Remida is a place that promotes the idea that waste materials can be resources. The Centre collects, displays, and distributes alternative and reclaimed materials obtained from the unsold stock and scrap materials of industrial production, with the aim to reinvent their use and meaning.

Remida is a cultural project that represents a new, optimistic, and proactive way of approaching environmentalism and building change through giving value to reject materials, imperfect products, and otherwise worthless objects, to foster new opportunities for communication and creativity in a perspective of respect for objects, the environment, and human beings.

Remida is a joint project of the Infant-toddler Centres and Preschools Istituzione of the Municipality of Reggio Emilia and Iren/ENIA. The center is managed by the Friends of Reggio Children International Association, now merged into the Reggio Children-Loris Malaguzzi Centre Foundation.

The Centre distributes materials (paper, cardboard, ceramic, paints, cord, leather, rubber, wood, and so on) to teachers of infant-toddler centers and preschools, elementary, middle, and secondary schools, as well as to educational and cultural associations, senior citizens' centers, sheltered workshops for the disabled, recreation centers, and so on.

Remida also promotes and organizes workshops and training courses, seminars, exhibitions, conferences, and the annual Remida Day initiative, held over several days and dedicated to creative and eco-friendly recycling of discard materials. During the event, the city of Reggio Emilia is animated by a series of unique events and initiatives, including the traditional Household Goods Flea Market.

Remida offers an opportunity to translate the sense of social and environmental responsibility into concrete actions, highlighting “remainders”, a world of elements and traces that, upon leaving industrial production, no longer have value but can receive a new life at Remida in other forms, taking on new and diversified identities.

The Remida project gives attention to the search for new sensory “grammars” also in relation to new generation materials and elicits curiosity toward the entire production and distribution process, stimulating a commitment toward designing materials and objects whose recycling and reuse are already contemplated.

Remida figures

15 years of activity

170 companies in the province of Reggio Emilia that furnish discard materials

170 tons of materials recovered and made available free of charge for educational/cultural projects in schools, recreation centers and associations.

12 REMIDA DAY events with 200,000 participants

17 REMIDA centres in the world