English version In October we had the pleasure to host Federico Porrà, Policy Officer at the European Commission, at our Re-think Circular Economy Forum, an event we designed to stimulate critical thinking towards some elements of the current industrial economic system and to show the possible evolutionary trends of the Circular Economy. Federico Porrà explained the European Commission’s vision and policies on the Circular Economy for the period 2020-2024, in particular by presenting the new EU Circular Economy Action Plan, a key pillar of the European Green Deal, which is the project through which the European Union decided to set the goal to reach climate neutrality by 2050. The European Union, in fact, recognizes that the Circular Economy is one of the key pillars for the economic recovery of the post-Covid era and an opportunity to support the green transition and create inclusive growth. Today, the Circular Economy is even more relevant than before, precisely because it is a tool that can be used to create local jobs and boost sustainable growth, while supporting resilient supply chains and new business opportunities. This is why the Commission is working to mainstream circularity principles along all the main strategies adopted in the context of the Green Deal. An example is the Farm to Fork Strategy, which aims at making food systems fair, circular, healthy and environmentally-friendly, and food chains more sustainable. What does the Plan entail? Building on the first Action Plan launched in 2015, the new Circular Economy Action Plan is currently one of the most ambitious documents ever adopted on the Circular Economy, thanks to its comprehensive approach targeting the entire life cycle of products. In fact, it introduces legislative and non-legislative actions to reform the way we think about sustainable products, production processes, consumption, waste, secondary raw materials, and...
economiacircolare
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26 March 2021By Luca Bertolasi English Version Lac2Lab is a start-up currently under the constitution, whose project started in 2019. The team is made up of 4 co-founders, with different backgrounds: Paride Acierno and Luca Bertolasi for the economic-business area, Lorenzo Ippolito, and Arianna Palladini for the R&D and production area. Cell cultures are a laboratory technique that aims to reproduce biological phenomena through the growth of certain cell lines within laboratory slides, in a controlled artificial environment. The growth and proliferation of cells are guaranteed through nutrition, given by the FBS (Fetal Bovine Serum), which has various problems concerning the ethical, economic, and qualitative sphere. First, FBS is produced by killing bovine fetuses, and about 2 million of them are killed each year. Furthermore, the FBS has a considerable cost, and the cheaper variants are produced in South America, where herd control isn’t comparable to Italian standards. An ethical and sustainable product The purpose of Lac2Lab is therefore to place on the market a substitute product for FBS, totally ethical towards animals, obtained by reusing a material that would otherwise be wasted: cow’s milk. Indeed, approximately 116 million tons of milk and dairy products are wasted every year around the world. An in-depth analysis of the dairy market was conducted, in particular by examining the relationships between producer, distributor, and the final consumer. This analysis highlighted how to milk waste is an intrinsic problem in the supply chain. The Lac2Lab product is born from the requalification of expired or expiring cow’s milk, no longer destined for food consumption, to be used in Life Science technologies. This guarantees production based on a circular and sustainable economy. The whey, suitably transformed through original processes and replacing the FBS within the cell cultures, also reduces the distances between the additive manufacturer and users: the...
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1 January 2021English Version Winter is coming and the cold weather with it as well which encourages all of us to look for something to keep us warm. For instance, a blanket, a jumper, a pair of soft and thick socks or a hot drink. Indeed, one of the most popular beverages in the world is coffee which, actually, has no seasonality anymore. Coffee has been consumed for over 1000 years now and around two billion cups are drunk everyday worldwide. This makes coffee the most consumed beverage and the second largest traded commodity after oil. According to the International Coffee Organization, Europe accounted for 34% of global coffee consumption in 2019, followed by Asia and Oceania, Latin America and North America. Therefore, the European Union has the world’s highest per capita consumption with 5kg of coffee per person per year, which is surprisingly high. The increasing production and consumption of this beverage comes with the consequent huge generation of spent coffee grounds left from coffee brewing. According to Solange et al., 6 million tons of spent coffee grounds are generated every year worldwide thus resulting in a great amount of unused organic waste. Spent coffee grounds are usually known and used for their natural and strong properties as fertilizer for gardens, plants and compost. However, over the last years numerous researchers and companies have been focusing on other possible ways to benefit from such waste. For instance, coffee residues can be exploited in pharmaceutical industry, in the food sector or in bio-refineries and for a variety of different products such as the coffee cups created by KAFFEEFORM. THE KAFFEEFORM STORY KAFFEEFORM was born in Berlin from the initial vision of creating something new and lasting out of supposed waste. It all started with Julian Lechner, product designer, who after years of...
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25 December 2020By Alessandro Arlati – Research Assistant at HCU, Department of Urban Planning and Regional Development English Version During the last decade, Circular Economy (CE) has more and more affirmed its relevance as a conceptual framework for supporting future sustainable development in our cities. The Ellen McArthur Foundation, as a way to eschew the take-make-waste mentality that has largely characterized our economic systems, defined CE paradigm in 2013. The CE paradigm claims for a change (often referred to as “transition”) from a linear economy, not only by mitigating and adjusting its negative impacts. It implies a more profound systemic shift, aiming at building “long-term resilience, generate business and economic opportunities, and provide environmental and societal benefits”. Yet, CE is not alone in this objective. Many other concepts are paving their way in the attempt of countering the negative impacts of the society we are living in. Among others, Nature-based Solutions (NBS) are becoming a fancy answer to address various societal challenges by imitating nature. The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) defined the main objective of NBS implementation in its ability to support the achievement of society’s development goals and safeguard human well-being providing simultaneously economic, social and environmental benefits. Now it is worth asking ourselves whether there is a synergy between these two concepts. Looking at the definitions and the objectives that both CE and NBS are aiming at, it does not sound absurd. Furthermore, it is important to mention at this point, that both CE and NBS were included in the EU research and innovation programmes (e.g. Horizon 2020) in 2015. Yet, the series of projects started within these programmes have taken two definite and distinct directions: in other words, the two concepts do not figure out as connected in some way. However, it is possible to identify...
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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...