). Until waste is zeroed: this new paradigm will enable us to last over time regenerating: sustainability and renewability.

A gem to experiment a human and sustainable lifestyle.

(From the publisher's site)

 

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ZERO-WASTE LIVING

 

 

 

 

What can we - active citizens- consume-actors, civil society - do in order to avoid wastage of food, water and energy? What can firms do to prevent losses and inefficiencies that result in significant economic, environmental and social impacts so very negative for the whole community? What should our local administrators and the national and European policy do to promote a society banning waste, not only of food, water and energy waste, but also those related to garbage, mobility, purchases? What should governments do to promote a model of production and consumption that allows us to save and renew natural resources, and most importantly get us out of the crisis? Andrea Segrè outlines in this book a horizon, not surprisingly called "zero-waste", which actually leads to a new vision of the relationship between ecology and economy. Where the second one - literally the good administration of the house - is an integral part of the first one: the larger home, our Earth. Doing more with less, having less stuff and more in terms of good relationships and common good. Zero-waste living makes us understand, with lots of practical suggestions, how to move from a false well-being to a real good life. But it is also a show of good practices - some already exist, such as the Last Minute Market - which, if replicated on a national and European level, will lead to a more just and responsible, fair and united, renewable and sustainable society, with respect to humanity’s rights and needs.

(From the publisher's site)

 

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WASTES

 

 

 

Irrational and senseless food waste has become a widespread problem and a priority, which cannot be put off any further on the environmental agenda. For the protection of the unstable terrestrial ecosystem, reducing waste is as important as fighting the greenhouse effect or maintaining biodiversity. Tristram Stuart, a researcher at Cambridge university and enthusiastic anti-consumerist , with food waste has ‘soiled his hands’, addressing the issue from a global point of view. To identify the origin of this global phenomenon, the author has travelled from Europe the United States, passing through Russia and central Asia, and then about Pakistan, India, China, South Korea and Japan.

(From the website ibs.it)

 

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CONSUMERS AND BUSINESSES. FOOD INFORMATION REGULATION.

PRODUCT ANALYSIS AND REGULATORY CONSIDERATIONS.

 

 

 

 

This volume, combining a knowledge in commodity economics together with a legal and managerial one, is a useful tool to guide the reader (enterprise or consumer) in the complex "world" of food labelling, also leading him to reflect on the provisions with imminent implementation.

The first part is devoted to the analysis and commentary, including diagrams and figures, of Regulation (EU) No. 1169/2011 on the procurement of food information to consumers, while the second part shows the results of a survey conducted on a sample of Piedmont consumers to investigate the general attitude towards food labelling.

(From the publisher's site)

 

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TO ZERO WASTE

 

 

 

 

A chronicle of the last few years amply shows how waste management, is important to describe the fundamental aspects and the whole existence of a community: the forms of cohabitation, the urban 'liveability', the respect that a population has of itself and that can expect from others, the image of a territory, the relationship between rulers and ruled, the defence of legality, the survival or development of entire economic sectors. Finally, and unfortunately at the cost of dramatic events and real disasters, everyone has had a chance to figure out that the waste management sector is not an activity to be appointed only to experts, but a central issue for the government of a territory. Everybody  now has the duty to ask and the ability to answer a fundamental question: whether the amount of waste we produce today, is an inevitable outcome of industrial production and mass consumption, or rather the result of strategic choices made by forces and organizations engaged in a race towards unlimited growth, without worrying about the damage this way of producing and consuming inflicts on the environment; a damage that in large part we could and should prevent.. To zero the garbage does not make it any less urgent the task to govern it. The primary objective is to reduce the quantity and dangerousness of refuse produced, by eliminating at the source both trade and production of all those "goods" designed to shortly turn into rubbish, i.e. the so-called "disposable" items. But secondly, to start recovering products - i.e. recycling - can only be done by promoting separate collection of both urban and industrial waste.

 

(From the publisher's site)

 

 

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THE CULTURE OF REUSE

 

 

 

(...) We never pay attention to the fact that at the hotel, the restaurant, the bar, the cinema, we sleep between sheets, we eat from plates, which have already been used hundreds of times. We put in our mouths cutlery that others have used, we sit on chairs and armchairs who have already supported many other bodies. Many other families have inhabited the apartment where we live, unless it is a new construction. The cities we haunt have already been used for hundreds or thousands of years. The entire planet has been and is used and shared by billions of other human beings. Gift, barter, sharing, neglect, dispossession and pillage have always been a much greater weight than one might think: the attitude, the feelings and purposes that accompany these actions reveal to us the reality of our relationship with things, which is almost always full of meaning and affections, so much more than for those instincts or reasoning leading us to the purchase of something "new", where instead feelings and choices imposed by the market prevail. But reuse has hidden potential, because the things that we discard every day are many and because recovery is convenient to those who give and to those who acquire, reducing the collection of raw materials and the production of waste, promoting the sharing and mingling of tastes and lifestyles, increasing employment. Promotion of reuse is possible, in a short time and with few resources.

 (From the publisher's site)

 

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