Zero-waste menus and circular cuisine are the 2026 innovations for Poseidonia Beach Club, a beach establishment that has made sustainability its mantra, earning the 2025 Audit People Award as the best Italian beach club for quality and sustainability.

Now the Ascea Marina facility opens the 2026 season with a new piece of its sustainability journey linked to food and dining. The project by founder Gianni Rizzo brings the principles of circular economy, work organization, territorial enhancement and measurable results control to everyday dining. Not just a simple “green” message, but a system based on internal procedures, waste monitoring, portion standards, controlled recovery of surplus and involvement of kitchen, pizzeria, dining room, bar and local suppliers. The project fits into the already ISO 20121:2024 certified path for sustainable event management and strengthens a vision that connects the Beach Club to environmental innovation, short supply chain and Mediterranean culture. “Reducing waste doesn’t mean giving up quality – states Gianni Rizzo -. It means respecting ingredients, producers and territory. For us, sustainability is organizing value, not declaring it”.

The heart of the project is the transition from linear cuisine to circular cuisine, where every raw material is valued throughout the entire process. The reference is also to the principles of circular economy recalled by ISO 59004:2024: maintaining the value of resources as long as possible, reducing waste and losses. In practice, it means better planning purchases, valuing every ingredient, recovering controlled internal surplus and transforming often overlooked edible parts into new preparations, while respecting quality, safety and readability of the dish.

Preparing this menu is chef Costantino Buono, who has applied a monitoring system that tracks quantities of organic waste, percentage of ingredients reused or transformed, food cost in relation to waste avoided, number of circular dishes, share of local and seasonal ingredients and reduction of environmental impact linked to waste. The goal is to make sustainability verifiable and improvable over time, through data collection, results analysis and deviation correction, transforming every improvement into quality perceived by the customer.

For Poseidonia Beach Club, the project also has cultural and territorial value. Reducing waste means: enhancing Cilento as a place of learning and not just tourist consumption; strengthening the local supply chain for seafood and agricultural products; transforming dining into a storytelling tool for Ascea and its identity; building a replicable model for other coastal hospitality businesses. In a context where sea, land and Mediterranean gastronomic culture are an integral part of the experience, Poseidonia Beach Club confirms itself as a permanent laboratory for more responsible and conscious hospitality.

“We want to convey a simple idea – states Rizzo -. Sustainability is never a sacrifice, but a more evolved way of doing catering: working better, wasting less value and offering a more authentic and credible experience. In this sense, our menu is not just a gastronomic proposal: it’s a method, and it’s also a message”.