Remida Recycling Centre

The Reminda concept started in 1990 with parents from the small schools bringing in recyclables from home and work. It grew to include left over products from businesses, ‘urban rubbish’ and a community wide tradition began. Now there are 8 centres throughout Italy, also some in Germany and Australia. These other centres pay a trade mark fee. The procedure is strict because it has strong ethical principles behind it. The idea has been easy to export, because as a society people also like to consume ideas; here they are keen to come to get new ideas and suggestions on what they can do.

The centre has a teacher/ pedagogist who is a bridge between the schools & it also has lots of competent volunteers, e.g. dressmakers who come in and set up displays etc. Left over material from businesses arrives once a week. The Remida based pedagogists research the possibilities of the materials and display their ideas around the centre in order to promote the creativity of ideas amongst people. Some schools are guinea pigs and take materials to experiment with and create new ideas for sharing. Displays change everyday depending on what comes in ... can’t come with a pre conceived idea because it depends what comes in. 

Members of the Reminda centre pay for a card which costs 40 euros a year and people/schools/scout groups etc can come and get anything they want.  The checkout is at the end of the building, so that when walking through people are exposed to the vision the Remedia staff present for them. 

Pedagogical and cultural and ethical  perspective behind the centre. 

In many places rubbish is money & organised crime (black market) is behind the rubbish situation because it is expensive to deal with rubbish.

So the Remida concept is an ethical way of making responsible use of what people take in our consumer society. It’s a political statement about how the city of Reggio Emilia stands in the environment - i.e. what kind of human beings people want to be…. people are not islands , but part of a culture and a society & for this reason they choose to be responsible for their rubbish.  It’s the Reggio approach , a life philosophy  of building relationships not only with other people but with the environment as well for example, i.e. it is a way of thinking.

Learning by doing is the idea in Reggio Emilia and the Remida opportunity supports this.

Displays change everyday depending on what comes in.