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Costa Cruises To Halve Food Waste On Board Its Ships Thanks To The “4GOODFOOD” Program

The program, afirst for global shipping, starts with the shipboard food preparation processand also engages Costa's guests and crew members.

Milan –February 5, 2018 – Costa Cruises has today unveiled its4GOODFOOD program, whose aim is to halve food waste on board theItalian company's ships by 2020.

Thestarting point for the project is recognizing the value of food. The foodexperience is a key part of the cruise and the relevant figures are quite staggering: some 54million meals a year are prepared on board the members of the Costafleet. By means of 4GOODFOOD, Costadecided to review all its food service processes and remodel them using anintegrated approach based on sustainability while ensuring the proactiveengagement of guests and crew. Thecompany is not working alone on 4GOODFOOD; indeed, it can count on the collaborationof Italian and international partners with a proven track record such as Fondazione Banco Alimentare ONLUS,Cittadinanzattiva, the Slow Food Foundation forBiodiversity, Universitàdegli Studi di Scienze Gastronomiche di Pollenzo and Winnow.

Thepilot project was successfully developed and tested on the flagship CostaDiadema starting in 2016 and 4GOODFOOD is now being implemented fleetwide. During the experimental phase on board theCosta Diadema, the program yielded impressive results with a more than 50% reduction in food waste in 11 months: this is equivalent to a saving of 1189metric tons of CO2, namely the emissionsof 231 motor vehicles in a year. In any event, Costa Cruises' ships were wellplaced from the outset with regard to food waste. Accordingto a report entitled "Overviewof waste in the UK Hospitality and food sector" produced by WRAP(the Waste & Resources Action Programme, world leaders in helpingorganizations achieve greater resource efficiency), the average shorebased restaurant wastes 284 grams of food per person per meal. This compares to the 216 grams measured on the Costa fleet prior to the launch of the 4GOODFOOD program.

Costa Cruises President Neil Palomba commented asfollows: "We've taken a good hard look atthe value of food and responsible consumption, and come up with practicalsolutions. 4GOODFOOD is unprecedented inglobal shipping: thanks to this programwe intend to cut food waste on our ships by half by 2020, ten years ahead ofthe deadline prescribed by the United Nations 2030 Agenda. We've laid down amarker for the industry by promoting a more sustainable shipboard foodpreparation and consumption model, without in any way impairing the quality ofthe cruise experience. But the most importantaspect - and this is one of our top priorities - is that this project willengage around two million guests a year as well as our 19,000 crew members,meaning there'll be a positive knock-on effect shoreside as well."

"I am proud to vouch for the progressmade by Costa Cruises on the path to food sustainability while contributing to the cultural change that istaking place vis-à-vis this issue. Allof this goes to show that the business world and civil society are taking afirm stand when it comes to tackling food waste. I am in no doubt that a heightened sense ofresponsibility is the key to spreading the message that the right to food is aninalienable one; therefore, we need to boost our joint commitment so as tocreate more opportunities for dialogue, thereby engaging the community andfostering best practices, including tangible synergistic actions like theinitiative presented here today," said the ItalianDeputy Minister Andrea Olivero.

Foodwaste is a key global issue: the UN 2030 Agenda lays down 17 SustainableDevelopment Goals, one of which is precisely to halve per capitaglobal food waste by 2030. According toFAO, roughly one third of the food produced in the world every year —approximately 1.3 billion metrictons — gets lost or wasted.

PeterBakker, President of the World Business Council for Sustainable Development,stated: "Today, one-third of all the foodthat we produce is never eaten. As almost 800 million people suffer frommalnourishment and food insecurity across the globe, this is a situation whichsimply cannot continue. As the global voice of sustainable business, WBCSD isleading a range of projects that aim to transform global food systems from forkto farm. Business action is urgently required to address the problem of foodwaste and work towards targets in the Paris Agreement and the UN SustainableDevelopment Goals."

"This initiative shows the importance ofbusiness engagement in achieving the UN 2030 Agenda Sustainable DevelopmentGoals," stressed Enrico Giovannini, Spokesperson for the Italian Alliance forSustainable Development (ASviS). "Companies like Costa Cruises, which interactwith millions of people every year, can use these awareness-raising initiativesto accelerate the cultural change required to improve lifestyles and providethe impetus to make the future more sustainable. Only by means of partnerships betweendifferent types of stakeholders can we successfully deal with a series of closelylinked global challenges. The issue offood waste," Giovannini added,"is related to other key issues such as climate change, food and watersafety, and migration, which need to be tackled using an integrated approach.The Agenda 2030 system framework offers an extraordinary platform to build andshare forward-looking programs that can result in a fairer, more resilient andmore inclusive society."

4GOODFOODis a far-reaching project that considers every aspect of food preparation andconsumption on board and provides tangible and measurable solutions. In partnership with the Università di Scienze Gastronomiche di Pollenzo (University of Gastronomic Sciences), Costa began by remodeling its food&wine offerings basedon sustainability and the rigorous selectionof quality products and ingredients while prioritizing the seasonal availability and local sourcing of produce. This included the introduction of 572 regional and local dishes reflecting Italy's unrivalled culinary heritage andthe Mediterranean Diet.

Togetherwith Winnow, specialists inoptimization of processes in professional kitchens, Costa placed kitchen scalesin the galleys and kept a centralized recordenabling the mapping, quantification and analysis of wastage at food processingand preparation level. This system has enabledthe gradual implementation of integrated improvement actions on board the ships,and it is already in use on more than half the fleet. Key to this was the specific training ofalmost 2400 galley staff, who wereinstructed on how to reduce waste and apply more sustainable processes.

Meanwhile,the Tastedon't Waste consciousness-raising campaign is designed to directly involve guests by encouragingresponsible behaviors and proactive engagement, particularly in the buffetarea. In this phase of the project CostaCruises is working alongside the citizen and consumer rights group Cittadinanzattiva, which helped monitorthe effectiveness of the "call to action" on the Costa Diadema. The results of the initial test wereexcellent: almost 90% of the guests viewed the campaign favorably and theamount of food wasted by guests in the buffet dropped by almost 20%.

Followingthe introduction of Law no. 166/2016 onfood waste, promoted by Italian MP MariaChiara Gadda, Costa teamed up with the food bank charity Fondazione Banco Alimentare tolaunch a surplus food donation scheme. In what is a first for global shipping,Costa can now retrieve and donate "readyto eat" meals prepared on board but not served in the ship's restaurants. This initiative started operating on theCosta Diadema in Savona in July 2017 and was recently extended to include thePort of Civitavecchia (Rome). In justsix months approximately 16,000 portionswere distributed vialocal associations to people in need.In 2018 it is planned to expand thescale of operations to include other Mediterranean ports - namely Palermo,Cagliari, Bari and Venice in Italy plus Marseille, Barcelona, Athens andValletta (Malta).

The engagement of guests will have anotherpositive effect. Costa Cruises hasdecided to support the network of FoodGardens in Africa promoted by the SlowFood Foundation for Biodiversity. The Italian company will provideongoing financial backing for the venture, with the annual amount of itscontribution directly linked to the reduction in food waste in the buffet onthe part of guests; the idea is to guarantee the future growth of the networkby giving food resources back to the community.Earlier today Costa kick-started its commitment when it handed over to Slow Food founder Carlo Petrini initialfunding for the establishment of 50 newfood gardens in Mozambique, South Africa and Tanzania.

The conference for the presentation of4GOODFOOD program was held today in Milan, under the patronage of the Italian Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Forestry.

For further information:

Costa Cruises

Press Office - Tel. +39 010 5483523 / 0105483068 - costapressoffice@costa.it

GabrieleBaroni – Communication Director – mob. +39 3497668013 - baroni@costa.it

Davide Barbano – MediaRelations Manager – mob. +39 3346525216 - barbano@costa.it

Cristiano de Musso – Head of Corporate Communication – Tel. +39 0105483068 – mob. +39 3346805095 - demusso@costa.it

Press releases and photos available at www.costapresscenter.com

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