[Ads-l] zero-kilometer/zero-mile products

Benjamin Barrett mail.barretts at GMAIL.COM
Mon Sep 5 19:44:54 UTC 2016


According to the Italian Wikipedia, “chilometro zero” is an economic term referring to a type of commerce in which the product is sold in the same region as it is produced, essentially locavorism:

https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chilometro_zero
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Il chilometro zero (anche chilometro utile, km zero o km 0) in economia è un tipo di commercio nel quale i prodotti vengono commercializzati e venduti nella stessa zona di produzione.
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Ex.: The Kilometro Zero (http://www.tanjatikarli.com/1752777/kilometro-zero) is a Roman restaurant that offers a large range of zero-mile products.

1. The earliest English cite I find for this term on Google is December 13, 2002. Given that it is for a Venetian event, it seems likely to be a calque at that point:

Drops of Water 4
UNESCO
http://bit.ly/2c6pKrl

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So, whenever possible, it is better to purchase “Zero Kilometer” products.This term means that fruit, vegetables, meat and other products are cultivated, sold and eaten in the same place or region.
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2. Although there are a couple of hits from around 2010 on Google for “zero-mile products”, they are Google dated. The earliest with an internal date I see is 22 October 2014.

Milano is bio
Expo 2015
http://bit.ly/2c0w2GG

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ZERO MILE PRODUCTS
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There might be earlier hits using the Indo-Arabic “0” or various abbreviations and spellings. I did not search very carefully on all the possible permutations.

Benjamin Barrett
Formerly of Seattle, WA

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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org



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