Clocks: CLOsing the loop is a project promoted by EIT Raw Materials, co-founded by the European Union, and developed together with the University of Padova.
#circulareconomy
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The liquid economy is a concept that revolves around the idea of sharing and renting rather than owning, so that consumers can access it when needed.
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Subito is a digital platform that enables millions of people to share items such as sofas, cars, apartments or even jobs from the local community.
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Shyaam Ramkumar gave an overview on circular economy business models applied to fashion, and how the textile industry can switch to circular economy.
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3 September 2021English Food waste is still one of the biggest world problems, indeed according to FAO around 1.3 billion tonnes of food gets lost or wasted every year. As Kaitlin Mogentale, founder of Pulp Pantry told us, generally, food waste creates a huge burden on the world, environmentally and socially, as resources are extracted to produce food that will never be eaten. In fact, it is estimated that if food waste were a country, it would be the 3rd largest emitter of greenhouse gases behind China and the US. Who is Kaitlin Mogentale and what is Pulp Pantry? Kaitlin Mogentale earned a degree in Environmental Studies, with an emphasis on Social Entrepreneurship, and Urban Policy & Planning at the University of Southern California, is a self-proclaimed food waste warrior and the founder of Pulp Pantry, which she started in 2015. Pulp Pantry transforms upcycled ingredients —the overlooked, nutritional byproducts of fruit and vegetable processing —into wholesome, better for people and better for the planet, snack staples. “Waste Less, Thrive More”, is the company motto, because a thriving humanity depends on a thriving, healthy planet. Kaitlin had her business idea while looking at a friend who wanted to waste his carrot pulp. She could not stand it and decided to make cookies from the saved carrot pulp instead. She started her business when she became closely acquainted with the unsettling disparities in the American food system. In a country where obesity and preventative diseases are sweeping the nation, the paradox is that the foods people could benefit from most are the very foods going to waste at the greatest rates: fruits and vegetables. The mission of Pulp Pantry is indeed to transform upcycled ingredients – the overlooked, nutritional byproducts of fruit and vegetable processing – into products with the ingredients, nutrition, and...
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30 August 2021English What do a pencil and fashion have in common? Susanna Martucci, Founder Alisea – Perpetua and Alice Fortuna, Sustainability Communications Manager at WRAD Focus Design, explained to us – during our Re-think Circular Economy Forum 2020 in Milan – what it is and how it is possible. Susanna Martucci is an entrepreneur whose job is to extend the life of materials. She has always worked in sales and communication and after 12 years of experience in a large Italian company, in 1994 she founded her own: Alisea. She was in the business of creating promotional “gadgets” made in Italy. However, a little over a year, products made in China arrived on the market and competing became impossible because they had unbeatable prices and looked exactly as the products she was making. She was risking of going out of business and leaving 20 people unemployed. One day of that same period she found herself in a bar where an acquaintance gave her a small notebook as a gift. When she opened it she read “no trees has been cut down for the production of this notebook”. This suddenly took her back to 1982 when she was on a train and by her side two university professors were having a conversation: “we are all sitting on a huge landfill, it’s a ticking bomb, a huge problem for future generations but also a great business opportunity for those who will be able to seize it”. However, in 1982, in Italy, nobody had a clue what household waste recycling actually meant. Then, she asked herself: “Why don’t we give a new life to waste?“. Therefore, she started speaking to her clients’ marketing departments and asked to see the waste their companies were producing. Thanks to the production managers she could walk through their production processes and she could learn about the technical data sheets of the materials. This is the moment when at Alisea they realized how, through creativity, all waste could become the protagonist of a fascinating story to tell. In fact, it was 1996 and from that intuition Alisea found a unique collocation on the market, becoming the only operator in Italy that...
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26 August 2021by Fabrizio Cinque, Tondo Associate L’ambiente costituisce una fonte di risorse essenziale per il funzionamento del sistema economico, questo perché, come ogni attività umana, l’attività economica si svolge all’interno dell’ambiente naturale. L’ambiente fornisce risorse economiche: le materie prime. Esse sono un bene economico in forma grezza, che l’uomo, attraverso cicli produttivi, può trasformare in beni di consumo pronti a soddisfare i bisogni umani. Ciò però impoverisce l’ambiente, perché nonostante la natura sia una riserva di beni materiali molto grande, non è illimitata, di conseguenza, le materie prime sono risorse scarse. Quando si parla di scarsità di una risorsa naturale questa può essere assoluta (stock) e in tal caso si parla di risorse esauribili (non rinnovabili) oppure relativa, è il caso di risorse rigenerabili (rinnovabili). Ambiente ed Economia sono quindi due sistemi inseparabili e in continua relazione. Ci sono pertanto due distinti metabolismi sul nostro pianeta: il metabolismo biologico, o della Biosfera, cioè i cicli della natura e il metabolismo tecnico, detto anche Tecnosfera, cioè i cicli dell’industria. Biosfera e Tecnosfera: definizioni e funzionamento La Terra viene divisa da alcuni studiosi in varie «sfere»: Litosfera, Idrosfera, Atmosfera e, da pochi anni, è stata introdotta anche la Tecnosfera. Il sistema che comprende Litosfera (l’insieme delle terre emerse), Idrosfera (insieme delle acque) e Atmosfera è chiamato Biosfera. Quest’ultima comprende tutti gli ecosistemi della Terra e si può quindi considerare formata dall’insieme degli ambienti fisici del pianeta che possono ospitare organismi viventi. Caratteristica fondamentale della Biosfera è la diversità biologica (o biodiversità), cioè, la varietà di organismi viventi nelle loro diverse forme, e nei rispettivi ecosistemi. La parola Tecnosfera è stata coniata dal professore di geologia e ingegneria civile della Duke University Peter Haff, che afferma: «La tecnosfera è fatta dalle strutture che l’uomo ha costruito nel tempo: centrali elettriche, linee di trasmissione, strade, edifici, mezzi di trasporto, templi, aziende agricole,...
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24 August 2021Comunicato Stampa RE-THINK CIRCULAR ECONOMY FORUM APPRODA A TARANTO Aziende, organizzazioni, istituzioni, startup ed enti di ricerca mostreranno il loro percorso tutto circolare per favorire la nascita di attività innovative e imprenditoriali nel territorio pugliese 28-29 settembre 2021 – 28 settembre dalle 9.30 alle 18.30 & 29 settembre dalle 9.30 alle 18:00 – Evento in presenza e online – Link per registrazione Milano, 24 agosto 2021 – Con l’obiettivo di favorire la nascita di attività innovative e imprenditoriali nel territorio pugliese, Tondo, organizzazione internazionale operante nel settore dell’economia circolare, annuncia l’organizzazione del prossimo appuntamento di Re-think Circular Economy Forum che si terrà a Taranto il 28 e 29 settembre 2021. Si tratta di un grande evento in modalità mista sia in presenza fisica e sia online, questo il link per la registrazione. Tra i partner il Comune di Taranto e l’associazione ETS Eurota, partner territoriale di Tondo per Re-think Circular Economy Forum nella città dei due mari, Fondazione ITS Logistica ed Epm Servizi. Protagonista indiscussa sarà l’economia circolare. Nello specifico verranno trattate tematiche centrali per il territorio tarantino come la transizione energetica e le energie rinnovabili, la gestione ambientale e dei rifiuti e i porti circolari. Verranno infatti raccontati i trend emergenti e le tecnologie che utilizzano nuove fonti energetiche pulite, che trasformano i porti in luoghi dove implementare l’economia circolare, e che permettono il recupero dell’ambiente e dell’ecosistema, la gestione dei rifiuti derivanti plastiche e pneumatici e la produzione di bioplastiche dagli scarti organici. “Abbiamo subito individuato una connessione importante – spiega il sindaco di Taranto, Rinaldo Melucci – tra le attività di Tondo e dell’associazione Eurota e i principi del nostro piano di transizione energetica, economica ed ecologica “Ecosistema Taranto”. Per questo non abbiamo avuto dubbi sulla possibilità di essere partner di questa iniziativa, che per alcuni versi...
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6 August 2021English Version Jacco Verstraeten-Jochemsen, Lead Business Strategy at Circle Economy joined us in October at our Re-think Circular Economy Forum to talk about why and how we should measure our progress towards a Circular Economy. Circle Economy is an organization that strives to accelerate the practical and scalable implementation of the Circular Economy, which is why they are working to effectively measure circularity levels of different companies in Europe. The desire to create a tool to measure the levels of circularity arose from the realization that although economic growth has been exponential in recent decades, many other parameters have grown at the same time: these include material extraction, CO2 emissions, water scarcity, and loss of biodiversity. This is why, in 2018, Circle Economy started to study how the circularity of the global economy can be measured and, after that, they also introduced new methods to measure the circularity of a country and of a company. This is fundamental because if you can’t measure how circular you are, you can’t improve on that. Circle Economy also found out that people are still not aware of how urgent the situation is. When asked how circular the global economy might be, most people assumed that the level of circularity globally would be between 25 and 50%, when it is truly 9%. This means that only 9% of our materials is cycled on a yearly basis, through several different strategies: reusing, composting, recycling. This also means that more than 90% of materials on a yearly basis are lost, landfilled, or incinerated. But how does this work in practice? How can Circle Economy measure the circularity of a company? Jacco presented as an example the results they obtained when analyzing the Danish company Rockwool, which is one of the biggest producers of insulation materials for buildings in...
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28 July 2021English Version Have you ever thought that spent coffee grounds could not be a waste, but a great resource? Let’s start with some numbers. Italy imports annually around 606 thousand tonnes of coffee (this is 17% of the EU’s coffee imports), and on average an Italian consumes 6 kg of coffee annually. As we can see, Italy is a significant coffee consumer, which means that Italy produces a significant quantity of spent coffee grounds. Spent coffee grounds have a lot of qualities: in particular, they are rich in nitrogen, an element with a high potential for energy production, saturated fatty acids, and cellulose. They can be used in several industries as they can be used to produce cosmetics, compost, pellets, biofuels, etc. While some industries do recognize the potential of spent coffee grounds, there are some innovative startups that truly went above and beyond. Coffeefrom uses this resource in a circular way, with a zero-waste approach. Coffeefrom is an Italian company that was born in 2019, it is based in Milan and it brought an innovative, extremely versatile, and sustainable material of biological origin material on the market. This material is made using spent coffee grounds of industrial origin, in a truly sustainable and circular fashion. Coffeefrom is the second circular economy spin-off launched by a local cooperative, Il Giardinone Cooperativa Sociale. The first experience dates back to Expo 2015, when the team of Il Giardinone experimented with the recovery and transformation of coffee grounds from Lavazza bars, using them to cultivate fresh mushrooms. In 2016, FungoBox was launched: the kit allows for self-production of fresh mushrooms from urban coffee waste. Over time, the know-how of Il Giardinone in the recovery and transformation of coffee by-products strengthened and a new entrepreneurial vision was born: this is how Coffeefrom first came...