The joint project between Costa Cruises and the Banco Alimentare Onlus Foundation, which aims to recover excess food produced on ships and reuse them for noble causes, has achieved good results.
Since Costa’s food donation program began five months ago in Savona, 8,500 portions of food have already been served to needy people. Now it will be the turn of Civitavecchia to integrate the initiative. A new chapter of this partnership was announced on December 1 aboard the Costa Diadema during the ship’s parade in Civitavecchia, Rome.
The food prepared and not served in the restaurants of Costa Diadema will be collected for delivery to a Civitavecchia organization that helps underprivileged youths.
“Today, I am very happy to start the second step of this initiative, and I am sure that this project will involve more and more ports in Italy and also in Europe,” said Maria Chiara Gadda, an Italian parliamentarian who developed the law that encourages donation “From now on, another 36 groups of young people will benefit from very high-quality meals, both in taste and in nutritional value,” says Marco Lucchini, General Director of the Banco Alimentare Onlus Foundation.
“Today we have taken another step in our journey against food waste. We started in Savona last summer, and now extending the program to Civitavecchia, we reaffirm our commitment to implement the initiative in other Italian ports. We are proud of this action, the first in the world held in the cruise industry, and for making it possible through our partnership with Banco Alimentare. We will continue working to expand the program to other vessels on the Costa and other Mediterranean ports, “says Giuseppe Carino, vice president of Consumer Experience at Costa Cruises.
Costa Diadema runs one-week Mediterranean cruises throughout the year, with stopovers in Civitavecchia on Fridays. On Thursdays, all dishes prepared at restaurants and not served to guests will be collected. Meals will be placed in aluminum containers, which will be sealed, labeled for tracking, and placed onboard for refrigeration. The next morning, after the ship stops at Civitavecchia, the containers will be unloaded and delivered to Banco Alimentare volunteers, who will take them to La Repubblica dei Ragazzi, a community in Via Aurelia in Civitavecchia, which provides support and education for young people with family problems.
The project of Costa Cruises and the Banco Alimentare Onlus Foundation is designed to help combat poverty and social exclusion and was made possible by the validity of Italian Law 166/2016 against food and pharmaceutical waste and entered into force on 14 of September 2016. The law restructures the regulation on donations of unsold food with incentive measures, making it easier, more controlled and safe to donate any type of food.