English Version 3 models for a sustainable city: the Circular Economy applied to the urban context A story of two cities. The first is the city as we have known it so far. The air made unbearable by pollution. It is very difficult to dispose of waste properly. Resources are widely wasted or underused. The other is a sustainable and circular city. Here the waste does not exist, the resources are used to the best according to the rules of the sharing economy and the energy required is completely produced from renewable sources. In the middle, there are the real cities, which are more or less similar to one or the other model. Cities are the first context in which it is essential to apply Circular Economy. They represent an area in which it is perhaps easier to agree on its founding principles. Also because, above all, they are the place par excellence where humans live and will live. Why the cities? According to a World Bank report, 54% of the global population lives in urban areas and in cities, 85% of world GDP is produced (data: 2017). 75% of the natural resources are consumed here, 50% of the waste produced and greenhouse gas emissions equal to 60-80% of the total, according to different estimates. It is therefore clear that we need to start from the cities if we want to influence the way in which human beings live together and exploit resources. Also because the trend is destined to increase; by 2050, 75% of the population will be living in cities. This means that even more funds will be invested in cities: infrastructures will be at the center of the growth strategies for the cities. Increasingly, natural resources, capitals, talents, and data will be concentrated in urban contexts. Moreover, given their...
Month: February 2019
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4 February 2019English Version “With Re-think we take the first step towards the Circular Economy” Accelerating the transition from the linear model, in which we live, to a new circular productive paradigm, where nothing is wasted and human activities have no negative output on the environment. This is the target of Tondo, an association unofficially launched in April 2018, which was set up in November of the same year, with the idea of acting concretely for the development of the Circular Economy. The association arised from the will of Francesco Castellano, president and founder of Tondo: «We want to transform the Circular Economy into a practical reality». The first step is Re-Think, a forum on the Circular Economy, to be held in Milan on the 14th of February, at the Catholic University (for more information, click here: http://re-think.today/). The event will involve industry experts, startups and corporations that are moving towards the Circular Economy. Why participate? Castellano explains this: «The forum is an opportunity to acquire a medium and long term vision on some topics related to the Circular Economy. Participating therefore means finding ideas that will soon become market trends and opportunities to develop new businesses». In this interview, Francesco tells us about the birth and the objectives of Tondo. How is Tondo born? The idea for the association comes from my real experience. I was swimming in the sea, the place was beautiful from a naturalistic point of view, but it was completely ruined by the presence of plastic: there was plastic everywhere. On the sand, in the sea. I began to question myself about the world in which we live and I have identified two enormous problems, evident to all, which it is impossible to not see now. The first is plastic: it is stupid to continue throwing tons...
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4 February 2019English Version What is the circular economy and why it is important for everyone: citizens, businesses, institutions While the circular economic motivations are clear, very often we don’t know how to implement it, as it is shown in the last report of the Global Fashion Agenda. The industry of fashion is the one which often finds difficult to marry an ecological approach. This is why it is even more important that the philosophy of the Circular Economy is linked to fashion: 20% of water waste resources comes from the fashion industry, at global level, and 10% of the emissions of anhydride carbon are due to textiles. The reason why Circular Economy is spreading, is clear: the plastic residues that invade seas and oceans (and therefore all marine fauna), global warming, climate change are phenomena largely investigated by the scientific community and (almost) all the actors in the field realize that it is time to act in this direction. The ‘how’ is missing, however, perhaps because there is no unambiguous definition of what the ‘current’ circular economy actually is: what are the objectives? What are the essential processes? What are the founding principles? In fact, similar questions are not at all trivial. What is the Circular Economy Where does Circular Economy come from? It is the economist Kenneth E. Boulding, who developed the first circular model for materials, in which the production has no residue, but everything is reintegrated and reused in the production circuit. It is 1966 when Boulding writes his article “The Economics of the Coming Spaceship Earth“. Since then the concept has evolved and formalized in recent decades, especially for the emergence of climate change, defining the concept of a Circular Economy in the academic sphere. But where we are, it is still far from identifying a single...