Last Minute Market - recovering and reusing unsold goods
Last Minute Market (LMM) is a social enterprise, founded in 1998 as a research initiative and now a spin-off from the University of Bologna (Italy). Today, it is an entrepreneurial company working at national level, developing local projects to recover unsold goods and benefit non-profit organisations. Its objective is zero waste: all services offered by LMM are studied and designed to prevent and reduce waste.
LMM was created to assist companies in re-using surplus food and turning waste into resources. Its field of activity has expanded to different types of goods (e.g. medicines and non-food). Their services are:
- circulation of surpluses (food, meals, medicines, books, non-food goods, etc.)
- data analysis, loss and waste analysis, estimating the environmental and social impacts
- training for schools, companies and institutions
- communication, marketing projects and content production.
LMM cooperates with companies, schools and organisations from the third sector. It has provided recovery and waste prevention projects over a wide range of activities, such as:
- Recovery of cooked meals not served by canteens and their re-distribution to other institutions in need
- Re-use of purchased, but non-used pharmaceutical products, saving up to EUR 1 million in the last three years
- Re-use of supermarket surpluses. In a project involving over 200 supermarkets, in two years, LMM has managed to recover and prevent waste of goods with an economic value of EUR 5.5 million.