CREMONA, Italy — On Saturday mornings, residents of this tidy city of 72,000 crowd into a former market for fruit and vegetables in order to donate old clothes and housewares or pick up a used toy or book.

Second-hand markets are nothing new, of course. But the one here, <link https: www.comune.cremona.it node>inaugurated a year ago and known as the <link https: www.comune.cremona.it node>Centro del RI-USO, is part of a much larger and very forward-looking local policy on waste management that seeks to reduce what residents throw away and increase what gets reused and recycled.

Cremona has become a European test ground for new ideas to promote a “circular economy” — <link https: www.ellenmacarthurfoundation.org circular-economy>a concept that seeks to reduce waste and extend the useful life of resources. In the last two years alone, Cremona has increased the percentage of waste collected separately — necessary for recycling — from 53 percent to 72 percent.

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