Europe Desperately Seeking Biomass
The availability of biomass is the bioeconomy’s lifeblood. Being able to predict flows becomes strategic for government and the industrial sector. Lately there has been a proliferation of anal...
The availability of biomass is the bioeconomy’s lifeblood. Being able to predict flows becomes strategic for government and the industrial sector. Lately there has been a proliferation of anal...
Dynamic Growth Potential Currently, bioplastics still only represent well under 1% of the about 300 million tonnes of plastic produced annually. But as demand is rising and with more sophisticated ...
Every year 8 million metric tons of plastic end up in our oceans. Every year we use 1 trillion plastic bags, most of them only once. A constant stream of plastic waste, that is filling up seas and o...
A growing demand for food, raw materials and energy, following land consumption that went beyond the security threshold, has now reached its physical limit. This was the scenario addressed in Berl...
In Germany, reaching such a conclusion is a serious business. When Töpfer stepped in – an economist by training – he was determined to apply the polluter pays principle, i.e. the pr...
Over the years, EPR has been applied within the European Union and various countries to different waste streams, including packaging waste at municipal level. This has undoubtedly led to a better en...
Collection of the organic fraction continues to grow in Italy. This gives us a profile of excellence compared to the rest of Europe, and in some cases such as Milan, even compared to the rest of t...
According to the International Air Transport Association (IATA), in 2014 air transport produced 715 million tons of CO2 (689 in 2012), about 2% of climate-change gases. Not a negligible share. There...
It is a deal between agriculture and chemistry, local and global markets, environmental and production interests. An agreement, not a compromise, because the challenge of Matrìca, the joint...
Armando Testa, Pirelli Elephant, 1954 ©Pirelli Ecopneus has come a long way in less than three years. It is a not-for-profit consortium business made up of...
Just think of localized and distributed generation of electricity. Such is the case of a family installing a photovoltaic system on the roof of its house, thus becoming a power prosumer, i.e. it p...
A huge wholly-Italian open air biorefinery, where wheat, rice, corn, sorghum, tomatoes are grown (and refined) and cows, pigs, calves and sheep are bred. And where the residues of agricultural pro...
If the creation of an award is a sign of the maturity of a sector, and considering that “Bio-based Material of the Year” has now reached its eighth edition, then the bio-based material s...
“Nature and its design are an inexhaustible source of inspiration for science and designers. Its shapes, materials and complexity offer great inspiration.” These were the words of Jani...
Twenty-three years after being banned, asbestos is still very much present, in various forms, on Italian territory: CNR and INAIL have given the rough estimate of about 32 million tonnes. Although L...
In fact, the ocean capacity is far from infinite and investigations in its ecosystems have shown the large impact of those man-made environmental condition changes, such as pollution, global warming...
However, there are various sophisticated plans not to throw it away. This is happening within a cultural panorama that I find extremely fascinating: the most advanced technologies enable us to ident...
I believe it is worth talking about it for several reasons. First of all, what is striking is the level of maturity of the societies we are talking about. Catalonia is the historical flag of cultu...
Meant as a report for the British government in 2009, Prosperity without Growth is back in the bookstores in a completely revised new edition. In such volume, Tim Jackson, professor of Sus...
In 1987, Michael Braungart – a chemistry graduate – founded EPEA, the Environmental Protection Encouragement Agency based in Hamburg, of which he is currently CEO. For over twe...