SUSTAINABLE DESIGN: THE CIRCULAR JOURNEY OF PET
Corepla, Guzzini and Costa Crociere, setting the example in circularity
Environmental stewardship starts first and foremost with a cultural approach that sets out to rethink products, services and production processes on circular principles, aiming to minimise an object’s impact on the environment throughout its lifecycle.
It is an undertaking that involves everyone: not just businesses, institutions and the general public but also visionary engineers and change-makers, capable of interpreting this cultural transformation by working to develop new materials and processes that involve the reuse of raw materials from end-of-life products and, above all, respond to society’s latest needs. Plastic, for example - if properly collected and recycled - can be used to create new, environmentally sustainable designer items.
This is the thinking behind the circular economy project launched by Corepla, Costa Crociere and F.lli Guzzini, presented the 26th of September at Civitavecchia on board cruise ship Costa Smeralda, which sets out to give new life to used PET bottles by transforming them into new, attractive, sustainable, circular economy products.
The project, which started in May 2024, has already yielded impressive results: a total of almost 40 tonnes of PET has been collected from 3 Costa Crociere ships, the equivalent of about 2 million PET bottles.
In fact, since May 2024 Costa Crociere ships calling at Civitavecchia have used the services of the S.E. Port company to consign the PET bottles collected on board to the Corepla Consortium. Corepla then delivers them to a recycler, which transforms them into secondary raw material (R- PET). F.lli Guzzini uses this material to create new designer articles, including the Tierra line, which then go back on board the Costa Crociere ships for use by both passengers and crew.
In these first five months of the project, 60,000 “Tierra” tumblers have been taken on board 4 Costa ships.
The project, extremely effective in raising the awareness of the public and holidaymakers on environmental issues, also includes the installation on board Costa Toscana - with Costa Smeralda and Costa Pacifica, one of the three Costa vessels which regularly dock at Civitavecchia - of a bottle crusher supplied by Corepla within the RecoPet Project, to further simplify the recycling of PET bottles on board the ships.
The bottles disposed of in the bottle crusher will be recycled and transformed into new designer objects.
