The Liquid Continent
A liquid continent. This is how Fernand Braudel, a famous French historian of the Annales School, defined the Mediterranean. A continent made of water surrounded by three different continents, ...
Bioeconomy's Triple Advantage
The Bioeconomy aims to promote the most efficient and sustainable production and exploitation of biological resources to tackle global interconnected challenges. The concept of the bioeconomy int...
Southern Italy Restarts from Green Chemistry
Non-repayable funds that often enriched Southern politicians’ entourage and led to white elephant projects, plants with no connection with their areas and in many cases with no consideration f...
Fighting Waste to Produce New Wealth
Innovating involves approaching problems from a different perspective. In other words, one needs to move from a quantitative to a qualitative analysis, thus feeling an integral part of a living sy...
5 Drivers for a Changing Economy
This implies analysing what its economic relevance is, assuming that there is a very close connection between economic development and the rational and sustainable use of matter flows. In order to a...
Rare Earth Elements: The Vitamins of Modern Industry
Demand is increasing. Production is almost completely dominated by China. Recycling margins are inadequate. This is the current context of the market of Rare Earth Elements (REE) or “technolog...
Bioeconomy: a European Gamble
The Bioeconomy. In Europe this sector is currently worth € 2 trillion with 22 million jobs and yet this word is still relegated to technical language, as if it were an academic oddity, a margin...
Not Renewable, but Everlasting
Virtually, the aluminium of the beer can you had last night is everlasting, even if its use is a very recent application. Aluminium is not found in nature, for centuries its value rivalled that of g...
Revision of the Waste Directive and Prospects for a European Circular Economy
The proposal for a waste directive presented at the commission on 2nd July 2014,(1) in the framework of a packet of measures aimed at promoting circular economy, is the first important regulato...
The Secret of Steel
When Jared Diamond wrote his essay Guns, Germs and Steel. A Brief History of Everybody for the Last 13,000 Years purported to show a picture of the history of mankind from an ecological rather than ...
Employment, Research and Innovation for Sustainable Growth
Europe: innovation for sustainable and inclusive growth In times of financial straits, substantial demographic changes and increasing global competition, innovation is Europe’s best tool to s...
5,000 Years of Transparency
We could define glass as a noble material. Made with naturally-derived raw materials, has been used for as many as 5,000 years and today it can be separated and recycled – with economic and en...
A Ban Spurs the Launch of the Bioeconomy in Italy: the Case of Shopping Bags
For once, the revolution involving landfills and waste management saw Italy as the leader in Europe. Funny, since Italy is known for having the highest number of law infringements, some of them very...
Circular Economy Showing off
In order not to risk sending a weak signal, it chose the most prominent position: the fair’s entrance hall, impossible to go unnoticed. So the “ExNovo Materials in the Circular Economy&...
It Takes a Flower
In Hannover, Germany, the natural rubber used for treads has been replaced by a new product, an extract of dandelion (to be precise of the Russian dandelion, Taraxacum kok-saghyz), then renamed &ldq...
Filling up at the Treatment Plant!
A treatment plant in Milan’s metropolitan area turned into a biorefinery. A treatment plant for the sewage of part of Lombardy regional capital turning into a filling up station. Local and wit...
The European Path to Bioeconomy Runs through Clusters
Long gone are the days when the big enterprises of the early capitalism used to rule from within the innovation processes, from basic research to the marketing of new products. Nowadays such innovat...
That Treasure Inside a Little Grain
Meeting with Nicoletta Ravasio, professor of general and inorganic chemistry at the Department of Chemistry within the faculty of Agrarian and Food sciences at the University of Milan, at the end of...
CO2: From Climate Killer to Resource
It started operating in 2002, when Alex Krajete left for California with a degree in chemistry under his belt obtained from the University of Innsbruck. After a PhD at Berkeley University, at the Ca...
Used Oil: 30 Years of Green Economy
According to COOU (the Italian Compulsory Consortium of Used Oils), the evaluation of its 30 years of activity is a chance to think over the potential offered by a recycling model of a substance whi...