By Paola Vinci – Fashion Analyst at Tondo English Tondo PodCast is the first Italian PodCast that creates a dialogue with startups operating in the world of Circular Economy. Tondo PodCast collects successful stories, narrated by founders and characters who explain the business models, the circular and the sustainable practices implemented in their startups. With this project, Tondo wants to give a voice to concrete and innovative solutions, aimed at creating a network of realities which operate in the Circular Economy, involving different actors who focus their activities on circularity, social equity and sustainability. Tondo PodCast wants to spread a circular culture, breaking down communication barriers and raising people’s awareness of the necessity to adopt a regenerative and sustainable system. Through our interviews, experts and founders will tell the stories, the challenges and the future projects of their startups, representing an inspiring model for students, startup founders and entrepreneurs who want to approach the world of Circular Economy. The startups will be selected according to a circularity framework that includes the sustainable inputs and the possibility to convert products into services. These latters can extend products’ useful life undertaking recycling and regenerating processes, key element of the new business models. The framework has been implemented in different sectors, as demonstrated by the startups that have already joined our project: Mogu, Orange Fiber, Enerbrain and Hexagro. We record periodically new interviews that will be published on Spreaker, Spotify, iTunes and on our social media channels. You will also find the episodes on a specific section of our website, dedicated to Tondo PodCast. On May 21st at 18:00 CET we will launch Tondo PodCast during a live event that will host the founders of two important Italian startups that operate in Circular Economy. Register here for the live event: https://www.eventbrite.it/e/biglietti-tondo-podcast-live-event-104736794572?aff=ebdssbonlinesearch Italiano Tondo...
Month: April 2020
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30 April 2020By Katsiaryna Serada – Research Fellow & Policy Analyst at Tondo English Version The pandemic COVID 19 has questioned the foundations of our global economy, demonstrated the weaknesses of our current economic model in facing real and potential global challenges, revealed the excessive and risky dependency on the global value chains and a single largest supplier. The COVID 19 demonstrated that the largest supply of the essential medical items, almost three-quarters of blood thinners imported by Italy, 60% of antibiotic components imported by Japan and 40% imported by Germany, Italy, and France, and largest amount of the medical masks come from China (Javorcik, 2020). Before the COVID-19 crisis, China produced around 20 million masks per day. By early March 2020 the production increased to 120 million per day, including through deploying idle productive capacity and repurposing other sectors such as automotive and electronics. Despite deploying additional productive capacity both in China and worldwide, the global spike in demand for medical and other supplies during the COVID 19 crisis far exceeded both material stocks and available capacity to produce. The global value chains were hit in several dimensions – demand, international transportation networks, productive capacity — and were not able to respond the global health crisis. The governments of the exporting countries have addressed the increasing shortage or scarcity (risk of scarcity) in the domestic markets by imposing the numerous export restrictions on medical and other items. More than 70 economies, including the US, China and the EU, have introduced export restrictions to allocate domestic supplies to national healthcare systems and citizens first (Hoekman, Fiorini, 2020). Therefore, the COVID 19 crisis has explicitly demonstrated that the price mechanism and the markets have failed to accomplish social optimum and efficiently provide and allocate the resources. The crisis has explicitly demonstrated that...
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23 April 2020By Felipe Hernandez – CEO and Co-founder of Hexagro English Version Felipe Hernandez begins his speech introducing a problem: the scarcity of food for the inhabitants of the planet. In fact, a population of 9 billion, is expected to be reached by 2050, which will require a 70% increase in food production. Some companies have tried to solve this problem by developing the cultivation of food through “Indoor Farming” or “Vertical Farming“, but these techniques still have very high costs, both for development and maintenance. Hexagro is an international startup based in Milan, born to reconnect people to nature: its vision is to bring nature to the workplace, using existing technology. People spend an average of 90% of their time inside buildings, where pollution is 5 times greater than outside, causing a direct impact on people’s health, food habits and perceived happiness. These considerations have given birth to a new idea: create office plants that are also useful for the health of those who work. The plants, which Hexagro offers, grow within some modules whose design and structure take inspiration from beehives and trees, with the aim of maximizing the use of space. These do not include pesticides and require a limited use of water since the high oxygenation of the plants, deriving from the use of aeroponics as a cultivation technique, reduces water consumption between 90 and 98%, in addition to tripling the speed of plant growth. The modules on which the plants grow are configurable on the basis of the available space and can be chosen among three different configurations, having different dimensions, and being capable of growing different types of plants. For example, an “indoor garden” has developed, located in the Novotel Ca’ Granda building in Milan, containing a cultivation of different types of herbs. The product...
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15 April 2020By Rebecca Rolle – Marine Conservation Expert at Tondo English Version The project in collaboration with Worldrise Onlus and Arianna Liconti project manager of Worldrise Onlus, concerns the conservation and innovation of the ecosystem services characterizing the Marine Protected Areas (MPA), with particular attention to the protection of marine biodiversity. The MPA represent an element of sustainable development. It allows the conservation of biodiversity and natural processes; it provides shelter for endangered and threatened species and areas where fish can reproduce; it protects critical habitats from damage due to practices of destructive fishing and other human activities, catches of fish (in size and quantity) in the surrounding fishing sites up to 80%; it increases the resilience of ecosystems; it maintains local cultures, economies, tourism and livelihoods related to the marine environment; it maintains the promotion of education, training and scientific research activities, and compatible recreational activities; it allows control guaranteed by research and innovation for the waste cycle and water purification. Biodiversity is the basis for the wealth of nations. In addition to intrinsic value, biodiversity is important because it is a source of goods and services for humanity, directly and indirectly, an essential aspect for its survival and prosperity. These services are called: ecosystem services (ES) and they represent “the benefits that people get from the ecosystem”. Biodiversity depends on the ability of natural systems to provide the ES that support the life of humankind and guarantee the life of all species. ES lead to better well-being of human communities capable of creating development opportunities, less vulnerability and greater health and resilience of natural systems. They consist of the production of food, the availability of water, raw materials, genetic resources, functions and processes of ecosystems such as absorption of pollutants, protection from erosion and floods, maintenance of water quality,...