The Budding Bioeconomy
“Our strategy is inspired by a series of guidelines, starting from the protection of natural capital – an aspect that we take very seriously – and the management of natural resourc...
Growing Little Blue Companies
The Atlantic BlueTech Project questioned the maturity of this sector, in the Atlantic regions of France, Ireland, Portugal, Spain and the UK. Dominated by small and micro enterprises, the sector app...
The Unbearable Heaviness of Food Production
But the study, besides estimating the environmental costs caused by unsustainable food production practices, highlights methods to start alternative approaches to intensive agriculture able to provi...
Micropigs from Beijing
There has been some ethical as well as cultural criticism: why carry out genetic experiments for the sake of our Disney animal fantasies? Disney culture is hardly condemnable, but we should be able ...
The Facebook Generation Will Lead Dematerialization
The fifth issue of Renewable Matter includes an interview with economist Mariana Mazzucato that reviews the current engines of innovation. She describes how public and private governa...
Blackwater, Black Gold
“Nothing grows out of diamonds. Out of dung, flowers do grow,” used to sing Fabrizio De André in 1967. Asking the poet’s for forgiveness, fifty years on we can go a step fur...
The Birth of Waste
Adriana Varella and Nilton Malz, Digital DNA, Palo Alto (California), 2005. Photo by Wonderlane, graphic elaboration Nature does not generate waste: evolution has...
Seek and you Shall Find
The circular economy concept is becoming increasingly widespread, but it is not easy to apply to the operational and everyday run of businesses. Indeed, by definition, the circular economy requires ...
Islam: The Third Way
The imposition of an uneven, forced modernization, on the one side; the retribution of archaic, systematic violence, on the other. In the Islamic world, a third way between these two extre...
Environmental Disasters Broadcasted in Prime Time
Nowadays TV news and newspapers tell us stories of floods, drought, tornadoes and flash floods, but it’s highly likely that in the future these dramatic events will be even more frequent, dama...
Fair Competition
The results of the graphic work presented herewith are editorial artefacts, produced in only one copy and on paper, magazines (Issue 0) in their own right, as a result of a workshop carried out betw...
EU Engagement, USA Disengagement
Whilst the 195 participants’ work led to small steps forward, a group of countries achieved an important outcome with the approval of the “Powering Past Coal,” committing countries...
From Nowhere to COP21
ArtCOP21. The acronym implies an agenda of cultural events in Paris that is paving the way for the 21th round of negotiations about climate and is going to animate the capital of France as long as t...
3D Printing and the Animal World
It really opens up a new world. 3D printers offer two new great possibilities. First, you can design an object from inside while traditionally it has always been designed from outside. If I shape so...
Compliance Schemes: Drivers of Economic Development
It used to be an emergency, a public concern, a cost for the community. It is now becoming a resource, a shared benefit, an economic and employment opportunity. Waste is changing. Its nature, meanin...
Technical Effectiveness of Extended Producer Responsibility Schemes: What Do Data Reveal?
In the EU, according to the web pages dedicated to waste, we currently use 16 tonnes of material per person per year, of which 6 tonnes become waste. In 2012, total waste amounted to 2.5 billion ton...
Natural Capital and the Circular Economy: Two Sides of the Same Coin
The traditional juxtaposition of environmental and common good’s issues stimulates some considerations on a possible systematic approach to the two themes within the general principles of a le...
Why Waste is Not Treated in the Same Way
To regularly ensure the best environmental results and the lowest costs for citizens, adequate waste treatment – from collection or where waste is generated, up to the end of the treatment pro...
Packaging Management System: Assessing a Tree by its Fruits
In 1997, 80% of Italian urban waste was disposed of in landfills: an amount equal to about 22.3 million tonnes. In the same year, in Italy, the national average separate collection amounted to 9%: 1...
Waste Boundaries
The hierarchy of waste management priorities has been in place – both at EU and national levels – for several years now. Against this legal framework, prevention is top of the list, but ...