By Enrica Arena – Orange Fiber Co-founder English Version Enrica Arena presents Orange Fiber, a company that produces a sustainable fabric similar to silk from citrus fruits. The material was born as an alternative product to classic cellulose, so the production is cut down over 70 million trees all. The developed product can be printed, colored and packaged, so brands don’t have to modify their suppliers and can be woven together with all other materials. The activity was born from the idea of recovering what remains at the end of the industrial pressing of the orange for the production of the juice, which is considered a processing waste and which involves great costs for the companies in the sector and for the environment. In fact, 60% of the original weight of the fruit is considered waste but through a series of research carried out in collaboration with a university professor in the chemistry department of the Politecnico di Milano, it is currently possible to examine and patent an innovative process to transform the by-product of citrus fruits in a new resource capable of revolutionizing fashion in a sustainable and protected way to the resolution of problems related to the disposal. In the fashion field, 60% of the garments are made with materials deriving from the transformation of oil, and this not only causes environmental problems, but also links the value of materials to the oscillation of oil prices, by influencing the possibility that a collection is profitable or not for a brand. Furthermore, 25% of the products in the sector come from the cotton, a material whose production requires high quantities of water and soil, and which is often produced using pesticides. Organic cotton, on the other hand, has the disadvantage of needing more soil because it uses less pesticides...
Month: October 2019
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23 October 2019By Giovanni Tula English Version Giovanni Tula started his speech by introducing the focus of his presentation: circular projects linked to the energy world. The goal is to understand the status of renewable energies and their dissemination at the global level, by considering the 4 macro areas: storage, efficiency, the automation, and digitalization. The starting point is the comparison of the estimates regarding the dissemination of the renewable energies developed by the World Energy Agency in 2008 and 2017. As you can see from the image above, the estimates have more than doubled, the reason is that in 2017, with circa 13 years to spare, the estimate of the 2030 has already been reached, now the expectancy is to reach 4.718 GW installed in 2030. Actually, the estimates recently made could be underestimated because the renewable energies are becoming highly competitive thank to a strong reduction of the cost of production. For example, in the solar energy field, there has been an 83% reduction in the costs of the photovoltaic panels starting from 2010 till today. In the previous image it is highlighted the evolution of renewable energy sources compared to the fossil fuel, where it is estimated that the renewable could reach 64% of the overall energy resources. The storage Among the enabling elements of this revolution there is the “storage theme”. The batteries are essential to this evolution per 3 functions: Stabilization of the electricity grid Reduction of the imbalances on the generation side Offer of the energy in time of need on the consumer side The evolution of the lithium batteries in the last years has been important such that it has gone from some MW of power and storage of some minutes to a power of hundreds MW that can last for hours. The one that...
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14 October 2019By Francesco Castellano English Version Francesco Castellano started his speech by explaining the reasons that drove him to create Tondo and ReThink. It all started from a beach, a place where he loved swimming, that place changed dramatically during the years because of the plastic and the waste. Trash created by human beings, which denotes, in part, the failure of the current system, a system that doesn’t take into account the impact of our actions on the environment. ReThink – Circular Economy Forum Without any doubt, we need to rethink our economic system, to reconsider its elements and the path we are following. The necessity to rethink led to the birth of “ReThink – Circular Economy Forum”, with the purpose to question some of the elements of our economic and industrial system and to show concrete applications of some interesting trends in the Circular Economy. Problems To understand the importance of the Circular Economy we need to show firstly the problems that humanity has to face at this moment. One of the most important issues is global warming caused by the CO2 issued for energetic production, for industrial activities and for transports. In particular, Castellano reported, that according to the last IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change)’s study, dated October 2018, to avoid the increase of the global temperature over 1.5°C (temperature that is considered the maximum limit to avoid effects that could be catastrophic on the global ecosystem and for the humanity in general), we have circa 12 years to reduce the 50% of the CO2 emissions and circa 30 years to delete them completely. Otherwise, some effects, that are already present, will expand more and more, with a devastating impact of drought, fire and flood. These events have already caused damages for 320 billion dollars in 2017 (https://newclimateeconomy.report/2018/)....
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8 October 2019By Barbara Pollini English Version Understand Barbara Pollini started her presentation by mentioning the contemporary philosopher Timothy Morton who coined the term “hyperobjects” to explain those interconnected phenomenons which have a wide vastness in time and space and that are incomprehensible for us. Climate change is one of them. In this perspective, designer’s ability to value material is important for the environmental impact of a product, also, in the complex world, the sustainability is not a steady-state, once it is reached you can’t keep it, it is a dynamic threshold based on the continuous research. Designers, very often, are focused on some aspects of the project, and they ignore the life-cycle of the products and their materials; there aren’t many Italian universities that push the students to think about these issues and not many corporates of materials that explain information about the life-cycle of materials. Some designers adopt a critical approach and they reinvent some materials in order to find solutions that the market is not able to propose or in order to show a walkable path or an unresolved problem. Among these examples there is “Studio Swine” which created a stool made by plastic recovered at sea. It’s not part of a series production, but it wants to stimulate a critical thinking on an environment issue through the story of a material. At NABA, during Pollini’s lessons, there have been a lot of trials on DIY materials, that are organic or “made in waste”. Some of the projects are virtuous, such as “Peel Saver”, packaging for the street food made by potato’s peel, created by the students: Simone Caronni, Paolo Stefano Gentile and Pietro Gaeli. Also at Politecnico di Milano there are a lot of studies on DIY materials, Pollini is a tutor of the Metaprogetto Lab that took part...