Costa Cruises And Banco Alimentare Working Together In The Fight Against Food Waste
The joint project between Costa Cruises and food-bank charity Fondazione Banco Alimentare Onlus to recover surplus food produced on cruise ships and re-use it for good causes goes from strength to strength.
A new chapter in this cooperative effort was introduced today on Costa Diadema, during the Costa flagship’s call at Civitavecchia (Rome). The food prepared but not served in the ship’s restaurants will now be collected for distribution to a local organisation that helps disadvantaged young people.
Five months after the Costa food donation programme began in Savona, 8500 portions have been provided for people in need, and now Civitavecchia has also come on board.
Costa Diadema is deployed on week-long cruises in the Mediterranean throughout the year, calling at Civitavecchia every Friday. On the Thursday before, all the ready-to-eat dishes prepared in the restaurant areas but not served to guests will be collected. The meals will be placed in aluminium containers, which are then sealed, labelled for traceability and kept in on-board refrigerators. The next morning, after the ship moors in Civitavecchia, the containers will be unloaded and delivered to Banco Alimentare volunteers, who will take them to the charity La Repubblica dei Ragazzi, a community on the Aurelia road in Civitavecchia that provides support and education for young people with serious family problems.
The Costa Cruises and Fondazione Banco Alimentare Onlus project, aimed at assisting those affected by poverty and social exclusion, has also been possible thanks to Law 166/2016 against food and pharmaceutical waste promoted by the Hon. Maria Chiara Gadda that came into effect on September 14 2016. The law restructures the regulatory framework concerning donations of unsold foods with simplification, harmonization and incentive measures, making it easier than before to donate any type of food in a controlled and safe way, but most importantly it gives priority to retrieving food to be donated to the poorest people in our country.
Fondazione Banco Alimentare Onlus
Since 1989, Banco Alimentare has been retrieving undamaged and non-expired food that would otherwise have been destroyed, as it was no longer saleable. Having saved it from the being thrown into the waste, it becomes valuable once more and becomes a resource for those in need. The Food Bank Network works throughout Italy every day via its 21 Food Bank Organizations across the country, coordinated by the Fondazione Banco Alimentare Onlus. Last year Banco Alimentare distributed over 66,000 tons of food. This includes 1,100,000 cooked food dishes and 326 tons of bread and fruit retrieved every day from catering establishments, corporate canteens, hospitals and schools. Every day, food is redistributed free of charge to 8,035 charities who help approximately 1,600,000 needy people in Italy, including 135,000 children aged 2 to 7. Banco Alimentare’s work is possible thanks to its 1,800 plus volunteers.
