Tag: plastic

A special wedding: multi-ethnic and plastic free – Italian Cuisine

Francesco and Chiara got married on Saturday. A special wedding with a catering managed by Gustamundo. On the table the specialties of eight countries on three continents prepared by refugees and a particular attention to ecology

For their marriage, organized in three months, Francesco and Chiara wanted a special catering, made up of refugee men and women. And so, on Saturday, on the tables set in the heart of Rome for their wedding reception, the specialties of ben were served eight different countries from around the world: Syria, Ethiopia, Iraq, Somalia, Turkey, Palestine, Pakistan and Morocco.

A menu from three continents

The wedding menu, built together with two chefs Ilyas and Moustafà, it was a journey through three continents, discovering flavors like those of the babaganoush (Syria), of the kubba (Iraq), of the mushakhan (Palestine) and, finally, of the baklava (Morocco). The service in the hall was entrusted to the coordination of Behara, of Roma origin and resident at Casa di Leda, a protected facility that hosts women as an alternative to detention, along with their minor children.

A special marriage, which is part of the proposals of Gustamundo, a project oriented towardsprofessional integration of refugees in the field of catering and carried out in collaboration with various reception centers and facilities that host migrants in Rome. For counter social exclusion through work.

The spouses

Francesco is a university professor of Philosophy, Chiara is a creative and works like art director: they met in 2012 in Cologne, Germany, where Francesco lived for several months for «Abroad, far from their comfort zone, he says, «we open ourselves to each other and we become more aware of the difficulties related to emigration. Especially for those who leave everything, not to train themselves or improve their work position, but to save their lives .

Chiara and Francesco explain that it was also their Christian faith to encourage them to entrust catering to Gustamundo. "The important thing is to know how to give up a perfect marriage in style and put one's creativity at stake to make something truly original. The sense of that day was, for me and Francesco, doing something beautiful not only for us and for our guests, but also for the other and the community of which we are a part , says Chiara. The newlyweds also wanted to launch another important message: the environment must be respected and protected. That's why theirs was a plastic free marriage and because participations and menus were printed on recycled paper.

In the Philippines he inaugurates a park of tulips made of recycled plastic – Italian Cuisine

In the Philippines the fight against waste is proclaimed creatively, thanks to an enchanting garden whose 30 thousand colored tulips are made of recycled plastic

In this historical period, as perhaps never before, the climate change it is a hot and widely debated topic. While politics and the global media try to understand how to reduce their effects and how to cope with the problem of waste and environmental pollution, there are so many green initiatives and projects that come to life and that deserve to be known and supported. One of them is the Forever Tulip Garden, recently inaugurated in the city of Lamitan (Basilan) in the Philippines, or a charming garden of tulips whose flowers have been made with recycled plastic.

The anti-waste garden with 30,000 recycled tulips

The Philippine sea has the sad distinction of being one of the most polluted in the world and has, unfortunately, also recently recalled the attention of the world press due to the discovery of a dead whale with 40 kilos of plastic waste in the stomach. And yet, recently, something is beginning to awaken, and in some local communities initiatives have been started to environmental awareness, including the offer of a kilo of rice in exchange for a kilo of plastic.
The last eco-friendly project, as laudable as it is creative, is a tulip garden made entirely of plastic waste and recently opened in the town of Lamitann, in the province of Basilan. The park, called Forever Tulip Garden, is reminiscent of the famous Keukenhof gardens of the Netherlands, but its 30 thousand colored tulips are made of plastic. These beautiful flowers have in fact been made with about 30 thousand plastic bottles collected from 45 surrounding villages, then recycled, reshaped and painted of yellow, blue, red and pink. Other bottles have been mixed and mixed with sand and cement to give life to the paths and paths of the garden.

Forever Tulip Garden, tourist attraction of the Philippines in 2020?

This unique garden in the world was strongly backed by the local government, led by Mayor Rose Furigay, currently engaged in one awareness campaign to reduce the use of plastic in the city. Although Basilan is among the poorest provinces of the Philippines, the local population appears to be motivated and interested in this new original initiative and many have attended the inauguration ceremony. The Forever Tulip Garden is already attracting a large number of tourists and the government is ready to bet soon it will be one of the most popular tourist places in the city, if not in the country.

Photo: Image via City Government of Lamitan_Reuters Media

The "second hand" of plastic bottles – Italian Cuisine

The "2 × 1" in Ferrarelle arrives. No, this is not the usual campaign of discounts to which the supermarkets have accustomed us but a project based on environmental sustainability. Thanks to the new plastic recovery plant, the company is able to produce recycled PET bottles: each two recovered can be produced […]

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The "2×1" comes in Ferrarelle. No, this is not the usual campaign of discounts to which the supermarkets have accustomed us but a project based on the sustainability environmental. Thanks to the new plastic recovery plant, the company is able to produce bottles in Recycled PET: every two recovered a new one can be produced. The countdown to the arrival on the market of bottles of Ferrarelle obtained for 50% from PET recycling, has already begun. We need only the latest authorization from EFSA (the European Food Safety Authority), which should arrive by the end of 2019. On the project "Bottle to bottle" Ferrarelle has invested so much (34 million of euros only for the new plant) and thought big: the structure of Presenzano, in the province of Caserta, not only meets the needs of the company, but realizes recycled plastic also for other uses (from construction to clothing, fromfaux leather to the objects of furniture) and has a production capacity equal to twice the PET which Ferrarelle uses in a year.

The novelty: recycled and "home made" bottles
Ferrarelle's choice is pioneering for the world of food, and not just Italian. No other mineral water company has its own plant to manage the cycle integrated of PET recovery. TO Presenzano plastic waste arrives from the circuit of separate waste collection throughout Italy. Here, after having appropriately selected and treated them, new bottles are obtained, made up of 50% by Recycled PET (the so-called R-PET). For now we cannot go because the Italian law is more rigid than in other European countries. But the goal is to raise this threshold, as is permitted in many European countries.

From the box to the table (and vice versa)
They look like installations of "pop art", the large cubes of bottles of drinks, crushed and compressed, coming from the circuit of the separate collection and piled in the external courtyard of the plant of Presenzano. Looking at them it is difficult to think that they can obtain something good. And yet it is so. Everything starts from a premise: PET (polyethylene terephthalate) is fully recoverable and today in Italy has a rate of 40% recycling about. But Italian law sets limits on the use of PET "second hand": can represent at most the 50% maximum of new containers in PET. This is why the new Ferrarelle water bottles will be only half R-PET. And that's why this establishment doesn't just serve to satisfy the need of the company but realizes recovery plastic materials destined to other uses, food and not. In fact, the flow of incoming PET is substantial: only in the first seven months of 2019 were they 4,500 tons that, when fully operational, they will become 23 thousand. That is the equivalent of 800 thousand bottles in recycled plastic every year.

What is behind a bottle of R-PET
The PET journey in the plant is forced: we start with the separation of the labels and with a prewash, to then move on to the selection of the material to eliminate the "unwanted" ones. At this point the selected PET is ground in water mills. You get one chip, similar to that of soap. Separated from the one obtained from the caps (which are made of a plastic material different from the bottles and are intended for different uses), the one in PET it is washed, dried, and again selected and controlled. Finally, it is separated by type and color (there is a precise point of green, the green Ferrarelle) and treated with heat and empty to make it suitable for contact with food. And after all this process, the recycled PET scale is ready to be mixed with that "new" to make the preforms, that is the like test tubes (but of maxi dimensions) that represent the embryos of the new bottles, then produced in the two plants of bottling of Ferrarelle.

Manuela Soressi
October 2019

DISCOVER THE COOKING COURSES OF SALT & PEPE

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