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5.5 Billion Precious Tons of Forests and Agricultural Fields

According to estimates by Water Footprint Network, for each ton of vegetables an average 300 cubic metres of water (300,000 litres) are needed; 1,000 for fruit; 1,600 for cereals; 4,000 for pulses. ...

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...

Bioplastics: Fostering a Sustainable and Resource Efficient Circular Economy in Europe

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 ...

Good Fibre Packaging

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...

Bioeconomy and Food Security: The Relaunch of Agriculture Is at Stake

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...

EPR - A Building Block of the Circular Economy

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...

EPR as an Economic and Environmental Instrument

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...

Italy: Compost is Catching up

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...

Biofuels: The Aviation Industry Takes Off

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...

Sardinia: An Alliance between Farmers and Green Chemistry Is Born

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...

Problem Solved: Tyres Soon to Become a Versatile Resource

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...

Distributed Generation Finally Hits the Bioplastics Production

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...

The Po Valley: An Open Air Biorefinery

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...

Biomaterials Come out on Top

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...

Circular Design: Matter Exits No Man's land

“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...

A Recurring Health Menace

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...

Marine Biomass: An Unconventional Wealth

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...

Straw Yellow Gold

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...

Putting Madrid and Barcellona back into Circulation

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...

The New Economy According to Tim Jackson

  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...