di Angela Conversano (traduzione di Laura Tajoli)
As every college student knows, while you are in a train station waiting for a train to get you back home there's plenty of time to reflect about the future. A train station might become the place to conceive the idea of a concrete and well-defined work project too. And that's what happened to Daniele Merola, a "pugliese" computer engineer who lives in Turin. Inside the train station he thought about a simple and, at the same time, complex concept: how much food is left inside all the pantries and the refrigerators of the people who are leaving their homes today to go on holiday?

"One evening, before leaving home for a few days – he said – I verified that I still had plenty of food like fruits and yoghurt, good stuff that I wouldn't have been able to eat. I thus gave it to a friend. The following day, at the train station, I considered that other people could do the same". Two years later the Next Door Help web platform was born, thanks to Daniele and two of his college friends, Fabio Galiano and Emiliano Marzo. The aim is, on one hand, to communicate the need to donate food in excess that won't be consumed and, on the other, to ask for it.

Things work with a geo-localisation process through which the supply and demand places are located. The nearest person is then contacted by a text message system. Next Door Help is today most of all active in the San Salvario area in Turin. "Slow Food" organization decided to encourage this initiative from the beginning introducing it at the Salone del Gusto (Taste Salon) in Turin. As Francesco Mele, in charge of the Slow Food "food waste combat" project, pointed out "Next Door Help has caught our attention because it's one of the first food sharing platforms in Italy and it has got our approval because food selling isn't based on sales, which would cause waste, but it tries to incentivize true food redistribution experiences".

The platform, though, is not just about food waste combat. "There's still a lot of work to do on the food exchange issue, we need to operate in the city and in its different areas, whereas the objects exchange matter is more on its way", said Daniele, and he explained that, for this reason, the platform decided to include more categories in the exchange strategy. That is why it is now possible to exchange books, clothes, furniture and technological devices aiming to reduce food waste and, at the same time, foster social relations and sharing.