Resources

This captivating series takes you on a journey through the living labs of the 11 cities involved in the Food Trails project, where innovative pilot actions, aligned with the Food 2030 EU Policy Framework and the Milan Urban Food Policy Pact categories, have been implemented to address urban food challenges.

Each video showcases a partner city’s pilot actions, their beneficiaries, and their results. It also highlights how these have driven progress in local food policy development.

1/11 Bordeaux Metropole

Discover how Bordeaux Metropole is strengthening its local food network by enhancing the Food Council and connecting local producers with public canteens to support short supply chains.

2/11 Warsaw

Peek into Warsaw’s collaboration with the local food bank. Together they enabled restaurant owners to donate food and optimised food management for local organizations.

3/11 Tirana

Tirana is supporting local supply chains by prioritising locally sourced produce in kindergarten canteens and community centres, and creating a new agri-food market. The city is also developing awareness campaigns to reduce and prevent food waste.

4/11 Birmingham

Birmingham’s path toward a bold, sustainable, healthy, and thriving food system? Enhancing access to healthy and sustainable food, supporting bottom-up food waste sorting practices, and promoting veggie consumption among the youth.

5/11 Thessaloniki

Thessaloniki established a food council dedicated to preventing food waste and promoting circularity. The city is also advancing urban agriculture by supporting existing growing hubs and creating new school gardens to educate children on healthy diets and sustainable food cultivation.

6/11 Groningen

Watch how Groningen is promoting sustainable, healthy plant-based diets while supporting grassroots urban agriculture initiatives. The municipality also established an interdepartmental working group to improve municipal food governance.

7/11 Grenoble-Alpes Metropole

From organising a month of events focused on the protein transition, to promoting a support program for municipalities to foster sustainable diets in school canteens, Grenoble’s Metropolitan Area has put food at the centre. To involve the whole territory, it established an Inter-Territorial Food Council to lead the shift towards a future-proof local food system.

8/11 Copenhagen

Copenhagen has linked public food tenders to food education and developed a financial model for healthy, eco-friendly school meals, creating a kitchen app for better communication with procurement officers, and disseminating knowledge about sustainable public food procurement policies.

9/11 Funchal

The Funchal Food Week and World Pulses Day are empowering communities to choose sustainable diets and embark on the protein transition. The city has invested in food literacy initiatives and supports social housing residents with composting and other circular practices.

10/11 Bergamo

Discover how Bergamo is reshaping society’s relationship with food through early education. How? By developing a comprehensive municipal food policy, promoting healthier meals in primary schools, and transitioning to plant-based proteins and organic foods.

11/11 Milan

Explore Milan’s journey with Food Trails to foster circularity in its school canteen system. The city renovated school canteens to reduce food waste, distributed educational booklets on healthy eating to all nursery and primary school children, conducted composting feasibility studies, and enhanced data monitoring to scale food surplus redistribution.

Bonus track

The ‘Food Trails: Pathways for Food 2030-Led Urban Food Policies’ is a special episode centering on the crucial role of food policy development, a key legacy of the project. This video zooms in on the core elements that Food Trails has identified for successful food policy development. It also invites cities across Europe to embark on their own journey toward implementing urban food policies.

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Produced by the City of Milan as part of the Food Trails project, the series was filmed between September 2023 and July 2024.

Food Trails is an EU Horizon 2020 project involving 11 cities, 3 universities, and 5 food organizations. Its goal is to promote more resilient, safe, fair, and diverse urban food systems through co-designed actions in Food 2030-led Living Labs, enabling the development of systemic urban food policies.

The Food Trails project has received fundings from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation programme, under grant agreement n. 101000812.