The resumption of cruises began on Sunday 4 July with the Costa-Smeralda (Costa Croisières), which took on 700 French passengers. In this context, the crew of the Costa Smeralda unloaded cooked meals not served to passengers at the Food Bank of Bouches-du-Rhône, for the benefit of the William Booth Residence of the Salvation Army Foundation in Marseille, a famous foundation whose vocation is to help, accompany and rebuild people in distress.
The operation will be repeated every week with the Costa Smeralda, the latest flagship of the fleet to be powered by gas (LNG), during its stopovers in the city of Marseille. This unique initiative in the sector aims to promote the circular economy and support people in need.
In recent years, Costa has implemented measures to limit food surpluses. As food surpluses cannot be completely avoided, in 2018 Costa launched a food surplus donation initiative, a unique project in the entire maritime sector launched in collaboration with the European Food Banks Federation in 11 of the company’s ports of call including Marseille, Pointe-à-Pitre, Fort-de-France and Saint-Denis de la Réunion.
Every Sunday, these dishes are unloaded and donated to the Banque Alimentaire des Bouches-du-Rhône
In France, nearly 50,000 meals have been donated since the launch of this exclusive programme in 2018, half of which were donated to Marseille via the Banque Alimentaire des Bouches-du-Rhône – that’s nearly 5 tonnes of food.
These meals were prepared on board but not served in the ship’s restaurants. They are collected, placed in aluminium trays according to very strict sanitary procedures, sealed and labelled for traceability purposes and stored in on-board refrigerators. Every Sunday, these dishes are unloaded and donated to the Bouches-du-Rhône Food Bank. These quality meals, prepared on board by Costa’s chefs, are immediately sent to the Salvation Army.
“The resumption of cruises also allows us to relaunch our programmes”
“Costa Cruises has placed the issue of food at the very heart of its sustainable development strategy, focusing primarily on the objective of reducing food waste. This initiative is essential for us and is perfectly in line with the objectives of Sustainable Tourism“, says Raffaele D’Ambrosio, General Manager France and Vice President Costa Crociere, “The resumption of cruises also allows us to relaunch our programmes such as this. The Costa Smeralda is an ideal ship to carry out this type of circular economy project and I warmly thank our involved crew members, the port authorities and our partners from the Food Bank for their trust and involvement”.
Gérard Gros, President of the Food Bank of Bouches-du-Rhône added: “The Food Bank is very happy to continue this collaboration with Costa Croisières. We serve an average of 140,000 people in the Bouches-du-Rhône department in terms of food aid, given the poverty rate in this department. This is a very important programme for us.”
Jocelyne Bresson, Director of the William Booth Residence, Salvation Army Foundation concludes: “The help of the Banque Alimentaire 13 and Costa is invaluable to us and constitutes more than half of the food products we use to prepare our meals.”
Original article here (in French)
