[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]The project focused on environmental care dates back to the 1980s, the first years I spent at Esselunga, and it began with organic and natural products in general. It is also the project I am most attached to because it had a soul, a social purpose, beyond its business goals.<\/p>\n
The idea was that Esselunga, representing a model of entrepreneurial and commercial excellence in the Italian landscape, could also excel from an environmental and social perspective.<\/p>\n
I remember a conversation in the kitchen on Via del Lauro about the amount of pesticides in strawberries. It was 1987, before I left for the United States. I wanted to create lines of “natural” products; my father Bernardo was less enthusiastic. Back then, I didn\u2019t have an environmental reference point; I simply followed my instincts.
\nIn the 1990s, I developed my ideas and program in close contact with ethologist Danilo Mainardi (Lipu), listening to and reading Lester R. Brown (author of\u00a0State of the World, Italian edition edited by Gianfranco Bologna), Fulco Pratesi, with whom we launched joint operations between WWF-Esselunga, and Enrico Albertini, with whom we organized an operation for the forests of Gabon, with\u00a0Trust the Forest, managed by Gustavo Gandini.<\/p>\n
The continuous food crises of those years, from BSE (“mad cow disease”) to dioxin-contaminated chicken, helped me introduce integrated pest management products, and later organic products, into Esselunga’s assortment.<\/p>\n
In the early 1990s, organic agriculture products were introduced and highlighted on the shelves with supplier labels.<\/p>\n
This was the start of a journey lasting approximately 12 years: after organic agricultural products, we moved on to launching \u201cNaturama\u201d products (1995) and introducing fair trade products from Altromercato (1998), followed by “Esselunga Bio” products, the first Ecolabel products \u201cFor Nature Lovers\u201d (2001), and finally the fair trade \u201cEsselunga Bio\u201d products (2002), achieving 10% of Esselunga\u2019s food sales, equivalent to about \u20ac300 million in 2003.<\/p>\n
The launch of Esselunga Bio, in just seven months, was certainly the most important adventure. It was born during a long car trip in February 1999, where, in addition to myself, who was then the commercial director, and Gaetano Puglisi, we had the director of quality assurance Claudio Arnoldi and the senior buyer of the food sector, Alberto Bianchi.<\/p>\n
The marketing idea was to cover all market segments: the lower one with entry-level prices (at that time, there was the Fidel brand), the middle range with Esselunga and Naturama, and the high-end with Esselunga Bio.<\/p>\n
Naturama and Bio products also had the merit of reassuring customers worried about the decline in food quality, increasingly aware of the fact that “we are what we eat.”<\/p>\n
Obviously, there were also other motivations: through the sale of certain products and explaining why they were being sold, we tried to stimulate and build awareness: the condition of the Earth, from the planet itself to the micro-system in which the customer lived, was poor because exploitation was too intense and was causing immeasurable ecological and economic damage, widening the gap between wealth and poverty\u2014not only in poorer countries.
\nIn practice, these years saw the birth of what would become Esselunga’s formal commitment to the planet, nature, people, and culture, as outlined in the essential\u00a0Social Balance\u00a0of 2003, which stated that the company’s mission is to believe \u201cin sustainable development, understood as the integration of environment, social equity, and economic growth.\u201d<\/p>\n
These same principles led to a deep innovation in relations with staff, suppliers, and customers: the pamphlet\u00a0Values and Principles, created with the company staff (2002 and 2003), made it clear how both internal and external people (customers) are the founding values of the company. By integrating and collaborating with a common goal, following rules of care for oneself, others, and the environment, they would achieve a positive result from their commitment, in line with the golden rule formulated by C.M. Cipolla in his\u00a0Allegro ma non troppo: if a person performs an action that benefits them while also benefiting others (and, now, also the environment), they act as an intelligent person.[\/vc_column_text][vc_media_grid gap=”15″ grid_id=”vc_gid:1747856478968-dc1963cb-afd0-10″ include=”68137,68141,68138,68135,68142,68146,68144,68159,68145,68140,68136,68139″][vc_column_text]Bibliography:<\/strong><\/p>\n G. CAPROTTI, Le ossa dei Caprotti, Una storia italiana, Milano 2024\/3. The commitment to environmental care is a project that dates back a long way, to the 1980s, the first years I spent at Esselunga. It started with organic and natural products in general. It is also the project I am most attached to because it had a soul, a social purpose, beyond the business aspect.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":68158,"template":"","tags":[],"class_list":["post-68134","protagonista","type-protagonista","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fondazioneguidovenosta.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/protagonista\/68134","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fondazioneguidovenosta.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/protagonista"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fondazioneguidovenosta.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/protagonista"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.fondazioneguidovenosta.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/protagonista\/68134\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":68160,"href":"https:\/\/www.fondazioneguidovenosta.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/protagonista\/68134\/revisions\/68160"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fondazioneguidovenosta.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/68158"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fondazioneguidovenosta.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=68134"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fondazioneguidovenosta.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=68134"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nID., Esselunga Bio, ovverosia \u201cl\u2019avventura del biologico\u201d<\/a>, 14\/12\/2023.
\nEsselunga Bio, \u201cl\u2019avventura del biologico\u201d 2<\/a>, 09\/01\/2024
\nID., “Le ossa dei Caprotti”. La marca: \u201cEsselunga Bio\u201d, 1999<\/a>. Spunti dal libro.
\nC.M. CIPOLLA, Allegro ma non troppo, Bologna 1988.[\/vc_column_text][\/vc_column][\/vc_row]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"