The pandemic has put many citizens in difficulty: now they need concrete help in order to be able to do grocery shopping.
The SOSpesa project aims to create a neighborhood network, made up of local actors, in charge of mapping food flows, recovering and transforming food surplus and, finally, offering it to disadvantaged people at controlled prices.
The network is based in the NoLo neighborhood in Milan, where the initiative “SpesaSospesa a Nolo” has already been put into practice. Starting from this experience, the SOSpesa project will study and develop a functioning model at local level for the recovery, distribution and upgrading of food surplus, identifying innovative solutions and defining which technological innovations can support the system.
The departments of Design, Management, Economics and Industrial Engineering and Electronics, Information and Bioengineering are involved in the project, together with many partners: Municipality of Milan, Food Policy Office; P.I.Nolo; MEMO54; RECUP; Casa Nolo; Qubì Loreto network (funded by Cariplo Foundation); “La terra che non c’è” project (funded by Fondazione Comunità); Gorillas (online supermarket).
SOSpesa is a 2021 Polisocial Award winning project. Polisocial Award is the initiative that supports high social impact research at the Politecnico di Milano thanks to the funds from the 5×1000 donations (a fraction of the personal income tax each Italian citizen can donate to support a non-profit organisation). The 2021 edition was dedicated to the theme “Equity and Recovery”.
THE PROJECT TEAM
- Davide Fassi, Department of Design (principal investigator)
- Giulia Bartezzaghi, Department of Management, Economics and Industrial Engineering (project manager)
- Anna Meroni, Department of Design
- Francesco Vergani, Department of Design
- Paola Garrone, Department of Management, Economics and Industrial Engineering
- Annalaura Silvestro, Department of Management, Economics and Industrial Engineering
- Maurizio Magarini, Department of Electronics, Information and Bioengineering
- Davide Scazzoli, Department of Electronics, Information and Bioengineering
