The Waste 2 Value project inaugurated at the Centronova Shopping Center
The partnership between Camst Group-IGD Siiq-Coop Alleanza 3.0 and the municipality of Castenaso leads to a circular economy project which transforms waste into resources
“Waste 2 Value”, the circular economy project involving Camst group, IGD Siiq, Coop Alleanza 3.0 and the municipality of Castenaso, under the supervision of Impronta Etica and sponsored by ATERSIR, was inaugurated this morning at the Centronova Shopping Center in Villanova di Castenaso (BO).
The goal of Waste2Value is to create an innovative circular economy model for the recovery of food scraps by turning them into “new products”. The operators along the food chain, from large scale distribution to food & beverage businesses, in fact, have a key role in the reduction and recycling of the food waste which, based on FAO’s estimates, reaches around 1.3 billion tons per year or one third of all the food produced for human consumption worldwide.
In the Camst and Coop snack bars located inside the shopping centers coffee grounds and orange peels will be collected at the end of the day. The La Fraternità coop will then gather the waste and put it in the compost bins, which are inside boxes painted by the young Bolognese artist Hazkj, and transform them into a soil amendment, a natural fertilizer which will be used to maintain the green zones inside the shopping center and a few vegetable gardens managed by local communities. The amendment will improve the physical characteristics of the soil and enhance the absorption of water and nutrients.
The community was actively involved in the program, as were a large number of stakeholders, during both the conceptual and development phases. Two hackathons, namely two creative marathons with around 80 participants comprised of students and internationally renowned researchers, were held in order to address topics relating to food waste and the development of an innovative model which would give a new life to food waste by transforming it into a resource. The involvement of Coop Alleanza 3.0, Camst group, IGD Siiq and those already committed to fighting food waste, allowed the participants to work as a team on the concrete development of this project in a precise location, namely Centronova.
The inauguration of the composter took place in two phases. At 9:30 a.m. two classes of elementary school students from the town of Castenaso, along with the volunteers that take care of the community vegetable gardens, went through the whole cycle of transforming waste to fertilizer beginning with the Camst and Coop Alleanza 3.0 snack bars. Then time was dedicated to the institutions involved in the project with a welcome speech from Carlo Gubellini, mayor of Castenaso, followed by the presentation of the project by Sara Teglia, Impronta Etica’s coordinator and the speeches given by Rossella Saoncella, Chair of IGD Siiq, Mario Cifiello, Chair of Coop Alleanza 3.0, Francesco Malaguti, Chair of Camst group, Francesco Tonelli of the La Fraternità coop and Vito Belladonna, Director of ATERSIR.
The event ended with the ribbon cutting ceremony and the usual photo ops which involved all the project partners who were photographed with the elementary school students and the local communities in the hope that Centronova might become an example for similar projects in the future.
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