Mary Giò Zaki

Purpose: The growth of global food delivery (FD), which could reach a market value of 1510 billion dollars by 2027, could raise significant sustainability concerns, especially in terms of the social impact related to the expansion of the gig economy. This study, therefore, aims to analyze the social sustainability of the FD, taking Italy as a case study. The results could be a baseline to suggest practices that could promote a more socially responsible FD sector. Methods: Social life cycle assessment (S-LCA) was used, following the guidelines of the Product Social Impact Life Cycle Assessment (PSILCA) and considering four categories of stakeholders (workers, value chain actors, society, and local community), 11 risk categories, and 13 subcategories, mainly based on both the availability of data and their adherence to the objectives of the study and FD. Results and discussion: The main risks are associated with low wages, improper working hours, high accidentality, and approximation in food handling. Specifically, the wages of riders, 23% of whom are migrants, are just 14% above the poverty line in Italy and 67% below the median income. With 30-h work weeks, moreover, riders may face high risks of economic vulnerability. Stressful working conditions and the absence of mandatory protective equipment have resulted in 17 fatalities × 100,000 workers and 25 accidents × 1000 workers, which could generate a medium risk that violations of labor laws will occur. All this is also due to the low unionization in the Italian FD. Finally, results also show a flaw in food safety, as riders are not required to have HACCP and ATP attestation. Conclusions: Italian legislation and the business models of FD companies are still shown to be insufficient to guarantee the fairness of protections for riders, which are substantiated by low wages, high accident rates, poor union rights, and improper working hours. In addition, doubts are raised about the hygiene of containers carrying food during transport, as they could induce a potential microbiological health risk for consumers, especially related to food handling during transport.

Animal based-food products represent an essential source of protein supply in overall diets, and livestock provide 25% of the total protein content consumed by humans as food. Concurrently, livestock significantly impacts the environment, being responsible for 10–12% of total anthropogenic CO₂ emissions. Among livestock, pork is considered one that accounts for the greatest impact in terms of emissions, about 4.62 kg CO₂ eq/kg. Furthermore, the growing global demand for protein sources has led to a widespread need to find agri-food solutions that meet the demand for food through sustainable production systems. The high nutritional quality of edible insects, in terms of amino acids, fats, minerals, and vitamins, is comparable with meat products. This study aims to compare protein production from pork and mealworm, assessing the degree of substitution and environmental impacts of the two production systems. To assess the impacts of protein production from mealworms and pork on the ecosystem, resources, and human health, an LCA was conducted using the ReCiPe 2016 Endpoint method, with a 100-year hierarchical perspective (H) V1.05. It emerged that pork production is characterized by high impacts on the ecosystem, land use, climate-altering emissions, and fossil resources, in contrast with mealworm protein production. The low impact of insect protein production and the high nutritional values make edible insects a sustainable solution to growing food demand and economic benefits render edible insects globally a major potential future food.