Keep the rest
Aluminium for the prevention of food waste
“Tenga il Resto” or “Keep the rest” is a national initiative aimed at combating food waste, promoted by the CIAL Consortium in 5 Italian provincial capitals: Monza, Arezzo, Pordenone, Cremona and Pavia, as well as three whole provinces: Macerata, Gorizia and Treviso.
In the initiative, aluminium trays supplied by CIAL are used to allow customers at participating restaurants to take leftover food home with them in a practical, useful and, above all, once used, 100% infinitely recyclable “family bag”.
The project, launched in 2015, was the result of an agreement between the CIAL Consortium and the Municipality of Monza on the occasion of Expo Milano, an international event focusing on food and on the need to eradicate food waste, which is harmful to the environment and the economy.
One project: two purposes
Let’s not waste food at the restaurant
One in eight people in the world suffer from hunger and 2 billion people are malnourished, while one third of all food produced, 1.3 billion tonnes, goes to waste. The environmental costs associated with all this waste correspond to about 250,000 billion litres of water and 1.4 billion hectares of land, with emission of about 3.3 billion tonnes of Co2 into the atmosphere.
This is a campaign conceived following the signing of the “Charter for a Zero Waste Network of Territorial Authorities” that the Municipality of Monza signed in 2014 and which provides for the implementation of initiatives aimed at limiting the waste of resources and energy by participating local authorities.
After Monza, other cities followed suit and prepared the project with CIAL, involving local restaurateurs, who were able to use CIAL’s aluminium trays free of charge after joining the project.
The Monza experience paved the way for other communities, where the relationship between the fight against food waste and the use of aluminium packaging and containers was underlined with the involvement of the companies that support the municipalities in urban waste management and separate waste collection:
Gea and Snua Srl in Pordenone, Sei Toscana in Arezzo, Cosmari in Macerata, ASM in Pavia, Isontina Ambiente in Gorizia, and Contarina in the province of Treviso.
In the same way, to reiterate the importance of working together, in each city CIAL has entered into an agreement with local trade associations in the catering sector, primarily confcommercio and confesercenti.
The aluminium tray: recyclable and perfect for leftovers!
Tenga il Resto conveys two important messages perfectly expressed in aluminium packaging, in particular the tray distributed in participating restaurants.
Aluminium is an infinitely recyclable and 100% recyclable material, meaning that after several uses, if properly separated for recycling, the tray can be reborn and transformed into any number of everyday objects, from a classic aluminium coffee pot to a bicycle.
In addition, the aluminium tray is the perfect form of packaging for saving leftovers, due to its strength, malleability and practicality. Its ability to preserve food at its ideal temperature is another quality not to be underestimated.
