Paper short abstract:

Drawing from an ongoing ethnographical research on food and refugees, our paper intends to reflect upon a non-waste circuit, put in place by a network of local activists in the city of Rome who share a civic, an environmental and an educational engagement

Paper long abstract:

Drawing from an ongoing ethnographical research on food and refugees, our paper intends to reflect upon a non-waste circuit, put in place by a network of local activists in the city of Rome, who recover unsold food from ovens, restaurants, neighborhood markets to distribute it to lay and religious associations committed with marginal subjects. In the detailed observation of collection and redistribution practices, a shared philosophy of non-waste becomes increasingly visible where the leftover and unsold food is put back into circulation becoming nourishment, and life. The non-waste network is tied to a wider civic, environmental and educational movement, which in Italy officially started in 2004 with Andrea Segrè, an engaged university teacher, exemplified by the studies of David Korten (2015) and Sarah Van Gelder (2014) among several others. A circular responsible economy seems to be a reaction against the current interpretation of the market based on a waste economy and a concrete proposal of action in a world still imbued by linear careless thinking. By means of fresh data derived by a detailed case-study in a complex urban setting, the present paper aims to adds its contribution to the ongoing debate on circularity in social sciences.