By Arianna Sica English Version The term Circular Economy appeared for the first time in Boulding’s article “The Economics of the Coming Spaceship Earth” in 1966, indicating a planned economic system for the reuse of materials in subsequent production cycles with the aim of reducing waste. Since then, this alternative model which aims to substitute the classic one, characterized by a linear production-consumption relation, has entered the discussions of the round tables of the Public and Private Sector, sometimes provoking forms of resistance to its implementation, fueled by individual and social cognitive biases. The footprint of Circular Economy Although the term was conceptualized only during the last century, circular practices such as Upcycling, Downcycling, and Zero Waste aimed at maximizing the value obtainable from resources can already be seen in ancient times. Through the numerous findings received in archaeological excavations, the footprints of the circular economy of the past are being outlined. The goal of these researches is to examine the know-how that cities of the past hold, so that a long-term perspective can help and inform today’s politicians and decision-makers. For example, while today we often discuss the sustainability of “Consumer Cities”, a large part of urban centers in the past was largely self-sufficient through recycling and reuse of resources. Rome In “Recycling and Reuse in the Rome Economy“, several types of materials that the Romans recycled are identified. In the building sector, there were workers involved in the demolition of buildings, and most of the recovered recycled material was presumably acquired from suppliers of building materials. Garments and other textile items that have been recovered from Roman sites feature patches, additions, and other types of repairs that involved the use of material apparently made from used fabrics/garments. Parts of used fabric were also regularly used as padding to...
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29 June 2021Franco Fassio dell’Università di Scienze Gastronomiche di Pollenzo (UNISG) è stato nostro ospite in occasione di Hacking the City lo scorso aprile. Il suo intervento, riassunto in questo articolo, si è concentrato sulla necessità di partire dal cibo per cambiare il nostro attuale paradigma economico. Una tale evolluzione in chiave circolare permetterebbe di riportare l’attenzione sulla biodiversità, sulle comunità, sulla qualità delle relazioni e sulla sostanza dei comportamenti. Infatti, per comprendere i problemi che caratterizzano il food system, abbiamo bisogno di adottare un approccio sistemico, di analisi e progettazione. Il “thinking in systems” ci può aiutare a vedere le interconnessioni e capire le esigenze di tutte le parti coinvolte nel sistema. Già l’antropologo britannico Gregory Bateson in Verso un ecologia della mente aveva sostenuto: “I maggiori problemi del mondo sono il risultato della differenza tra come la natura funziona (sistema) e il modo in cui le persone pensano (lineare)”. Secondo il Professor Fassio, dunque, il primo terreno da arare se vogliamo sostenere e promuovere l’Economia Circolare è la consapevolezza che siamo un unico sistema interconnesso e che un’economia sostenibile può essere solo un’economia della conoscenza. Istruzione, formazione e ricerca sono necessari per ripensare le ipotesi della società contemporanea e mettere in discussione abitudini consolidate che a volte sono il vero ostacolo ad uno sviluppo sostenibile. La filiera agroalimentare estesa (comparto agricolo, industria alimentare, distribuzione e Horeca) è il primo settore economico del nostro Paese, con un fatturato di oltre 500 miliardi di euro e quasi 4 milioni di occupati. L’importanza di questo settore è tale che la pandemia di Covid-19 ha colpito il settore agroalimentare in maniera relativamente ridotta, con una contrazione del 4% in termini di valore aggiunto su base annua. L’importanza di questa industria è quindi tale da permettere di immaginare una ripartenza dinamica e sostenibile che sfrutti al meglio...
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18 June 2021Gianluca Tettamanti, Professore Ordinario presso l’Università degli Studi dell’Insubria, è stato nostro ospite in occasione di Hacking the City lo scorso aprile. Il prof. Tettamanti ha condiviso con noi una parte della sua ricerca, che analizza il ruolo che hanno – e soprattutto quello che potranno avere in futuro – gli insetti nella valorizzazione dei rifiuti. La necessità di valorizzare i rifiuti, come quella di accedere a nuove fonti di nutrimento, è di centrale importanza data la rapida crescita della popolazione globale che ha generato un importante aumento della domanda di cibo, e in particolare di proteine, a livello mondiale. Questo tema assume un’ulteriore urgenza se consideriamo che ad oggi circa un terzo del cibo prodotto a livello mondiale (pari a circa 1,3 miliardi di tonnellate) viene sprecato. Un ridisegnamento dei nostri sistemi produttivi è quindi necessario se l’obiettivo è quello di garantire la sicurezza alimentare della popolazione globale: tale ripensamento deve passare non solo attraverso una riallocazione delle risorse disponibili, ma anche dalla valorizzazione dei rifiuti che produciamo. In questo senso l’impiego degli insetti può essere estremamente utile: alcune larve possono infatti crescere su substrati di scarto producendo dei materiali di un certo valore. Questa possibilità consente di ridurre i rifiuti e, allo stesso tempo, di produrre materiali che possono essere utilizzati con nuovi scopi. In ambito zootecnico, per esempio, è possibile reintrodurre questi materiali come fonte di alimento per altri animali. Alcuni dei vantaggi più importanti che derivano dall’utilizzo di questi insetti sono i seguenti: – Gli insetti possono essere allevati su materiali di scarto di diverso tipo: materiali vegetali, reflui zootecnici, rifiuti urbani e molto altro. In generale questi materiali non sono in competizione con l’alimentazione umana: è quindi possibile nutrire questi insetti senza sprecare risorse. – Gli insetti hanno un elevato indice di conversione: essi sono...
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Versione Italiana Antonio Vaccari, Head of Health, Safety and Environment di Esselunga, è stato nostro ospite durante il nostro evento Re-think Circular Economy Forum. Esselunga è una consolidata azienda alimentare italiana, che opera come rivenditore e produttore. I concetti di sostenibilità ed economia circolare sono intrinseci nel modello di business di Esselunga. Infatti, l’azienda ha collaborato con Tondo anche in occasione del nostro hackathon Hacking the City, chiedendo a giovani studenti e neolaureati di sviluppare nuovi modi per rendere le nostre città più circolari. La strategia di sostenibilità di Esselunga si basa su 5 pilastri: clienti, dipendenti, fornitori, ambiente e comunità. Gli obiettivi principali di tale strategia sono la minimizzazione delle emissioni di Co2, l’imballaggio sostenibile e la riduzione dei rifiuti. Uno degli esempi più importanti di questo impegno è il fatto che negli ultimi 20 anni, Esselunga ha eliminato gli imballaggi secondari utilizzando 2 milioni di casse riutilizzabili e lavabili nei propri circuiti interni. Ripensare l’imballaggio In occasione dell’evento Re-think, Antonio Vaccari ha spiegato al pubblico quale è il delicato equilibrio tra packaging sostenibile e qualità del cibo e come Esselunga lo gestisce nelle scelte quotidiane. La strategia di packaging sostenibile dell’azienda mira soprattutto a ridurre, riciclare e sostituire la plastica mista ad altri materiali e a diminuire l’uso di imballaggi eccessivi. Allo stesso tempo, Esselunga vuole garantire la qualità dei suoi prodotti dal punto di vista della sicurezza alimentare, assicurando un’adeguata durata di conservazione dei suoi prodotti e riducendo così i potenziali sprechi. Entro il 2025, l’azienda vuole garantire che il 100% degli imballaggi dei prodotti Esselunga siano realizzati con materiali compostabili, riciclabili o riciclati. Esselunga persegue questo obiettivo coinvolgendo i suoi fornitori e i suoi consumatori, utilizzando un approccio scientifico, supportato anche dal metodo Life Cycle Assessment (LCA): Esselunga valuta ogni giorno l’impatto delle sue scelte di...
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21 May 2021English version Cingomma is an Italian company that creates accessories such as belts, wallets, bags, and key chains, bringing to life tires, billboards, sails, neoprene, and fire hoses. Cingomma was born almost ten years ago in Turin from an idea of a small group of friends who decided they preferred a product whose creation was industrious and not industrial. The challenge they set themselves was to bring together passions, skills, and talents to create a product that would encapsulate the values and ethics of a group of people who chose to improve the world in which they live. The guys at Cingomma like to define themselves as a creative reality and strongly believe that in order to be good ARTisans, it is necessary to be ARTists. Each product made by Cingomma is therefore unique, creative, handmade, green, and 100% made in Italy. How does it work? At the base of Cingomma is the desire to reinvent the consumption model that is dominant today, reusing products that only apparently have completed their life cycle but that can still be reused and revalued. Every year, in Italy alone, 380,000 tons of tires are disposed of. Cingomma chooses to recover this material, subjecting it to advanced cleaning treatments and transforming it into a beautiful, super-resistant, Italian, and above all unique clothing accessory! Each of the accessories made by Cingomma is characterized by the presence of a fabric label with a number that proves the uniqueness of the product. The numbering is curiously negative: the idea is in fact to show to those who buy an object made by Cingomma how much material has been diverted from landfills. Although bicycle tires and inner tubes are the basis of all Cingomma’s creations, the company loves to experiment and contaminate its products with other waste materials....
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English Version Italian version below A few months ago, we had the pleasure of hosting Ivan Calimani, founder of Krill Design, at our Re-think Circular Economy Forum, the event that we created as a meeting opportunity for those working in the Circular Economy sector. Krill Design is a startup, founded in October 2018, that puts design and technology at the service of the Circular Economy. In his speech, Ivan Calimani, first explained how the need to launch this startup was born from an understanding of just how critical it is that we redesign the way we think about waste. Every year in the world, hundreds of millions of tons of organic material are generated as waste and 98% of these materials end up in landfills to be incinerated or rot in open bins. European companies generate 88 million tons of waste per year, or 20% of all European food production, resulting in an economic loss of 143 billion euros per year. It is estimated that wasted food generates around 3.3 million tons of CO2 per year, representing about 8% of global emissions. This is why the food and beverage industry is looking for effective and sustainable solutions to recycle and reuse waste. In fact, food waste can be used today to realize raw materials for high-value products and help build a circular bioeconomy. Of course, new solutions often require a long phase of experimentation and don’t always prove beneficial to companies, but Krill Design has developed a Circular Economy model that starts and finishes within the same company, using the waste it produces to easily make a finished product. How does it work? How is it possible? Homogeneous food waste, such as peels, seeds, and shells, is transformed into a 100% biodegradable biopolymer. Through a 3D printer, it is then...
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27 April 2021English Version Brave Brew is a Swedish company founded by three friends, Matt, Niclas and Julian, who were shocked to find out that 80,000 tons of bread are wasted every year in Sweden. They then asked themselves this question: what can you do with more than 200 tons of leftover bread per day? They came up with possibly one of the best answers: beer! This is how Crumbs was born: made from bread waste, Crumbs is a locally sourced, locally produced, delicious beer brewed using leftover bread which would otherwise be thrown away. Their motto is simple: “Less Waste, More Taste”. Brave Brew is not a brewery per se, but they work to collect bread that would otherwise be wasted and then they trust local experts to work their magic and turn this bread into delicious beer. Brave Brew has been running since March 2020. They started selling beer in June 2020 and have produced about 45,000 bottles of two different qualities of beer. The first one, Loafy Lager, has been produced in collaboration with Värmdö Brewery, a craft brewery from Stockholm. To produce this first beer, 30% of the grain count has been replaced with rescued bread. The result is a tasty, light lager with citrus notes and of course light bread. Brave Brew is now working with a new brewery with the goal to produce a third beer. The final objective for 2021 is to be able to systemise the bread collection to be able to scale production in other cities. Brave Brew is also working on the idea of producing a new beer using spent grain, which is a leftover of the brewing process. An ambitious goal Brave Brew also seeks to raise awareness on the issue of bread waste and to create an alternative circular and scalable...
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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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9 June 2019English Version In the common imagination, technology and environment can be seen as in contrast. On the one hand, the manufacturing industry with its energy-intensive production processes, which consume enormous amounts of resources, introduces toxic substances in exchange for air. On the other hand, the environment is seen as an element to be preserved and defended. The term technology itself, however, indicates the most efficient and economical use of available goods and tools. This is why it is not an oxymoron to talk about Cleantech, clean technologies, although it can be complex to define its fields of action in an exact manner. Cleantech: clean technology without borders The concept of Cleantech is difficult to define. If it is true that in a theoretical level it is a rather simple concept when you go into it, the possibilities become practically endless. In Cleantech, we can include all the innovations, regarding processes and products, that limit or completely eliminate the negative environmental impact of human action. We can talk about Cleantech when we are faced with technologies that deal with: • Collection and recycle of waste • Production of electricity from renewable sources • Rationalization of transport • Optimization of energy consumption • Reduction of packaging volumes • Limitation of resources used in the production process • Cutting emissions of pollutants into the atmosphere. In a Circular Economy perspective, Cleantech can, therefore, become any technology that limits energy; optimize their production and consumption processes; prevents waste eventually produced. In our analysis, we will focus on technologies that provide innovative energy production and storage. Artificial intelligence Forbes has dedicated to the world of new technologies for the creation of clean energy an article on the possible trends for 2019. Among the 6 trends that could emerge this year, the newspaper cites Artificial Intelligence,...