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Features
8 January 2023 2.00 h

GABY SUSANNA

DIRECTOR OF THE PLATFORM APROFITEM ELS ALIMENTS (PAA)

“To move forward, we all have to be part of the solution”

The Platform Aprofitem les Aliments surprised everyone with their first meals made with recovered food, and since then they haven’t stopped working

“We have to tighten the bonds with the producers and work together much more closely” “WE ARE IMMERSED IN A MODEL THAT IS NOT THE RIGHT ONE, AND WASTE IS A CONSEQUENCE”

Mo­bil­is­ing sup­port and pub­lic pres­sure are among the rea­sons be­hind the progress made in the fight against food waste. In Cat­alo­nia, the work done by the Plataforma Aprof­item les Al­i­ments (PAA), headed by Gaby Su­sanna, clearly stands out.

Are we suf­fi­ciently aware of the scale of the prob­lem?
It’s not just what we throw away at home. We must try to avoid this more per­sonal and re­duced point of view in favour of a much broader and com­plete vi­sion of the food cycle. When we go shop­ping we choose, and choos­ing means we re­ject a prod­uct, ei­ther be­cause it is too big or too small or be­cause it has an odd shape. Who buys a potato that weighs 600 or 800 grammes? Every­one wants stan­dard food, and since na­ture is not per­fect, the only so­lu­tion left to the farmer is to over­pro­duce, which means that part of the food will not go on sale. This is one of the keys, and our re­spon­si­bil­ity is to con­vey that the prob­lem of food waste is sys­temic, very com­plex and multi-causal, which is why it re­quires a broad vi­sion and that all ac­tors in the cycle work to­gether.
Which changes should be a pri­or­ity, for con­sumers?
We must open our minds and be much more aware that be­hind every food there is a per­son, and that it’s not so much about what we want to eat, but what is sen­si­ble. All this is being worked on in the field of col­lec­tive cater­ing and schools. Pro­vid­ing qual­ity or­ganic food to schools means that there’s a man­ager who works very closely with the pri­mary sec­tor and that there are com­mit­ments of shared re­spon­si­bil­ity. If har­vests have been agreed ac­cord­ing to some menus but it turns out that a hail­storm has dam­aged the green beans, we must be able to put the prob­lem on the table and agree on a so­lu­tion, such as chang­ing the menu and using other veg­eta­bles. We have to ex­plore dif­fer­ent ways, tighten the bonds with the pro­duc­ers, work to­gether much more closely, and be more flex­i­ble.
How do you work with the dif­fer­ent links in the food chain?
As much as we can, we work with each link, al­though de­pend­ing on the year, we focus more on one or the other. To­gether with the School of Hos­pi­tal­ity and Tourism of Barcelona, we have drawn up a 12-step guide to achieve more sus­tain­able cater­ing, for ex­am­ple. We are very in­ter­ested in know­ing good prac­tices and mak­ing them known so that they can be repli­cated. The cook Ada Par­el­lada, for ex­am­ple, has three dish sizes at the her Sem­pro­ni­ana restau­rant, and many restau­rants have made their menus more flex­i­ble to allow din­ers to have half a plate or mod­ify dessert so that the cus­tomer can adapt ac­cord­ing to their ap­petite and eat­ing ca­pac­ity. With re­gard to school can­teens, it’s very im­por­tant to work on this issue as an ed­u­ca­tional pro­ject and in­volve all ac­tors.
How?
The cook must be able to in­ter­act with the chil­dren and ex­plain to them the rea­son for things. For ex­am­ple, you can warn them that in win­ter they will not have tomato sauce be­cause it is made with sea­sonal pro­duce and that you will have to make an al­ter­na­tive sauce. And every­one, mon­i­tors, teach­ers and fam­i­lies, must do the same thing. This is the rea­son why the plat­form was born: we were con­vinced that we had to have a global view of the prob­lem and work to­gether.
The plat­form was set up nine years ago. Where were we then and where are we now?
At the be­gin­ning we were a group of en­ti­ties and peo­ple closely linked es­pe­cially to the world of waste, who started to make the prob­lem of waste vis­i­ble, but since then we have all learned a lot, as we ended up hav­ing a much bet­ter global vi­sion. What is fail­ing is the food sys­tem. We are im­mersed in a model that is not the right one, and waste is a con­se­quence. In terms of aware­ness, it has im­proved a lot. The first meal we did in Barcelona with re­cov­ered food marked a turn­ing point. We man­aged to bring to­gether rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the pub­lic au­thor­i­ties, restau­rants and the so­cial sec­tor in the same room, and show that it was a prob­lem that chal­lenges us all to choose a dif­fer­ent path, to­wards sus­tain­abil­ity.
Where has more progress been made and what is miss­ing?
In terms of rais­ing aware­ness, we have done a good job, al­though there is still a lot to do. We need to hold even more meet­ings to pub­li­cise the pro­jects that exist, be­cause there are many, very nice and eas­ily replic­a­ble ones. We still have a long way to go, how­ever, in terms of quan­tifi­ca­tion. If we do not know our start­ing point, it is very dif­fi­cult to set goals and see if we are mov­ing in the right di­rec­tion. In this sense, bud­gets are miss­ing. We also lack ho­mo­ge­neous method­olo­gies, which allow us to com­pare data. The fig­ure of 35 kg of wasted food per in­hab­i­tant in Cat­alo­nia is from 2010 and is taken from mu­nic­i­pal waste, which in­cludes re­tail, cater­ing and house­holds, but does not take into ac­count the en­tire food cycle. This num­ber is very small. In Eu­rope, there are al­ready stud­ies that speak of up to 180 kg per cit­i­zen per year.
Give us some ex­am­ples of good prac­tices.
At the El Rosal work­shop in Tàrrega, they crum­ble the left­over dough left on the bak­ing tray from mak­ing their bis­cuits, put choco­late on it and turn it into a top­ping that they sell. This is putting imag­i­na­tion into it. At Coop Gavà they grow and pre­pare trays of veg­eta­bles for mak­ing broth. They worked on the issue of plant­ing den­sity so that the turnips and parsnips were smaller and could fit on the try with­out need­ing them to be cut in half, which is when they go bad ear­lier.
What will hap­pen to do­na­tions to so­cial en­ti­ties if com­pa­nies are re­duc­ing sur­pluses?
There will be fewer do­na­tions in the form of food, but the fact is that the model is al­ready chang­ing. We are all work­ing to em­power peo­ple by pro­vid­ing them with tools and re­sources so that they can stand up for them­selves. It is not about giv­ing a batch of food to the poor, which is what has been done until now, but about help­ing vul­ner­a­ble groups with tools they can use, such as a wal­let card that al­lows them to enter a su­per­mar­ket and choose what they want. If you are just given a bag of food you might find prod­ucts that you don’t know how to cook or that you can’t cook be­cause you don’t have the equip­ment or the en­ergy re­sources to do so. We must guar­an­tee the right to food, but in a dif­fer­ent way than it is done now.

in­ter­view FOOD WASTE

Tireless

An environmentalist specialising in geographic information systems, the direction of Gaby Susanna’s personal and professional life changed a decade ago, after watching a documentary about the food that modern society throws away. “It made an impact on me and it was immediately clear to me that I had to dedicate myself to this,” she explains. At that time, the Waste Agency of Catalonia was already very active and there were also several recycling kitchen workshops. Susanna became trained and certified, and in 2012 a group of people who like her were very aware decided to set up a public platform to raise awareness among the population, promote regulatory changes, demand economic measures and facilitate the donation of food to those in need.

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