Urban food policies and public markets: opportunities for food waste management

The following work stems from the observation that local public markets, with their potential to generate communities and spread good practices, can become “sustainable food places”, a spillover of virtuous behaviours. Public markets that are developing positive behaviours in terms of food waste, may prove to be the driving force behind bottom-up best practices, becoming active actors of Urban Food Policies (UFPs). By observing 70 markets in the city of Milan, it is shown that participants to public markets differ in their practices of food waste management. The authors suggest the urgency for the public actor to modulate its actions in order to exploit the potential of the public markets as drivers for effective UFPs. The first paragraph illustrates the birth of UFPs through a theoretical framework that defines their main characteristics. The second paragraph describes food waste and circular practices, identifying public markets as places favourable to their development, due to their characteristics of trust, mutuality and connection. The third focuses the attention on the case study of public markets in Milan, describing the survey carried out and the data analysis. Then, in the fourth part, the study identifies some peculiarities in Milan’s markets and structure an index assessing the propensity to virtuously manage waste and surpluses (Food Waste Avoidance Index). The final paragraph discusses the research hypothesis, and the results of the case study. The features and the drivers identified lead the authors to suggest a variety of actions that the public actor could implement, in order to support effective UFPs.