Costa Fortuna has officially become part of the Costa ships’ food donation program following her call in Genoa on Friday.

Surplus food not served aboard the ships is collected and distributed to local organizations that support people in need.

Launched in Savona on July 22, 2017, the project currently operates in Italy, in the ports of Savona, Civitavecchia, Bari and Palermo, and has been exported as an Italian “best practice” to France and Spain, in Marseilles and Barcelona and, since last December, in Guadeloupe and Martinique as well, according to a prepared statement.

Over 21 months, Costa said it had donated 100,000 portions of food to 11 associations.

This has now been expanded with another ship as the Fortuna is back in Europe following her China program and will call every Friday at Genoa through early November.

Every Thursday preceding the ship’s arrival in Genoa, at the end of dinner, all the dishes prepared in the catering areas and not served to guests, the so-called “ready-to-eat” meals, will be collected.

The meals will be placed in appropriate aluminum containers, which will be sealed and labeled to ensure their traceability, and then stored in the ship’s refrigerators, Costa said.

Then, the next day, with the ship in Genoa, the food is handed over to Banco Alimentare, who will deliver them to the La Casa dell’Angelo – Opera don Guanella center in Genoa, which cares for young people in need.

 “This partnership with Costa Cruises and Fondazione Banco Alimentare demonstrates that different worlds and interests can not only talk to one another but also cooperate and plan virtuous cycles to fight poverty and try to limit food waste. We and all the young people for whom we care, who will now be able to enjoy high quality food, are grateful to Costa Cruises and Fondazione Banco Alimentare Onlus,”  noted Don Attilio Molteni, Director of La Casa dell’Angelo – Opera don Guanella.

“This project to recover food from Costa ships is a good circular economoc practice of which we are very proud,” said Marco Lucchini, Secretary General of Fondazione Banco Alimentare Onlus. “We are committed to fighting food poverty and waste, as required by the Agenda 2030 and the Sustainable Development Goals 2 and 12, so we are proud to have created a model with Costa Cruises that sensitizes citizens on the subject of waste reduction and is a concrete example of responsible consumption, with great attention paid to the social dimension.”

“The return of a Costa ship to Genoa has enabled us to launch this initiative with Banco Alimentare Onlus in our city as well and is a real innovation in the maritime sector. The project began in 2017, also in Liguria, in Savona, and we are particularly glad to roll it out further within our region, giving a concrete sign of the commitment of Costa Cruises and glad to have an authoritative partner and benchmark as is Banco Alimentare Onlus,” added Giuseppe Carino, Vice President Guest Experience and Onboard Sales of Costa Cruises . “We are keen to thank and to highlight the hard work done by the Customs Agency and the Maritime Health Authority to develop the procedures for food to be delivered to all the parties involved in making this project possible.”

The donation of surplus food, managed in collaboration with Fondazione Banco Alimentare Onlus, is part of the 4GOODFOOD initiative, through which Costa Cruises was the first to decide to review the issue of food in a sustainable way, said a press release.

Thanks to its integrated approach, which begins with the preparation of dishes and gets both guests and crew members directly involved, 4GOODFOOD, has set itself the ambitious objective of reducing food waste on Costa ships by 50 percent by 2020, 10 years ahead of the UN Agenda 2030.