Recycle: a duty, un engagement
For some years now, the Piber Group has developed a positive answer to the problem of the environmental impact of plastic packaging. In fact, a project has been put in place, whereby the disposable plates and cutlery used by communities are collected separately. Today, this industrial system involves 500 caterings supplying 10 million meals a year and enables the recycling of about 600 tons of plastic per year. In the past, such items increased the flow of city waste earmarked for landfills. "This activity aimed at reducing environmental impact led to Piberplast being awarded the Eco Efficient Company 2000 prize by the Lombardy Region and the Institute for the Environment - this prize was awarded during "MeetingAmbiente" 21 of Milan.
Introduction
Meal times have always been a key aspect of the quality of life of a human being. In the post-industrial society of advanced countries, eating meals involves feelings that go well beyond the need to eat, embracing inter-personal relationships, recreation and a quest for a better psycho-physical balance. These needs may seem incompatible with the way we eat our meals (especially lunches) as typified in modern society, based on mass-oriented study, work, assistance and spare time structures.
Providing meals for a large number of students, workers, clerks or hospitalised people to be consumed simultaneously in large rooms, necessarily implies using rigidly organised meal supply and consumption models. Often, such models do not satisfy the users' related needs (which are of prime importance). Consequently, the various components of a catering service must be balanced and presented in an attractive manner: well designed and cared for rooms, split spaces - encouraging a dimension approaching that of a family - better lighted rooms with more "greenery", plus furniture and furnishings studied to encourage socialising among users; more ergonomic, practical and attractive crockery.
Catering and disposable crockery
In designing a collective catering model, we have to integrate the aims we have just examined, with some essential hygienic, organisational and economic limits. If we restrict our analysis to crockery and cutlery, we see that many communities have noted that the use of disposable articles in plastic ensures a better catering service at competitive prices in terms of hygiene, functionality, flexibility and safety, when compared to traditional crockery. As a result, the Italian market for disposable articles in plastic has grown at an amazing pace, reaching about 155 million Euro in the late 90s, and 100,000 tons or processed materials.
Most of these disposable crockery items are produced by thermo-formed polystyrene, as this technology has up to now assured lower costs compared to injection moulding, but to the detriment of the functional and aesthetic characteristics of the articles - usually highly limited. For this reason there are still psychological limits to the use of plastic crockery in collective catering centres, as this choice can be interpreted as synonymous with the overall quality of medium to low service.
