Retrieve food that is still good, which would otherwise be thrown away, and redistribute it. This is how Recup fights food waste and social exclusion, creating a sense of community and belonging and establishing an intercultural contact between generations where it was missing. The market becomes the ideal place for exchanging and meeting. Recup helps to live the neighborhood in a more supportive way.

Recup was started in 2014 thanks to its founder, Rebecca, who during her Erasmus in France came into contact with groups that recover food at the markets. Upon her return, she began to wander among the fruit and vegetable stalls, asked the street vendors how much food was left over and above all what they did with it and decided to apply the way of recovering the food learned in the markets of Lille to the market in Milan. The reaction of the vendors has been positive, they have understood the purpose of the project and support it. In addition to fruit and vegetables, yesterday’s bread is donated by the baker and the bar gives away unsold croissants.
However, it was only in 2016 that Recup was changed into an APS, the Social Promotion Association. Today it includes students, pensioners, unemployed people, homeless people of various nationalities.

Volunteers work in the local markets of the cities, in a simple and effective way. The food donated by the traders, at the end of the market, is recovered by a group of volunteers and is then collected in crates and left available at a meeting point in the same market. Everyone is free to take what they want, but always respecting others and the requests of everyone.

The discarded food is used by the same people who help to recover it. Food is always plentiful and there is enough for everyone. And when the collected food cannot be distributed, neighborhood associations are contacted to donate it, or jams are made to give away or sell to self-finance the project which is based solely on the work of volunteers.

Do you want to know the markets in which Recup operates? Click here:
RECUP Association – fights food waste