THEn fact of primates, Italy deploys several, and little known, in the field of recycling. According to the latest report from the Symbola Foundation, among the areas where our country is a leader there is precisely the circular economy: we are first in Europe for the share of special and municipal waste sent for recycling79.4 per cent, with the European average standing at 48.6 per cent (69.1 per cent in Germany, 66.2 in France, 48.7 in Spain). A record thanks to which emissions are reduced annually by 63 million tons of CO2 equivalent and 23 million tons of oil equivalent.
Furthermore, according to theEco-innovation IndexItaly is first in the continent also in the efficiency of the use of resources, with a score of 286 points out of 300, compared to the European average, which stops at 147: between 2008 and 2019 Italy reduced the use of raw materials by 44.1 percent for the same production, against the European average of 33 percent.
Recycle to react to difficulties
“These data are not so much the children of far-sighted policies, but of a historical ability to react to difficulties” summarizes Ermete Realacci, the president of Symbola. “The shortage of raw materials is nothing new for us and our production system has adapted over time“. The fact is that in the last five years a third of manufacturing companies have made investments in the name of sustainabilityand moreover these companies have on average had higher turnover, exported more and generated more employment.
Behind the choices of some of them there are women: consultants, startuppers, entrepreneurs of recognized talent, who are innovating with original ideas and visions.
Sustainable recycling: boxes, chairs, tables are born from textile waste
Giulia De Rossi 34 years old, at the head of a start-up that follows fashion companies in the recycling and reuse of leftovers
Until three years ago she was the controller in a company: graduated in International Economics and Business Management, she had a good salary, a safe place, the future in a safe. “But I wasn’t satisfied. Inside, I dreamed of working as a sustainability consultant, to leave a better planet for my two children. So, I decided to leave for a vacation in Japan, which in my thoughts also had to be a sort of mental journey, to reflect on myself, on my true desires, on my work, on the future … There I encountered the incredible and suggestive art of the packaging, carried out with diligent care, I would say almost maniacal and when, on my return to Italy, I found myself throwing away the polystyrene packaging of the ice cream, I had a flash, realizing that here there was nothing alternative to that container. Apart from trying to live a month without plastic, a crazy undertaking !, with equal diligence I began to reflect on how to produce something that would fill that void“. One chemical test at a time, with the support of a product engineer, he begins to consider, and then to have proof, that textile fibers have ample potential to generate the thermal containers he has in mind, but the production costs, compared to polystyrene, were too high. “So, continuing to study, I focused on that production model that today is the heart of my start-up: making containers and, in general, new products by recycling industrial textile waste and used clothes”.
Giulia De Rossi founder and CEO of Nazena.
And, moreover, in Europe 5.8 million tons of textile products are discarded every year. Today the production process is patented and his start-up, to which he gave the name of Nazenawhich in Japan means “Why not?! ”, Works with various Italian fashion companies to which it offers the opportunity to build their sustainability in an innovative way. “Practically, Nazena collects their industrial waste, processes them to return them to the shape of a staple and then processes the fiber with special natural glues, transforming it into panels from which, finally, she obtains objects which she then offers to the same companies.. We make hangers for clothes, boxes, labels, packaging and displays for jewelry, but also sound absorbing wall panels and we are focusing on the design of several other products, such as desks and chairs. Our products are the emblem of what can be recovered without drawing on virgin resources. For companies, the process offers multiple advantages: first of all, they do not pay for the disposal of textile waste because we collect them, they save on the procurement of new raw materials, they improve the Life Cycle Assessment score (it analyzes the environmental impacts of products, from extraction of raw materials until the end of life, ed) and have concrete stories of sustainability to tell their customers. I must say that, through collaboration with us, they also become much more proactive: after all, when we meet them, we explore with them the characteristics of the waste material that they give us and, always together with them, pwe design the products they need and that we are going to make with their scraps“.
Guided recycling: the platform that “escorts” waste to its second life
Camilla Colucci 28 years old, founder and CEO of Circularity, meeting point for companies that value second-hand as a raw material
Camilla Colucci, Co-Founder of Circularity
The conviction of the Neapolitan Camilla Colucci, founder and CEO of Circularity, is that companies can become the engine of the ecological transition and that for this to happen they have to radically change their approach: what until now they have considered waste, they must consider it a resource. In fact, the start-up he founded in Milan, Circularity in fact, is a georeferenced digital platform that connects companies that in the processing produce residues to be disposed of in landfills with other companies for which those same waste can become useful material to be introduced into a new productive process. To date, 25 thousand companies have already registered on the platform, 500 and more are the types of materials handled, from Tetra Pak to fabric to food by-productAnd Forbes has included this young woman, who is somehow a daughter of art – her father is a reference name in the field of energy efficiency and waste management – among the most promising under 30s in the green sector.
“The project is working very well, because it solves more problems for different types of companies” says Colucci, who cites the Booking and Tinder apps to make it clear immediately that the strength of Circularity are the combinations that the algorithm makes by connecting all the actors potentially in the field in the circular process. There are four, each with a convenience guaranteed by the platform: “Who produces industrial waste and must get rid of it; the transporters who go to pick him up; the plants that treat and recover it; the company that closes the circle by using that product for a new process, rather than virgin raw material. In the end, it is the whole system that benefits from it ». The business is immense, also because the Circularity team, which is very young, has multiple skills through which it guides companies that have not yet done so, to make the leap to optimize the use of materials and change the production process in a optics of circularity. In 2021, Circularity tripled its turnover: “In just three years of effective activity, we have laid the foundations to become a reference for the circular economy in Italy. Today companies find themselves managing an epochal change in models and processes, with legislation that is changing and that places them in front of new responsibilities ». From this point of view, the new objectives of the platform are explained: «We aim to qualify ourselves as a market place, so that companies, in addition to meeting, can sell materials. We will proceed to trace the path that what was once a waste takes from the moment the company disposes of it to the final destination. So we will measure the impact of each transition ».
Smart Recycling: Finding Sense of Wonderful Abundance
Daniela Ducato 62 years old, entrepreneur who makes regeneration the prerequisite for new models of economic development
Daniela Ducato WWF green office among the trees
In the world as she sees it, waste has no way of existing, as it happens in nature, where everything returns, in continuous regeneration. The way she thinks it, waste is the sick construction of those who have eyes that do not see the treasure that is hidden in what we throw away. “We are surrounded by surpluses, which are an immense, wonderful abundance, but we do not see it, unable as we are to grasp its value: we waste, we dispose of everything, goods, resources, intelligence. We must become aware of this and find meaning in these surpluses“. Speaking is Daniela Ducato, 62, from Guspini, southern Sardinia – the only municipality in the world to have an industrial area pesticide free (free from pesticides, ed.) and with streets that all have women’s names. She is a freelance who has been accompanying schools, national, multinational and listed companies on innovative sustainability paths for some time.. Through her very patient work of listening and relating, she is among the women who are helping to build new economic and social models where residues, surpluses, by-products are saved. And where what is refusal for someone becomes a new potential for another.
Award-winning in Italy and abroad for its activity, she was also awarded the title of Knight of the Italian Republic by President Sergio Mattarella, who defined her as the “World Innovation Champion, the pride of our best Italy” for showing how plant and animal waste can be transformed into renewable biomaterials. Daniela Ducato has, in fact, conceived the brand Edizero Architecture for Peace, a protocol of rules based on “zero”: zero exploitation of resources and economies, zero water content, zero plunder of land and zero plunder of seas (in English land grabbing and ocean grabbing) by large economies, but also zero waste of public and private money. “Starting from this protocol, I strive to create quality alliances between the most varied subjects – from civil society to the world of research, to businesses – and therefore to create sustainable innovation“.
The latest recycling project was born from the synergy between Fondazione Territorio Italia, which Daniela Ducato chairs, the Spezzini and Made in Carcere Mussel Growers Cooperative, a non-profit that aims to offer a second chance to people. «We have worked to obtain a special sea thread from natural waste, that is the filament through which the mussels cling to the rocks – and through which the sea water is purified from carbon dioxide. This filament in the processing of mussels is thrown away. With the process developed, it is transformed to create decorations for fabrics and buttons“. Waste, according to Daniela Ducato, is also immaterial: «For example, we produce a practically infinite harvest of research, which then ends up being forgotten.
Why not create a digital library that makes them available to the community? Now we all bring innovation to our lips, but the word has no meaning if it does not have a new vision at its base. The Earth is bad because we wanted to own it, considering it absolutely normal to do so. And now that we have destroyed it, through the same bossy attitude we claim to save it. But the Earth does not need us, it has all the resources to save itself and, indeed, it will perhaps be she who will save us all. We have to get out of the omnipotence of possession, embrace the limit, listen to each other, build relationships of respect and recycling with the plant, animal and mineral world. Only from here can innovation arise ».
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