To present the lights, the shadows and the development prospects of the Circular Economy (CE) in Italy during his speech at Hacking the City last year, Davide Chiaroni, Professor of Strategy and Marketing at the Politecnico di Milano, co-founder and deputy director of the Energy & Strategy Observatory, used the results of their observatory on the Circular Economy. The observatory started in 2020 and with it they investigated how widespread the CE really is in our country. One of the first myths they would like to dispel, he continued, is the equation between CE and the recycling economy that people have become accustomed to, but that actually detracts from the true scope of the CE itself. In order to understand how much circularity is really being implemented and therefore, how much products and services are being rethought and redesigned, they decided to investigate three Italian marco-sectors: construction, automotive and industrial plants engineering. Zooming on the construction sector, for instance, they saw that about 75% of the sample they interviewed had already adopted at least one circular practice and only 6% of the total had not adopted any practices yet and had no intention of adopting them in the future, while there was a 6% who had not yet adopted one but with the intention to in the coming years. Consequently, apart from this percentage of absolute sceptics, the Italian industrial and construction system is very well prepared. However, there is still a long way to go. When, during their analysis, they asked companies to identify their perception of their own distribution with respect to CE, so at what point in the development of circularity they think they have arrived on a scale from 1 to 5, many companies acknowledged that they are halfway along the circular transition. About 58% of...
Month: March 2022
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24 March 2022The Re-think Circular Economy Forum organised in Taranto on the 28th and the 29th of September saw the participation of numerous speakers, including Vito Albino, professor of engineering-economic management at the Politecnico di Bari, who discussed the energy transition between technology and ideology. The choice of addressing the issue of energy transition by looking not only at technological aspects but also at ideological ones, the professor began, is based on the observation that industrial transitions are complex phenomena and require in-depth understanding. The idea is that energy transition cannot be reduced exclusively to a question of technological change. It also requires ideological change. Hence, technology is a component of the transition, but the role of ideologies must also be considered. The European Green Deal offers an interesting example in this direction. It is an important political action that is strongly supported by the development and adoption of new technologies. However, it is useful to reflect on what happened a few years ago when, for the G20 meeting in Pittsburgh in 2009, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) tried to convince the major G20 countries that the best way to respond to the economic crisis was to respond to the already looming environmental crisis. Very interesting studies were carried out and brought to the attention of the G20, including a proposal for a ‘Global Green New Deal‘. This initiative had negligible effects because the proposed change offered potential technological options that governments should have made their own. These choices respond to logics that go beyond the strictly technological ones. At the moment, the European Union, proposing the European Green Deal programme, will reasonably have to consider aspects not only related to technological change, but also to the emergence of new ideologies that can enable the necessary industrial transitions. Industrial...
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17 March 2022Last June, in occasion of the Circular Threads report release, we organised a presentation event with experts from the fashion and textile sector, including Giusy Cannone, CEO of Fashion Technology Accelerator. This accelerator was created to support innovative start-ups within the fashion industry. During her speech, Giusy Cannone talked about some possible applications, innovative case studies that seek to make the process and value chain of fashion more sustainable. First of all, bith the fashion and the textile industry, she started, uses mainly non-renewable resources usually derived from oil, and synthetic fibres, chemicals and toxic products especially in the dyeing and the finishing phases. Moreover, this sector has a low rate use of the garments, sometimes a maximum of 5-6 times, and has a complicated relationship with recycling activities, which is still not enough widespread. Although at the moment the numbers are not reassuring and there is still a lot to do, there are many stakeholders who, through different steps, can make the fashion industry genuinely more circular. Zooming on what innovation entrepreneurs, also called innovators, do they start from the input, since fabric is not the only important step in the fashion value chain, but it has a significant impact. In this respect, one of the solutions that has already been developed is fabric derived from recycled materials. For instance, recycled polyester, a fabric that is derived from recycled plastic and then reconstituted into polyester fibres. This operation can save around 59% energy compared to virgin polyester. Moreover, widely used is also the recycled nylon, a product resulting from activities such as fishing. The well-known company Econyl has done an enormous amount of work to bring this solution to market. Even in the luxury segment, recycled nylon is beginning to be introduced, which can significantly save real resources and reduce oil...
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10 March 2022During the Hacking the City event organised last April, we had the pleasure to host several speakers including Professor Francesca Pirlone and Researcher Ilenia Spadaro from the University of Genoa. Their speech focused on the role of the Circular Economy in the Mediterranean Sea and in particular on the Port-5R project for the creation of circular port-cities. Numerous projects related to sustainable waste management have taken place for about 10 years, such as the Active project, the Med 3 R up to the Port 5-R project which ended in 2021. The projects revealed an upheaval in the concept of waste, which is now considered as a resource to be exploited, and the transition to a circular economy that aims to close the cycle, through recycling and the logic of the R, and with the objective of strengthening, growing and promoting sustainability while also generating new forms of employment. Waste therefore becomes a resource for sustainable growth, for the promotion of an economy and smart redevelopment of the city, also improving its quality of life. How did it go from a circular economy to a circular city? Starting from the 2015 Paris COP and largely with the United Nations 2030 Agenda, where 17 common goals were identified to ensure sustainable development. In particular, in the eleventh, it is the city itself that is placed as the main character of the circular transition, as they are also becoming increasingly populated. In 1900, only 2 out of 10 people lived in cities, but by 2050 it is expected that 7 out of 10 people will live there. Cities are great centres of consumption, from food to materials to climate-changing gases. Unfortunately, they are also great centres of inefficiency, for example, private vehicles idle for 90% of their time and offices are switched off...
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3 March 2022By Arianna Sica, Tondo Associate Industrial Symbiosis: an approach to the Circular Economy Why do we talk about industrial symbiosis? Currently it’s an application model that is often mentioned and proposed when talking about Circular Economy and it has as essential elements the sharing of waste, energy and skills between companies. It is a new field of research that aims to improve efficiency in the use of resources by moving from the current linear model of production to a circular model. By promoting the sharing of resources between companies in traditionally separate sectors, it wishes to prevent the by-products of a company, potentially usable for production purposes by other companies from becoming waste. Industrial symbiosis therefore offers a model for closing resource cycles: it proposes the exchange of resources between companies in different sectors promoting the development of a Circular Economy. Industrial symbiosis: what does it mean It’s an interdisciplinary field that investigates the relationships existing between industrial systems and their natural environment. In biology, the expression “symbiosis” defines any type of close and long-term biological interaction between two different biological organisms in which a beneficial mutualism may be present. Similarly, the term industrial symbiosis identifies the exchange of resources between two or more industries in different sectors. However, resources are not exclusively material as for by- products or waste, but also include thermal energy, services, know-how and tacit knowledge. Therefore, we can speak of symbiosis between companies when at the same time: – Utilities and facilities are shared in the use and management of resources such as steam, energy, water and wastewater; – There is the joint supply of services related to safety, hygiene, transport and waste management; – A waste or a by-product becomes a raw material for another company. The object of the relationships is therefore eco-innovation,...