September 26, 2024 15:20

A new circular economy project involving PET plastics and the cruise industry was presented today at the port of Civitavecchia, Italy, aboard the Costa Smeralda.
The initiative brings together the Corepla consortium, Costa Crociere, and F.lli Guzzini, with the goal of transforming PET bottles collected from large cruise ships into new design items to be reused on board.

Launched last May, the project has already collected nearly 2 million bottles, amounting to 40 tons of PET, from three ships of the Italian Costa Crociere fleet.
The collected packaging is sent to S.E.Port, a company operating at Civitavecchia, which delivers it to Corepla for recycling. A specialized recycler converts the waste into rPET, which F.lli Guzzini then uses to create new design objects. To close the cycle, these items are returned to Costa Crociere’s ships.

Among the products created from this virtuous cycle are glasses from the Tierra collection, each made using the equivalent of 3.3 1.5-liter water bottles. In the first five months since the project’s launch, F.lli Guzzini has provided 60,000 glasses to four Costa vessels.

Designed by Pio&Tito Toso, the Tierra collection features tableware made from post-consumer PET bottles. Developing these products required the use of materials suitable for food contact, resistant to high temperatures, and dishwasher safe.

As the program expands, an eco-compactor provided by Corepla as part of the RecoPet initiative will be installed aboard the Costa Toscana to further encourage passengers to recycle their PET bottles.

“The regeneration of resources is one of the pillars of Costa Crociere’s sustainability strategy,” says Giuseppe Carino, senior vice president of guest experience and onboard sales operations at Costa Crociere. “On our ships, we conduct comprehensive waste separation, integrated into an approach that seeks to implement circular economy projects, even going beyond existing regulatory requirements. In particular, about 80% of the PET collected from our ships is destined for recycling." He adds, “The project launched in Civitavecchia with Corepla and F.lli Guzzini represents another step forward, as it involves a true circular journey that starts and ends on our ships, transforming used PET bottles into elegant design objects used in our restaurants.”

“The selective collection of plastic packaging has now reached excellent levels,” notes Antonio Protopapa, Corepla’s director of operational management. “We are now focused on increasing the recovery of PET bottles and demonstrating that the ecological and energy transition must come from a change in mindset, where companies and designers collaborate to create increasingly circular products, involving the community in the selective collection processes."

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