This young volunteer from the Food Bank in Sicily has just been named by President Sergio Mattarella “flag bearer of the Republic” for her fight against food waste. A struggle that for her goes through education and cultural change.
Her efforts have just been rewarded, and not by any institution since Deborah Maria Inserillo, 19, has been named by President Sergio Mattarella “flag bearer of the Republic”, “for his exemplary demonstrationsays the statement of the Quirinale, the importance of sharing and giving”. The kind of honor that the main interested, modest, humble, did not expect at all. The “flag bearers of the Republic” or ambassadors, the bishops in Italian, they are young people, 30 this year, appointed every year by the presidency to highlight committed and above all discreet boys and girls, who do not necessarily make the front page of magazines, who are not influencers either on TikTok or Instagram, but whose engagement is essential. Like Deborah Inserillo.
She is a student in education sciences and at the same time volunteers at the food bank in her town, Termini Imerese, near Parlermo (Sicily). She started when she was ten years old, on a school trip, and since then she has never missed a collection, even becoming over the years an outstanding communicator, multiplying awareness-raising operations and interventions in schools, with the youngest “because the fight against waste begins with education“. A commitment therefore rewarded by this title of flag bearer of the Republic, a title which surprised her, but which she decided to take advantage of to spread her message as widely as possible.
In Italy, 27 kg of food thrown away per year and per inhabitant
Daily The Republic, she explains that in Italy, food waste represents nine billion euros lost per year, foodstuffs that are often still packaged and could be given away. And this is not anecdotal, quite the contrary, “it is a cultural revealer, which therefore requires a cultural change and this change requires an education in solidarity (…) because I am convinced that dignity is also acquired through food, through the fact of being able to feed oneself , self and children.“
For better measurement, she gives a figure: in Italy, each year, 27 kg of food are thrown away per person, mainly fruit, vegetables and bread. And make no mistake, we are not the best students in France, the land of gastronomy. It’s even worse with 29 kg thrown away per year and per French person according to figures from the Environment and Energy Management Agency (Ademe). Something to invite us all to question this culture of waste, in Italy, as in France, as everywhere.