Renewable Matter #5 by Edizioni Ambiente

RENEWABLE MATTER INTERNATIONAL MAGAZINE ON THE BIOECONOMY AND THE CIRCULAR ECONOMY 05 | August 2015 Bimonthly Publication Edizioni Ambiente

Robert Costanza: Claiming the Sky, Claiming the Future •• Mariana Mazzucato: The State is the Big Mover of Green Transformation •• Nancy Averett: The Way Art Heals Nature

Zero Tolerance to Food Waste •• Charters and Appeals from Expo 2015 •• Better Production, Less Production •• Water: A Disputed Resource

Agriculture: When Sustainability Rhymes with Efficiency

Euro 12,00 - Download free online magazine at www.renewablematter.eu

•• Biofuels from an Old Sofa? Yes, It Can Be Done •• Cardboard Beats Decay •• Renewability Index, Quality Index •• Green Made in Italy: A Model to Be Exported

Here We Are in the Anthropocene Age •• Eggs and Mines

#GEF2015 www.global-ecoforum.org

Contents

renewablematter 05|august 2015 Free bimonthly magazine www.renewablematter.eu ISSN 2385-2240 Reg. Tribunale di Milano n. 351 del 31/10/2014

Antonio Cianciullo

Fighting Starvation, Beyond Food

Robert Costanza

Claim the Sky!

edited by Marco Moro and Roberto Coizet

Green Innovation Needs Patient Capital Interview with Mariana Mazzucato

Nancy Averett

Art that Walks in the World

Carlo Pesso

Towards a Crackdown on Food Waste

Antonio Cianciullo

Stop Wasting Food!

Fabio De Menna Matteo Vittuari

Unsustainability Trap

Aldo Femia

Biomass: Balance is the Secret

Marta Antonelli

Water: A Contended Resource

Revolve

Buildings: The Circular Economy’s Challenge

Peter Viebahn

Critical Mineral Resources for Renewable Energies in Germany

Mario Bonaccorso

How to Turn an Old Sofa into Biofuel

edited by Marco Moro

The Soil’s Perspective Interview with Luca Ruini

Sergio Ferraris

Cardboard Beats Decay

Editor-in-chief Antonio Cianciullo

Contributors Marta Antonelli, Alessandra Astolfi, Nancy Averett, Gianfranco Bologna, Emanuele Bompan, Mario Bonaccorso, Antonio Capece, Vincent Chornet, Stefano Ciafani, Roberto Coizet, Robert Costanza, P. Valentino De Angelis, Delia Del Gaudio, Fabio De Menna, Roberto Di Molfetta, Joanna Dupont Inglis, Fabio Fava, Aldo Femìa, Sergio Ferraris, Stefano Folli, Werner Fuhrmann, Giorgio Lonardi, Mariana Mazzucato, Federico Pedrocchi, Carlo Pesso, Luca Ruini, Cluster SPRING, Peter Viebahn, Matteo Vittuari

Think Tank

Editorial Director Marco Moro

Acknowledgments Erik Assadourian, Giancarlo Naldi, Massimilano Lepratti e Ester Pillia (Università della Sostenibilità), Giulia Rognoni, Stuart Reigeluth, Cesare Ronchi Managing Editor Maria Pia Terrosi Editorial Coordinator Paola Cristina Fraschini Editing Paola Cristina Fraschini, Diego Tavazzi

Layout Michela Lazzaroni Translations Erminio Cella, Laura Fano, Franco Lombini, Elisabetta Luchetti, Mario Tadiello

Policy

Design & Art Direction Mauro Panzeri (GrafCo3), Milano

Executive Coordinator Anna Re External Relations Manager (International) Federico Manca, Carlo Pesso External Relations Managers (Italy) Federico Manca, Anna Re, Matteo Reale Press and Media Relations Silverback www.silverback.it info@silverback.it Contact redazione@materiarinnovabile.it Edizioni Ambiente Via Natale Battaglia 10 20127 Milano, Italia t. +39 02 45487277 f. +39 02 45487333 Advertising marketing@materiarinnovabile.it Annual subscription, 6 paper issues Subscribe on-line at www.materiarinnovabile.it/modulo-abbonamento This magazine is composed in Dejavu Pro by Ko Sliggers Published and printed in Italy at GECA S.r.l., San Giuliano Milanese (Mi) Copyright © Edizioni Ambiente 2015 All rights reserved

Columns

Case Histories

Marco Capellini

500 Materials under the Lens

Cluster SPRING

Bioeconomy: The Virtuous Cooperation between National Cluster and Regions

Giorgio Lonardi

Green Economy: Exporting Italian Know-How

Joanna Dupont-Inglis

Draught from Berlaymont A Smart and Efficient Bioeconomy for Europe

Gianfranco Bologna

Natural Capital We Have Ruined Three Quarters of the Biosphere

Stefano Ciafani

Green & Circular Recycling Frontiers

Federico Pedrocchi

Innovation Pills Eggs and Mines

Printed by Geca Industrie Grafiche using mineral oilfree vegetable-based inks. Geca production system does not produce exhaust and every waste of our manufacture is introduced into a process of collection and recycling. www.gecaonline.it

Printed on Crush ecological papers by Favini, made using process residues from organic products to replace up to 15% of virgin pulp: cover Crush Mais 250 gsm, text Crush Mais 120 gsm. www.favini.com

Cover Robert Costanza

Partners

Networking Partners

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renewablematter 05. 2015

Editorial

R M Fighting Starvation, Beyond Food by Antonio Cianciullo

Manifesto of the Green Economy on Agri-food for the Occasion of Expo 2015, downloadable document from tinyurl.com/poh8wmy

A flood of paper and Charts (Bologna, Milan), a torrent of conferences and a show-off of good resolutions to fight food waste stemmed from Expo 2015 should not be underestimated. A great communication effort was carried out. Some aspects will stay, they will help change the feelings towards bad eating habits and will become part of the everyday life of millions of people. Nevertheless, the spotlight was on the denunciation of waste, rather than an indication of structural solutions to reduce it radically. A lot has been said about techniques to avoid turning into waste food that could still be used (this is an urgent and necessary step by the way) and about a broader vision enabling the prevention of this damage with the development of a circular economy. The issue of fighting starvation is still at the forefront, pushed by the quantitative rationale that caused the problem. We have often heard the old refrain that we need to produce more because population will grow as well as per capita consumption. We are all too familiar with the adage according to which the pollution problems created by agriculture are on the rise as well as the old cliché that one third of food is lost in its journey from the field to the table. As if we were talking about independent mechanisms, without trying to pinpoint the connections between greater aridity that every year causes a loss of 24 billion tonnes of fertile soil and the asymmetries that engender lack of food in one billion people, while an additional billion people suffer from lack of food. Such connections have social (70% of food production is ensured by small farmers), environmental (one fifth of the productive fields is irrigated and the irrigation cycle, already in crisis, is threatened by climate change)

and economic (the race towards lower and lower prices is not enough to beat poverty and does not contribute to protect the health of individuals) implications. By linking these aspects, a wider and more compact front against waste could be presented. It’s not just about not wasting food. We must not dissipate water, energy, fertile soil and social cohesion by forcing the production cycles, disregarding the overal results in the medium term: to get a clear picture of this risk, flicking through history books (from irrigation excess in the Fertile Crescent to the hundreds of species of insects that have developed DDT resistance) should be enough. A circular vision of the agrarian economy can help build a more solid model for reviving production and agriculture. Perhaps by eliminating the barriers and controversies surrounding these opposing worlds, especially since the crop share destined for energy has been rising, with a peak stimulated by USA subsidies for corn which around 2007 caused cereal prices to skyrocket, generating the tortilla revolution with the slogan “not even a square metre of farmland for energy”. A battle for soil that belongs to a technologically-outmoded world, as it can be inferred by the Manifesto of the Green Economy on Agri-food for the Occasion of Expo 2015, circulated by the National Board for the Green Economy. The above-mentioned manifesto deals with a bioeconomy based on the valorization of biomasses from different sources used to generate renewable energies and to supply materials for a host of activities (from handicrafts to green chemistry). It also states that “such activities – when integrated and sustainable for the environment and not stealing land and productions for food –

can contribute to improving the protection and care for the environment, to the recovery of marginal and degraded areas and offer added income opportunities for farmers while helping to hinder rural depopulation”. Biorefineries – Italy is the leading country in this field – are an advanced version of such sustainable activities: they are able to reuse agricultural residues or to obtain crops without using water and phytopharmaceuticals on abandoned soils in a series of “cascade” processes where each time previous-cycle products are employed in order to obtain useful materials in various production cycles. Such vision of a circular economy integrating food in the whole production system can provide a huge contribution to the battle against waste of matter and energy, helping to find a solution to the conundrum raised by Expo 2015: nourishing a planet with an ever-increasing population with less and less resources and with climate change looming ahead. To fight starvation, producing more food is not enough: we need to look beyond food, thus guaranteeing social cohesion and a balance of ecosystems. As Vandana Shiva put it in the Manifesto Terra Viva: “The new agriculture replaces the linear process of exploitation of soil and resources with a circular returning process that guarantees resilience, sustainability, justice and peace. Such new agriculture is part of a process aiming at redefining the concept of democracy and freedom. In the old atomistic and mechanistic notion, my freedom ends where yours begins. In the new notion, based on the circular economy and on the growing role communities are playing, my freedom begins where yours begins and includes freedom of the soil and of all species”.

Manifesto Terra Viva by Vandana Shiva, available online tinyurl.com/njktfz5

renewablematter 05. 2015

by Robert Costanza

Claim the Sky!

The atmosphere is a common asset of the global community. If an oil spill occurs in the oceans, governments collect natural resource damages for cleaning up the mess. Yet they sit idle in the face of a catastrophic “spill” of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. The Public Trust Doctrine holds that certain natural resources are to be held in trust as assets to serve the public good. It is the government’s responsibility, as trustee, to protect these assets from harm. Approximately 90 companies globally are responsible for introducing two-thirds of the carbon emitted into the atmosphere. Courtesy by Solutions Journal, www.thesolutionsjournal.com

The atmosphere is a community asset that belongs to all of us. The problem is that it is currently an open access resource – anyone can emit carbon dioxide into the atmosphere with no consequences to themselves – but with huge cumulative consequences to the climate and the global community. Many agree that charging companies and individuals for the damages their emissions

cause, for example, a comprehensive carbon tax or cap/auction/dividend/trade system, would drastically cut emissions. However, despite some interesting regional experiments, implementing this kind of system via international negotiations at the global level has proven close to impossible. A few critical governments, influenced too much by fossil fuel interests, have been blocking

©Jacques Descloitres, MODIS Rapid Response Team, NASA-GSFC

Think Tank

1. Barnes P., Capitalism 3.0: A Guide to Reclaiming the Commons, BerrettKoehler, San Francisco CA, 2006.

4. Wood M. C., Nature’s Trust: Environmental Law for a New Ecological Age, Cambridge University Press, New York NY, 2013.

2. Barnes P. et al., “Creating an Earth Atmospheric Trust”, Science, 319:724 (2008).

5. Goldenberg S., “Just 90 companies caused two-thirds of man-made global warming emissions”, The Guardian [online] (2013), www.theguardian.com/ environment/2013/ nov/20/90-companiesman-made-globalwarming-emissionsclimate-change.

3. Sax J. L., “The Public Trust Doctrine in Natural Resource Law: Effective Judicial Intervention”, Michigan Law Review, 68:471-566. doi:10.2307/1287556. JSTOR 1287556 (1970).

Robert Costanza is Professor and Chair at Public Policy at Crawford School of Public Policy at the Australian National University.

binding commitments and effective economic instruments. Global civil society can change this if it claims property rights over the atmosphere. By asserting that all of us collectively own the sky, we can begin to use the legal institutions surrounding property to protect our collective rights, charge for damages to the asset, and provide rewards for improving the asset. This idea has been proposed by Peter Barnes and others.1,2 The Public Trust Doctrine is a powerful emerging legal principle that supports this idea.3 In her book, Nature’s Trust: Environmental Law for a New Ecological Age,4 legal scholar Mary Wood describes how the Public Trust Doctrine has its roots in ancient Roman law and occurs in the many legal systems derived from it. The doctrine holds that certain natural resources are to be held in trust as assets to serve the public good.

It is the government’s responsibility, as trustee, to protect these assets from harm and maintain them for the public’s use. Under this doctrine, the government cannot give away or sell off these public assets to private parties. The public trust doctrine has been used in many countries in the past to protect water bodies, shorelines, fresh water, wildlife, and other resources. However, as Wood forcefully argues, the time has come to expand the purview of the doctrine to cover all of the critical natural capital and ecosystem services that support human well-being, including the atmosphere, the oceans, and biodiversity. She argues that governments have been shirking this responsibility to protect “nature’s trust” and need to be required to fulfill their duty, including claiming damages. This problem is complicated by the fact that the atmosphere is a global asset. However, from the perspective of Nature’s Trust, the fact that nations are co-trustees makes them no less responsible for protecting the asset than individual sovereigns are for protecting assets like shorelines or open water bodies that occur exclusively within their borders. The Nature’s Trust idea significantly changes the whole discussion about how to deal with climate disruption. Rather than national governments negotiating with each other about emissions reductions, governments should see themselves as co-trustees with a fiduciary responsibility to protect the atmospheric trust. To do this, they can claim damages from the private interests that are causing the problem. As Wood notes, ‘Trustees have an affirmative obligation to recoup monetary damages against third parties that harm or destroy trust assets” (p. 185). If an oil spill occurs in the oceans, governments collect natural resource damages for cleaning up the mess. Yet they sit idle in the face of a catastrophic “spill” of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Holding climate polluters accountable for their damage is more straightforward than it might seem. Approximately 90 companies globally are responsible for introducing two-thirds of the carbon emitted into the atmosphere.5 This means that damage claims could target a relatively small number of private interests. In addition, all governments would not need to agree in order to employ this tactic. Since all governments are co-trustees in the global atmospheric asset, a subset of nations could

renewablematter 05. 2015

INVOICE

Date: [Soon] To: [Company XX]

Under the Public Trust Doctrine, you are hereby assessed for damages to the Global Atmosheric Commons. $[X,XXX] per cumulative ton of CO2 equivalent introduced into the global economy from date to date (based on the latest IPCC estimates of damages), plus ongoing damages:

= $[X,XXX.00]

Deposit this amount to the Global Atmospheric Trust Fund within 90 days or face legal action and sanctions by the shareholders of the Trust – the people of the Earth. Monies in this fund will be used exclusively to mantain and improve the atmosphere for the benefit of all shareholders, present and future. These uses include, but are not limited to:

1. investments in community owned, low carbon emitting renewable energy sources, such as wind and solar. 2. investments in carbon sequestration projects, including forests, soils and wetlands. 3. investments in urban infrastructure improvements to reduce car use and improve building energy performance. 4. investments in technology development to enhance and accelerate the above.

As an alternative to paying this invoice in full, you may investan equivalent amount in projects that have been approved and monitored by the Trust in one of the categories above.

Groups of school children deliver invoices to the corporate headquarters of major fossil fuel companies with major media coverage.

Signed, Shareholders in the Earth Atmospheric Trust

bring the damage claims. Damages achieved from these legal actions could fund restoration projects in those same countries, provided that they are certified to draw down atmospheric carbon or expedite the transition to non-nuclear, renewable energy. In addition, governments could charge for ongoing damages via a carbon tax or other mechanisms. But, given that governments have not acted on their own, well planned civil-society pressure will be required to support governments to act, and to counteract the inevitable corporate resistance. A concerted effort to “claim the sky”

as a public trust on behalf of all of global society, in combination with the solid legal framework provided by Wood’s work on the public trust doctrine, may just do the trick. The Civil Rights Movement in the US was based on equally solid legal principles, but required coordinated social activism to achieve success. Let’s establish a broad coalition of individuals and groups and publicly declare on the web and in other venues that the atmosphere belongs to us and our descendants, and that we demand that the polluters pay for recovering

Harrison Ford

Robert Redford

Think Tank

6. Moomaw W., From Failure to Success: Reframing the Climate Treaty, Fletcher Forum of World Affairs www.fletcherforum. org/2014/02/10/moomaw (2014).

and maintaining our atmosphere. Let’s establish an Earth Atmospheric Trust to charge for damages to the atmospheric commons and to qualify restoration projects (projects that achieve carbon drawdown through soil sequestration and reforestation, or that promote transition to a renewable energy infrastructure). These are not “carbon offset projects”. We have to go beyond offsets to demand cleanup of the atmosphere.6 The Trust can maintain a financial accounting and carbon accounting of projects funded by corporate polluters to carry out their liability to the citizen beneficiaries. A public outreach campaign to build pressure can start by sending invoices to the polluters themselves for past and ongoing damages. Imagine the following. •• An Earth Atmospheric Trust is established to collect past and ongoing damages and to certify and track restoration projects funded by corporations who are liable for carbon emissions, and to directly fund restoration projects. •• Groups of school children deliver invoices to the corporate headquarters of major fossil fuel companies with major media coverage (see box).

Brad Pitt

•• 350.org and other groups take up the campaign to finally get movement toward their goal.

42 Celebrities who care about the environment: www.examiner.com/ article/42-celebritieswho-care-about-theenvironment

•• The Occupy movement reinvigorates itself around this campaign. •• Major international NGOs, such as Conservation International, and the World Resources Institute, lend their support to the campaign. •• Major media personalities, like Robert Redford, Harrison Ford, Brad Pitt, Leonardo DiCaprio, Cameron Diaz, and others join the campaign.

Leonardo Di Caprio

Cameron Diaz

•• Michael Moore makes a documentary about the campaign. Nature’s Trust has the potential to be a significant new legal and social force in the battle to bring human activities on the planet into compliance with “nature’s laws”. It is far past the time for the people of planet Earth to claim the future by claiming the sky.

renewablematter 05. 2015

edited by Marco Moro and Roberto Coizet

Green Innovation Needs Patient Capital The Public Sector Is the Real Driving Force towards a Sustainable Economy Interview with Mariana Mazzucato

©Mariana Mazzucato

If a mythology of innovation exists, the government plays an inefficient and highly resistant role towards change in it, while brilliant businessmen and brave venture capitalists seem to be projected towards the future. Such mythology is further corroborated by the imagery built around the so-called startups. But looking back over the years, we can see clearly how the roles of such narration can be reversed. In her The Entrepreneurial State, Mariana Mazzuccato draws a comprehensive overview debunking many of the most validated myths regarding the processes that have produced major innovations in the last decades (but not exclusively), highlighting the central role played by the government. With no intention whatsoever to instigate legends on private companies, Pavan Sukhdev – interviewed in the last issue of this magazine – claims that the main driving force of change behind the current development model should be large multinationals, mainly because of the growing inability of governments to offer the necessary leadership. They can achieve that with certain conditions: aligning their objectives

Think Tank Repurchases, dividends, net income, R&D expenditures, 1980-2006 2.40

* 293 corporations in the S&P500 in October 2007 in operation in 1980

Source: Lazonick, 2014 & 2015

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0.60 0.40 0.20

Mariana Mazzucato is an economist, with dual Italian and American citizenship. She is RM Phillips Professor in the Economics of Innovation at the University of Sussex, SPRU and author of The Entrepreneurial State: Debunking Public vs. Private Sector Myths, currently available also in German, Greek, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese.

Marco Moro is editor in chief at Edizioni Ambiente.

Roberto Coizet is President of Edizioni Ambiente and Coordinator of the “Development of Ecosystem Services” team of States General of the Green Economy.

with those of society, limiting the use of financial leverage, communicating effectively and building a vital element in the communities and places where they operate. They will have to become guardians and promoters of financial, natural, social and human capital. Will they manage to do that? The thing is that, according to Sukhdev, corporations can achieve that more easily, quickly and efficiently than governments. A vision that seems to be the exact opposite compared to the argument put forward by Mariana Mazzucato in her book. She debunks the false image of the government as inertia factor, which would slow down the “natural” dynamism of a company, equally directed at innovation. Such image is the result of a distorted perception of how the fundamental innovations that have characterized recent decades originated. So the first question is: Who is now and who will be in the future the protagonist of sustainable transformation, the so-called green transformation? The State or private companies? “Neither. I believe the problem is of a different nature: today, we need to accept the current situation or to use both history and theory to build a different State, to aim at another change. We are faced with two fundamental issues: the first is that large companies are overfunded and more engaged in free-riding activities rather than in research and development ones. They repurchase their stock to cause the share value to rise, thus increasing the earnings of shareholders, rather that investing in research and development. Many companies do that, both in the Information Technology sector and in other areas, the worst one being the Energy sector. The second problem is that there are States and governments lacking the necessary courage to perform again what some governments did in the past. So, on the one hand we have to reform

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the State, re-instilling courage into it, and on the other the definancialization of large corporations. So, the question is not between State or corporations, but rather between what type of companies and what type of State. I am always referring to a mission-oriented State, not a State as “ministry of the economy”, the red tape, a top-down economy. If we consider Silicon Valley as well as nations such as Germany, Denmark and others (perhaps even China), what we see is that wherever there has been smart innovation, there was a so-called decentralized network state, and it is interesting to note what kind of organizations and structures operate in it and what kind of role they played. The other interesting aspect is the role of the State emerging from it: a player that does not merely correct market failures, for example when a public good such as basic research is involved, where private investments are so low that the state must intervene to correct them. This is still a crucial function, indeed the state funded all basic research behind the development of sectors such as IT, nanotechnologies, biotechnologies and now the green sector. Moreover, public funds have mainly been used to develop renewable energies. Besides all this, the State also played a role in market creation. As it happened in the United States, where as far as the development of renewable energies is concerned, the State created and shaped the market, by intervening along the whole innovation chain, not only within upstream basic research, but also in applied research. And money has also been put into it: initially, capital financing of companies in the renewables’ sector, did not come from venture capitalists, but from “patient capital” from various kinds of public funds. In Israel, for instance, there is a Public Venture Capital Fund; in the US there are many kinds of funds, such as the Small Business Innovation Capital Fund, just to mention one. There has been a great deal of public commitment along

renewablematter 05. 2015

Oftentimes, big challenges such as those tackled by the European Union (population ageing, climate change) risk being very abstract.

the whole research chain, not just in basic research. And it has always been about a mission-oriented commitment. What do I mean by that? That the objective, as was the case for space research, was clear and defined in advance: to land on the moon. While its usefulness (or lack of it) is debatable, and whether they really achieved that mission may still be a big bone of contention, what counts is the model. On the contrary, big challenges tackled by the European Union (population ageing, climate change) often risk being very abstract. They are embraceable challenges, but when can they be achieved? A direction, albeit broadly, must be defined, but it must be realistic, with clear objectives, so that it is possible to know when they are achieved.” So, private and public investments with regard to innovation are fundamentally different. The State is (or can be) a protagonist when it comes to trigger change processes with a strategic value, as is the case with the green economy, while the private sector comes into play when someone else created favourable conditions to do it and, in the absence of more advantageous ways, to improve its performance. Going back to the green development, what strategies should a government adopt? What are the key elements to implement its mission? “Today, to develop a green economy any State cannot merely intervene on market failures, for example through the introduction of a carbon tax, but it must make mission-oriented choices, in the direction of a green economy. In the past, this is what happened: developing the IT sector was a choice, working on nanotechnologies was a choice. Today they need to make a green choice, which does not mean only renewable energy, but a complete economy reorientation. Let’s just take the IT sector as an example: the so-called IT revolution is only half-way through, it has not really spread. As Robert Solow put it: ‘Computers are everywhere but they do not

appear in the statistics regarding productivity’. Up until now, the IT sector has had no direction, there was no real orientation towards a final goal. There could be a new green direction in order to achieve that full deployment that, for instance, the electricity revolution has experienced over the last fifty years. The problem is that we cannot even find the courage to talk about the State in these terms, namely as a subject steering development and innovation. At best, we talk about it as a subject acting to reduce risks for the private sector, by offering incentives, creating private-public partnerships and defining rules and regulations. It is not a subject that makes brave decisions, many of which will fail. This aspect must also be highlighted, because the State too, in its capacity as a fundamental investor in innovation, can fail. Let’s take as an example what Obama did in 2009: a big part of the stimulus package for the economy was directed towards green policies, with guaranteed loans for green initiatives, such as the $465 million loaned to Tesla and the $500 million allocated to Solyndra. And then what happened? Tesla performed well while Solyndra went bankrupt. What happened to taxpayers funding these initiatives? Nothing, except the costs. So, by not recognizing that the entrepreneurial State is an investing one accepting a macro-risk (with possible bankruptcies), we will only keep on socializing the risk while privatizing the profits. This creates a big problem, because in this way inequality soars (because, as mentioned above, the profits are not returned to the State, to the people) and money is taken away for the next challenge to tackle. Any venture capitalist chooses to invest in a higher risk portfolio knowing that it will balance it out on safer options. Pretending that the State must only reduce the risks for private companies, relegating itself to a role of administrator and regulator and by doing it in those countries where the state plays this role of investor/ innovator in an effective way (which does not happen in Italy), this revolving fund does

Renewable energy R&D investments in the U.S.

Source: Nemet and Kammen (2007), “U.S. energy research and development: Declining investment, increasing need, and the feasibility of expansion”, Energy Policy, 35 (1), 746-755

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Think Tank

Renzi’s policies see the State as a mere facilitator for the private sector: would you like fewer taxes? No problem. What law bothers you? I can repeal it. And all that without any evidence that this will produce useful results for the community.

not happen. Nothing goes back to the State, to the community. What does such attitude cause in the public opinion? Let’s take the healthcare system in the USA: taxpayers’ total expenditure for drugs is $32 billion, but when Obama decided to bring healthcare to 70 million people which did not have access before, with the so-called Obamacare, he was accused of ‘interfering with our healthcare system’. He defended his actions with the usual leftist arguments, referring to ethical values and justice principles, when he could have rightly said, “Interfering with your healthcare? No, my dears, we created your healthcare system!”. People do not even see the co-creator role of the State, but the drugs they buy have been created by the State (through what has been explained above, namely the funding of some mission-oriented research). There is a problem of ignorance and Obama himself (but the same applies to all national and local politicians) does not even have the right vocabulary, the right words to talk about the State in these terms. And politicians are at a loss even when they are fully aware of the role played by the State. Of course there is also a worse scenario: when politicians have no words because they fail to understand what has been done. Matteo Renzi the Italian Premier visits Silicon Valley and goes back home with the Jobs Act, without having the slightest idea of the role the State played in the creation of Silicon Valley. The government or the State must create a huge wave above which businessmen and venture capitalists can surf. Today, the State no longer creates this wonderful wave. Not only that. When you create a wave, you must also seal pacts, symbiotic and not parasitic, with the companies. Once again, let’s consider Obama: when FIAT put itself forward to buy Chrysler, Obama, in a nutshell said: ‘Dear Marchionne, would you like to buy Chrysler? Fine, since taxpayers rescued Chrysler, I tell you what to do, you must invest in hybrid engines’. So, FIAT in the USA invests in hybrid engines and in Italy, what does it do? Nothing like that, of course. But has anybody asked? Of course not. Renzi’s policies see the State as a mere facilitator for the private sector: would you like fewer taxes? No problem. What law bothers you? I can repeal it. And all that without any evidence that this can benefit the community. Think of the Jobs Act: it would have been beneficial for citizens if the Italian companies had on average 13-14 employees, by recruiting more and exceeding 15 they would have benefited from this law. But in actual facts the average number of employees in the Italian companies is 4! So this has just been an unconditional gift to large companies. The obstacles to growth did not depend on workers’ rights, but on the lack of a serious ecosystem, made both of public and private investments. In Italy the relation between the public and private sector is parasitic. They are both inert, so public, private or the subsidiarity of the third sector

have nothing to do with it. I consider the third sector inert too, a stopgap, not a subject leading to the opening of new markets. Just as the State does when, with regard to health, sponsors the research of new drugs rather than promoting new lifestyle models!” But over the last decades a contradiction has emerged: the public policy has delegated hugely to economy. And the economy has delegated a great deal to monetary economy. Political choices are increasingly taking into consideration aspects linked to factors strictly associated with their monetary value. Pavan Sukhdev reminds us that a great deal of natural capital, and therefore of common good, is linked to factors with no clear monetary value. So, is there any risk that this “cultural conversion” of public policies makes them unable to see the priorities of sustainability? Is there a possible difference between centralized State and the so-called decentralized State? How not to lose the visibility of common good, thus orientating the project, research, technological innovation in the interest of the community? “First of all when I talk about a decentralized State I don’t necessarily refer to different geographical levels of government (national or regional, for instance) but to a system like the US one, where all the competences on a certain theme, energy for example, are not concentrated in a specific ministry, but are distributed over many kinds of agencies and organizations. Then we can also look at whether they are federal, governmental or local, but this is not the point. Let’s take ARPA-e: this agency is committed to transferring to the field of renewable energies that out-of-the-box thinking and to carrying out that function that DARPA did before the Internet came along. It is a federal agency and it is decentralized from an organizational point of view; if you go inside it you’ll have the impression of being inside Google HQ: same creative atmosphere and not only that. They managed to recruit the best brains. The head of the agency himself was a Nobel Prize winner. Because what is interesting is that when you have a mission-oriented public agency it becomes an honour to work in it. If, on the other hand, you are there just to facilitate the work of the private sector, to de-risk, if you are a real scientist, you have no motivation to work there. Secondly, regardless of the territorial distribution of an institution of this kind, what is important is to understand its organization. This also applies to Italian history; suffice to think of IRI’s (Institute for Industrial Reconstruction). Here, it appears clearly that the question is not so much whether we need IRI or not. If we look back in history, when did IRI play an important role? How was it organized, who worked in it, what were their contracts like? For example, within DARPA employees had

renewablematter 05. 2015 For more information see the volume by Mariana Mazzucato and Caetano C. R. Penna Mission Oriented Finance for Innovation, available online tinyurl.com/pl7yvmm

What kind of relations with large corporations can be useful to the very few small companies really interested in innovation? It is necessary to definancialize large corporations, thus offering the necessary help to the few small companies that are really committed to this.

a five-year contract. You are employed and are pushed, I am not saying to go bust, to do difficult things and then you are appraised not just on how successful you were, but also for the risks you took. The other thing is that nowadays we are going through very distorted times: the austerity policies are indeed causing an exactly opposite phenomenon, one of growing centralization. Take as an example what is happening with the Cameron government in the United Kingdom compared to what the Big Society Project was: the first thing he did was to quash QUANGOS (the acronym stands for Quasi-Autonomous Non-Governmental Organisation, editor’s note) such as Carbon Trust, which was very interesting – and is still operating today, although weakened – and acted as a public venture capital fund for energy. This was one of the first things they cut down on. David Cameron’s government, with all its austerity policies, is not just about the reduction of social expenditure, but also its growing centralization, reducing such diversity of decentralized organizations and producing a less important image of the public sector (therefore less interest to go and work in such organizations).” So, in your opinion the key element within such dynamic and project-based public sector is represented by its own variety and multiplicity. Does centralization constitute its end? No, this is not the point. The question is not centralized or decentralized. Anyone wishing to innovate needs patient capital. The way in which direct patient capital has been created worldwide, that is supplied directly by actors appointed to do that (which does not happen in Italy) is different: in Germany, as well as in China, they achieved this through a large public bank; in the USA they did it differently. In Finland, there is on the one hand a very big central public agency for innovation (Tekes, national agency for innovation financing) and Sitra (Finnish Fund for innovation) which is a peripheral agency. Both things are needed. So, in order to create a dynamic and flexible fabric what is really needed is a multiplicity of organizations, this is the key factor. And such dynamism and multiplicity play a very important role for the private sector, which becomes inert if it does not measure itself against its public counterpart and, in the long run, they both become inert. The other aspect is how to assess, especially when it comes to public goods. What is a public good? The public good is a market failure: it is produced when there is something that can hardly generate profits, with an ensuing underinvestment by private companies. It is like with nuclear fusion: why does a private company not carry out nuclear fusion? Because if and when nuclear fusion will be invented it will be

impossible for a company to appropriate such basic invention that it will be used by everyone. An invention whose potential spillover effects are so huge that cannot be included in any company’s portfolio. The thing is that public funding alone was never able to let us have such general-purpose technologies, such as the Internet or electricity, nanotechnologies, biotechnologies, which have spillover effects, repercussions over the whole economy. Basic research was never enough, but there have always been upstream choices not only about public goods, but also about participation in the whole innovation chain. And this is how the problem is assessed: when we deal with public goods, the assessment issue should not even come into play: the aim is open access (on this subject we are experiencing a setback at the moment), so invest while you can because you know you will have huge returns. But this is not enough, since applied research is also needed – a great part of which, as it is normal, is bound to fail – it is necessary that such patient capital go to the very few companies seriously interested in innovation, taking into account the fact that they may also go bankrupt (as the above-mentioned Solyndra). Here one should wonder whether it is legitimate to monetize, to speculate whether the State can make a profit out of it, as well as lose out. We cannot pretend, as it happens with basic research, that this is irrelevant because the returns will be so many and so varied that citizens will benefit from them. My point of view is that by not admitting that the State plays the role of entrepreneurial State, we did not accept that the public party, namely the community, could benefit from this downstream innovation so the process, at some point, will stop. This is brought about by the fact that we no longer have a taxation system such as that that allowed, for instance, the creation of NASA: during Eisenhower’s presidency (who was a republican and a soldier by the way), taxation for the most affluent, the upper marginal rate reached 93%! Over the years this taxation system has been phased out, such resources are no longer there, so today time has come to wake up and do like Israel that keeps equity in some of these strategic investments. In other cases the tool can be a golden share on patents. Maybe not forever, but perhaps until the State decides to play his role as entrepreneur, not leaving all the profits to the private sector. Or a loan system could be adopted, as it happens with university students in the UK: the government lends you money to develop your curriculum. Can’t find a job after graduation? You don’t have to give me back any money. But if you can, you pay back your debt.” Must the entrepreneurial State thus build a clear “social pact” (or a political one, if you will) with private companies? “Absolutely, and it can be a very simple one,

Think Tank KfW funding for industrial environmental and climate protection projects in Germany

KfW Renewable Energies Programme

Other Renewable Energies Programme

Total Billion euro

0.55

2001

0.48

2002

0.71

2003

0.08

2004

0.89

2005

0.55

2006

0.42

2007

like the one mentioned above, an agreement to reinvest the profits made. This is precisely what is needed. There is no need to talk about a New Deal, but just about any deal will do, that’s what we need. Exactly like Obama did with FIAT or as it happened with AT&T in the telecommunication sector. Today, big corporations show record levels of immobilized resources, which are not reinvested. A similar tool should be part of an innovation policy, so we should wonder what kind of private company we need, for example for the innovation of economy in a green direction. Going back to the USA, we know that small companies do little innovation, so the issue to tackle would be: what kind of relations with large corporations can be useful to the very few small companies really interested in innovation? It is necessary to definancialize large corporations, thus helping the very few small companies committed to this aspect. The aim is to create an ecosystem like that in Germany, where they are investing greatly and where such ecosystem benefits from a mission-oriented public bank (KFW) and a fabric of independent research agencies (such as the 60 institutes within the Fraunhofer Gesellschaft) supporting and directing the innovation process.” The image of a State as “innovation retarder” is particularly strong in Italy. And many recent governments have done their best to validate it. By contrast, in some key sectors of sustainable innovation, such as the bioeconomy, companies are the driving force. Some EU directives managed to “impose” long-term strategies which otherwise would not be there, supporting the most advanced sectors of private companies. Currently – thinking about the way the

2.82

5.51

9.59

7.56

7.94

2008

2009

2010

2011

2012

European Union is addressing the Greek crisis – it may seem an inappropriate question, but could the supranational institutions such as the EU carry out such entrepreneurial driving force towards strategic innovation better than national governments? “Of course! Provided this institution does not cause problems itself. To tackle the crisis and abide by the parameters required by the EU, since 2009 Spain cut public funds for innovation by 40%. Then, you may have Horizon 2020 that dishes out 80 billion for innovation, but meanwhile you have strangled that agency network, that decentralized actors’ ecosystem, which is vital to implement processes. And who can work in moneyless agencies? If you are a good scientist, are you happy working there? Of course not! You go and work for Bill Gates! So, there is a need for a combination of both a national and supranational plan, which must operate consistently, though. Multiplicity is a positive factor, but today, in Europe, supranational forces are operating in the opposite direction: funds to Horizon 2020 – the main EU research programme aimed at sustainable innovation – are being reduced, in order to fund the Juncker Plan of investments in infrastructure and... research! So much for consistency…”

renewablematter 05. 2015

ART

that Walks in the World

by Nancy Averett

This story was produced in partnership with FuturePerfect, www.resilience.org/ stories/2015-06-08/artthat-walks-in-the-world#

Nancy Averett is a freelance science journalist who writes for a variety of national publications and is based in Cincinnati, Ohio.

Two California artists are creating public sculptures that heal damaged ecosystems and eventually disappear back into nature.

Daniel McCormick and Mary O’Brien have received plenty of accolades for their public sculptures over the years. But the review they like best? The turtle scat that they discovered each morning along one section of their work. “The animals found it instantly and that made us feel really good”, says O’Brien, referring to a 270-foot-long piece they built last spring along the Carson River in Nevada with the help of hundreds of volunteers.

Photo by Mary O’Brien

Think Tank A dead tree turned into a sculpture for Truckee project

Left: A sculpture built for the Carson River

Photo by Monique Verdin

Mary O’Brien and Daniel working on a project in Louisiana

Animal droppings probably wouldn’t excite most artists, but McCormick and O’Brien specialize in creating sculptures whose purpose is to help heal the environment. Their “Watershed Art” has appeared in the form of oyster beds in Oakland, storm surge barriers in Louisiana’s Gulf Coast, and now riparian habitat along sections of the Truckee and Carson rivers in Nevada. Helping Compromised Environments Watershed Sculpture, www.watershed sculpture.com

“As artists, we want to do more than just document the changes happening in nature”, says McCormick. “We want our sculptures to actually play a part in restoring the ecological balance of compromised environments.” To do that, he and O’Brien weave together branches from plants taken directly from the watershed into 7-, 10- or even 20-foot-long sculptures – which McCormick describes as looking like huge pea pods – that are designed to fit the curves of eroded stream banks. Later they install them in the watershed by staking them to

the ground with cuttings from native plants that grow quickly, such as willow and cottonwood saplings. The pieces trap eroded soil and runoff, allowing cleaner water to flow downstream. Eventually, the cuttings grow larger and swallow up the sculpture until it becomes just another part of the landscape. Stewards of Habitat For their latest projects, which are based in Nevada, McCormick and O’Brien have teamed up with The Nature Conservancy (TNC) to work on two different rivers: the Carson and the Truckee. This spring they finished up their work on the Truckee – four installations at TNC’s McCarran Ranch Preserve, just upstream east of Reno. The two rivers have a long history of human intervention, including unrestricted grazing, irrigation diversions, and dredging or straightening of the river channels – all of which has harmed their ecosystems. TNC estimates, for example, that the Truckee river basin has lost

Photo by Mary O’Brien

renewablematter 05. 2015

Top: One of the large “peapod” shaped structures the artists built to help restore the riparian zone of the Truckee River

Photo by Mary O’Brien

“We call this art that walks in the world.”

An Avian Habitat Sculpture on the Truckee River that quickly attracted a pair of house wrens

90% of the forested habitat along its banks and up to 70% of its bird population since 1900. The organization has acquired several key wetland, riparian, and meadow habitats along both rivers and has been working to restore them for a variety of native fish, birds, reptiles, and insects as well as to provide natural and better flood control for downstream communities like Reno. Within those key habitat areas are McCormick and O’Brien’s sculptures, which they created with the help of hundreds of volunteers from a variety of businesses and schools. “Because they help us create it, they have a pride of ownership”. says O’Brien of the local volunteers. “And eventually, they become the stewards of it.”

Artists Interacting Directly with Nature The two artists consulted with Elisabeth Ammon, ornithologist and science director at the Great Basin Bird Observatory, on how their work on the rivers might help attract birds. “They showed me some draft designs and wanted my input on whether they would be useful to native birds”, says Ammon, who is an expert on the restoration of riparian habitats. She added: “The migrants are just now arriving so it will be interesting to see how they use them. The structures should make really great perches for birds. Sometimes in wetlands, there’s not much to perch on, birds like to sit up high and look down to observe insects and fish”. In fact, several house wrens started buzzing around one of the Truckee sculptures, called the Avian Habitat Resource Sculpture, while the artists were still working on it. The birds mated and built a nest inside it. McCormick and O’Brien’s sculptures were featured at the Center for Art + Environment at the Nevada Museum of Art from December 2014 to April 2015. William Fox, director of the center, says their work was a great fit because the center collects, studies, and promotes art that is designed to “intervene directly in the affairs of the Earth”. Such art, he adds, is part of a natural progression as artists who once simply catalogued the natural world are now interacting directly with it. “Daniel McCormick and Mary O’Brien are in the forefront of this evolution”, he adds. “We call this art that walks in the world.” Giving Advantage to the Natural System The idea of creating art that might heal an ecosystem began with McCormick, who started making the large basket-shaped sculptures in the early 1990s. He became known for doing

Think Tank

his artistic restoration work in the Golden Gate National Recreation Area and began giving workshops to various organizations such the West Marin Unified School District in northern California. “I would hike out there with the kids and we’d put (the sculptures) in the gullies that were delivering agriculture waste to the main creek”, says McCormick. “We were able to slow the erosion process down to keep silt from filtering up to the spawning grounds of native coho salmon and steelhead trout.” O’Brien eventually joined him. The two are life partners as well as colleagues and have worked on projects all over the country, although most of their work has taken place in California. Lately the work has become more challenging as climate change advances. Nevada, for instance, has been suffering from a long drought, so the artists have to plant their willow and cottonwood cuttings in deeper water than before in order for the saplings to survive the heat and dryness. “There are assumptions we make on the scientific side of restoration, but when you’re out in the field all of those rules don’t apply necessarily because the climate has changed”, McCormick says. “We’re in the midst of a 7- to 10-year drought.” Tourists who want to see McCormick and O’Brien’s watershed art can visit the River

Photo by Simon Williams di The Nature Conservancy

The artists also had an exhibit that included drawings and smaller models of their sculptures at the Center for Art + Environment, Nevada Museum of Art

Fork Ranch near Genoa, Nevada, or the McCarran Ranch near Reno. The Nature Conservancy of Nevada has maps on its website to help people find the sculptures. But they shouldn’t wait too long, as eventually the sculptures will be hidden from view as the willow stakes take root and grow into larger trees. The fact that those structures will one day be nearly invisible doesn’t bother the artists. “They are intended to give advantage to the natural system”, explains McCormick, “and after a period of time, as the restoration process is established, the artists’ presence is less and less apparent”.

Sculpture on the Truckee River

renewablematter 05. 2015

Focus Waste

TOWARDS A CRACKDOWN on Food Waste by Carlo Pesso

Carlo Pesso, Study Centre Edizioni Ambiente.

According to FAO, one-third of global food production goes wasted and contributes an astounding 7% of GHG emissions. Besides being unethical – 795 milllion people hardly eat enough to stay healthy – this means squandering 360 million euro worth of food every year, which is equivalent to twice the GDP of Greece. How Germany and France are tackling food waste reduction. “The problem at this point is that there is a problem.” – Captain Obvious1

Policy

1. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Captain_Obvious. 2. www.nomorefood towaste.nl. 3. Fao (2011), Global Food Losses and Food Waste; www.fao.org/docrep/014/ mb060e/mb060e00.pdf. Fao (2013), Food Wastage Footprint: Impact on Natural Resources; www.fao.org/docrep/018/ i3347e/i3347e.pdf. 4. WRAP, Strategies to achieve economic and environmental gains by reducing food waste, 2015, report/wp-content/ uploads/2015/02/ WRAP-NCE_Economicenvironmental-gainsfood-waste.pdf. 5. Fr.wikipedia.org/ wiki/Programme_ europ%C3%A9en_d% 27aide_aux_ plus_d%C3%A9munis. 6. www.zugutfuerdie tonne.de/service/english/ video. 7. www.zugutfuerdie tonne.de. 8. Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), German National Research Strategy – Bioeconomy 2030, Our route towards a biobased economy, 2011, www.bmbf.de/ pub/Natinal_ Research_Strategy_ BioEconomy_2030.pdf.

2012 stands as a turning point. The Zero Hunger Challenge launched by the Secretary-General of the United Nations (UN) Ban Ki-Moon at the UN Conference on Sustainable Development Rio+20 prepared the ground for the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) – the international organisation that was mandated to pursue food waste avoidance since its inception in 1945 – and a number of partners to establish the “Global Initiative on Food Loss and Waste Reduction”. Accordingly, as recently as June 16-19, 2015, the Dutch government convened the “No more food to waste” international conference aimed at fostering “global action to stop food losses and food waste”. The conference resulted in a comprehensive wish list detailing what ought to be done.2 In many occurrences, citizens perceive international and multilateral organisations to be like elephants. They are big, clumsy, probably powerful, sometimes loud, and are best when kept at a distance. It is not always clear how much good they can do. However, elephants are peculiar animals because, through sensors placed within their feet, they can feel the tremors caused by other animals and elephants from very long distance. This is why they can feel the coming of earthquakes long before other species. This is exactly what the conference did. It took a broad feel at what is happening down on earth. At Ground Level By all accounts, curbing food waste means mitigating dramatic social and environmental issues. While the World Food Programme (WFP) estimates that 795 million people, i.e. 1/9 of the world population, “do not have enough food to lead a healthy active life”,3 FAO evaluates that roughly one-third of all food produced in the world ends up as waste. The corresponding carbon footprint is equivalent to a very impressive 7% of Green House Gas (GHG) emissions.4 The economic worth of such waste is currently valued at 360 billion euros/ year and is expected to reach 540 billion euros per year within the next 15 years. To put it in another way, on a yearly basis, waste food is worth, approximately twice the Greek GDP (185 billion euros/year; globally ranking 43rd and 53rd according to PPPs) and more than the entire Greek debt (320 billion euros). Incidentally, according to Eurostat, in 2014, 44% of Greeks were living below the poverty line. Given this context and the 2008 economic

downturn, which is causing an intense increase in poverty right across Europe, grass roots organisations were first to spur into action. National governments and EU institutions soon followed suit. Indeed, the role of charities and voluntary of organisations, starting back in 1985 with the initiative Restos du Cœur carried through by French comic and presidential candidate Coluche and the creation of the Fédération européenne des banques alimentaires in 1986, had already led to significant results such as the EU funded Most Deprived Persons programme.5 However, the sheer dimension of the issue suggested putting new actions on the drawing board. Prodding Within EU Member Countries: the Case of Germany In March 2012, the University of Stuttgart established that German citizens waste 82 kg of food/per person/per year, with private households discarding a total of 6.7 million tons of food per year, equivalent to about 230 euros/person. Meanwhile the Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture (BMEL) embarked in the initiative “To good for the bin!” aimed at reducing food waste through a joint effort along the entire value chain. The initiative consists in a public information campaign based on video messages,6 a dedicated website7 that offers background information and useful tips for everyday life, and an app “Zu gut für die Tonne” which enables to prepare 400 delicious meals from leftovers with the help of celebrity mentor chefs. Furthermore, BMEL, Slow Food Deutschland e.V. and the Bundesverband Deutsche Tafel organise nationwide action days against food waste under the title “Wir retten Lebensmittel!” (“We save Food!”). On such days, discarded food is collected from producers and supermarkets. Then it is carefully prepared to become a tasty “best leftover menu” consumed by citizens in the shape of a street banquet. A survey conducted by the Consumer Research Association GfK on behalf of the Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture in October 2014 measured the results of the campaign. Apart from establishing that one out of two German citizens were aware of the campaign, according to the survey 58% of respondents now pay more attention to what they buy to avoid generating waste, 46% intend using more of their leftover food, and 36% pay greater attention to correct storage practices. From an industrial perspective, the German National Research Strategy – Bioeconomy 2030, Our RouteTowards a Biobased Economy,8 indicates

renewablematter 05. 2015

The Waste Makers, Vance Packard, Pelican Book, 1960

11. Ministère de l’Écologie, du Développement durable et de l’Énergie, Programme national de prévention des déchets 2014-2020, www.developpementdurable.gouv.fr/IMG/ pdf/Programme_ national_prevention_ dechets_2014-2020.pdf.

9. Ministère de l’Écologie, du Développement durable, des Transports et du Logement, Rapport intermédiaire de l’étude relative au gaspillage alimentaire, 2011, www.developpementdurable.gouv.fr/ IMG/Rapport%20 interm%C3%A9diaire_ VF-1.pdf.

10. Ministère de l’Écologie, du Développement durable et de l’Énergie, Réduction du gaspillage alimentaire. État des lieux et pistes d’action, november 2012, www.developpementdurable.gouv.fr/IMG/pdf/ Rapport_final_gaspillage_ alimentaire_nov2012.pdf

12. “Stop au gâchis alimentaire en France!”; www.change.org/p/stopau-g%C3%A2chis alimentaire-en-france.

that most issues raised by waste food generation shall be overcome through the advent of the bio-economy. More specifically, food and organic wastes will become feedstock for the new booming bio-industry. Although there is no detailed masterplan to that effect, there are many signs that this is indeed the path to the future. Although, as already happens for primary food production used as a source of energy, it will certainly continue to raise considerable public debate. The French Touch France took an altogether different tack. According to the French Ministry of the environment,9 food waste has doubled since 1974 and today French citizens waste 20 kilograms of food per person per year. Out of these 20 kilograms, 7 consist of unpackaged yet-to-be-consumed goods. Altogether, between 100 euros and 160 euros per citizen and per year go to the garbage can and, apart from other impacts, effectively deplete household income by a total of 12 to 20 billion euros. In 2010, the French National Waste Council installed a working group on waste prevention to suggest possible actions to curb food waste.10 The Council came up with a number of recommendations aimed at linking the national waste prevention strategy with the national food program, specifically comprising the: •• implementation of legislation clarifying the responsibilities of entities wishing to donate food and of entities receiving donated foodstuffs; •• reinforcement of specialized training for professional cooks;

•• inclusion of food waste as a subject within school and high-school curricular programs; •• clarification of existing legislation and rules with the Group dealing with catering and nutrition markets; •• clarification of existing legislation and rules in relation to product consumption limit dates and deadlines for preferred use of product; •• creation of a club of major players within the food sector; •• development of a set of guidelines of good practice taking into account all stages of the food chain; •• establishment of a series of voluntary agreements; •• continued public communication and awareness raising campaigns. By 2013, the Ministry of Agriculture established a follow-up National Anti-food-waste agreement, based on 11 different measures which emerged from the commitment of stakeholders of the entire food chain (farmers, wholesale markets, agribusiness, retail, catering and commercial restaurants, local authorities). In August 2014, the Ministry of Ecology joined the effort through the national waste prevention program for the 2014-2010 period.11 Among other objectives, it aims for a 50% reduction of food wastes by 2025 through the implementation of six specific actions, namely: •• reinforcing the battle against waste generation in the catering industry; •• examining the link between food products and packaging; •• developing the use of the take-away bag (better known as “doggy bag”); •• promoting actions against food waste at territorial level; •• monitoring progress of regulations affecting large biowaste producers vis-à-vis the issue of food waste; •• establish a club of major players to deal with food waste. Of the two European examples dealing with food waste reduction, the incremental approach adopted by French authorities provides the most mature and comprehensive method to manage the complex dimensions of food waste. This, of course, without taking into account another trait of French policymaking: the predilection for sudden leap forwards known as Jacobinism. A disruptive Local Councillor Last May, Arash Derambarsh made national and international headlines. Mr. Derambarsh, a 35 year old municipal councillor for the “Divers Droit” (diverse right) in the suburb of Courbevoie, north-west of Paris, first promoted an online petition to stop food wastage.12 It took him only four months to gather over 200,000 signatures and gain sudden international visibility. By May 21st, the National Assembly

Policy

Keeping to the Fast Track All in all, it looks like the elephant, mentioned earlier on, has been prodded into action. Although it is considerably slow to kick-start, once it starts moving, it is faster than most humans and much less likely to come to an abrupt halt. A leap in cracking down food waste, such as that promoted by the French municipal councillor, does however raise a number of issues. Food distributors and charitable organisations18 alike have been quick in bringing these forward.

13. The Guardian, “France to force big supermarkets to give unsold food to charities”, 22 May 2015, www.theguardian.com/ world/2015/may/22/ france-to-force-bigsupermarkets-to-giveaway-unsold-food-tocharity. 14. “Stop food waste in Europe#StopFoodWaste”; www.change.org/p/ frans-timmermans-stopfood-waste-in-europestopfoodwaste. 15. Le Figaro, “Gaspillage: l’obligation des dons des invendus alimentaires soumise au parlement européen”, 8 Juillet 2015, www.lefigaro.fr/ conso/2015/07/07/0500720150707ARTFIG00005gaspillage-l-obligationdes-dons-des-invendusalimentaires-soumise-auparlement-europeen.php. 16. Parlement Européen Actualité, Économie circulaire: un changement systémique face à la rareté des ressources, 9 Juillet 2015, tinyurl.com/q9666vd. 17. The Guardian, “Man who forced French supermarkets to donate food wants to take law global”, 25 May 2015, www.theguardian.com/ world/2015/may/25/ french-supermarketsdonate-food-wasteglobal-law-campaign.

18. Libération, “La loi sur le gaspillage alimentaire, une fausse bonne idée?”, 22 Mai 2015, tinyurl.com/mh9d5ue; Le Figaro, “Les députés votent l’interdiction de jeter les invendus alimentaires,” 22 Mai 2015, tinyurl.com/ m93ccrp.

Don’t waste bread!, Clarke & Sherwell Ltd - Ministry of Food, 1914–1919

The most serious ones concern the ability to maintain the quality of donated goods. For instance: how should supermarkets stock food for donation and at what cost? In addition, and more importantly, how can charitable organisations safely stock and distribute donated goods? Introducing the necessary logistic infrastructure, i.e. transportation and refrigeration rooms, generates very considerable costs. How shall these costs be covered? Extended (or Shared) Producer Responsibility (EPR) already appears as a very promising way forward. Renewable Matter magazine will continue to report the ongoing debate on the possible application of EPR to achieve the food wastage clamp down as much as on the promising innovations that are in the works of the bio-economy.

Lick the platter clean. Don’t waste food, World War II Posters, 1942 - 1945, National Archives at College Park

unanimously adopted three amendments within the law on energy transition. To begin with, food distributors are now obliged to prevent any wastage of edible food. Hence, supermarkets may no longer contaminate unsold goods approaching best-before dates with bleach to make them inappropriate for human consumption. This common practice, mostly dictated by risk and pest management priorities, had outraged Mr. Derambarsh, an activist food collector in his hometown. If it is impossible for the supermarket to avoid potential wastage, other amendments make it mandatory to donate excess goods to charities and other registered organisations. If that solution is not feasible, excess food becomes either animal feedstock or compost for agriculture and gardening, or, at a last resort, it is destined to energy recovery. As of July 2016, large supermarkets in France – those that are 400 square meters or larger – will face fines of up to €75,000 or two years in jail if they fail to comply13 through the definition of specific agreements with registered charitable organisations. After reaching cross-party consensus in France, Mr. Derambarsh aims for the adoption of similar rules at EU level, and possibly, at global level. His method is similar to that adopted in France with much success. An online petition, distributed through change.org in six different languages (including Belgian!), has already been signed by 550.000 EU citizens.14 The aim is to reach 1,000,000 signatures. In parallel, on July 9, 2015 an amendment to the Circular Economy package, was adopted by 45 votes against 19 by the EU Parliament’s Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety15 and then approved by the plenary session of Parliament by 394 votes against 197 and 82 abstentions16 (as we write, the final text is not yet available). Sill looking ahead, in an interview to The Guardian,17 Mr. Derambarsh unveiled his intention to table the issue – via the campaign group ONE, founded by U2 singer Bono – when the United Nations discusses its Millennium Development Goals to end poverty in September 2015. Later he will take the issue before the G20 economic summit in Turkey in November and the COP21 environment conference in Paris in December.

renewablematter 05. 2015

Focus Waste by Antonio Cianciullo

STOP Wasting Food! Stop food waste. This is the common theme of the various Charters drawn up during Expo 2015. It is impossible not to be sympathetic with such plea. But a mere moral denunciation is not enough. It would be better to focus more clearly on the mechanisms causing this squandering of resources; consumption habits that force us to discard a lot of food which is still good from a nutritional point of view, but imperfect from an aesthetic viewpoint; the economic systems pushing us to overuse chemistry causing major environmental and health problems. We should put forward an alternative choice based on going back to the principle of matter circularity applied by nature. But this topic has largely been overlooked in the debates held during Expo and about Expo. The main documents mentioned herewith contain elements going in this direction. We thought it would be interesting to highlight them.

Manifesto of the Green Economy on Agri-Food for Expo 2015 Promoted by •• Italian National Council for the Green Economy

Document available online tinyurl.com/poh8wmy

“Spreading Eco Innovation and Good Practices”

The green economy aims reducing and using resources in an efficient and rational way, according to a circular economy model. This model is also valid for renewable productions, such as agri-food, that are not unlimited and bear environmental and economic costs. Notwithstanding the remarkable progress in agricultural productivity, it would be irresponsible not to stop the waste of food and agricultural resources; in particular taking into consideration the continuous increase in world population and food consumption, as well as the factors of pressure and risks for the agricultural sector. Paradoxically, while part of the world population continues to suffer from hunger and malnutrition, another significant part is affected by obesity and wastes a large amount of food. To fight food

waste, better information is necessary, as well as a sounder education on nutrition. More conscious and sober lifestyle and food consumption attitudes are required. It is also vital to apply a circular economy model to food chains, meant to actively prevent and minimise waste and losses in all steps: production, processing, packaging, storage, transport and distribution, all the waydown to final consumption. It is essential, in particular, to disseminate best practices and the best available techniques for the correct and sustainable use of all the by-products and derivatives from agricultural food production, and to recycle and recover all the remaining waste. […] Environmental pressure on land is exacerbated by agro-industrial practices which are set on short-term and low-cost market strategies, pursue low quality productions, make use of harmful substances, degrade land and water resources and are incapable of recognising the economic values of natural capital and ecosystem services. Those practices, already called into question among agriculture experts, can eventually be overcome by promoting an agri-food green economy policy based on sustainable quality production – a true driving force of local cultures and economies – and by using media and communication to enhance awareness

Policy of its positive effects on environment, employment and general well-being. It is necessary to focus on well-grown land – without the open field use of genetically modified organisms (GMO) – and best practices backed up by a good level of know-how and information, and by a greater contribution from research and eco-innovation: best practices

on organic farming, biodiversity, eco-sustainable quality production chains, restoration and conservation of plant and animal species, local products, land and cultural heritage. […]

Charter of Milan Promoted by •• Italian Ministry of Agricultural, Food and Forestry Policies •• Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation •• Italian Ministry of the Environment, Land and Sea Protection •• Italian Ministry of Health •• UNO – United Nations Organization •• FAO – United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization •• Chairman of the Steering Committee of the Commissioners of Participating Countries at Expo Milan 2015 •• Italian Pavillion

Document available online tinyurl.com/pbfzb2f

•• •• •• •• •• •• ••

Workshop Expo – Giangiacomo Feltrinelli Foundation WE – Women for Expo Feeding Knowledge Observatory on Food Waste – University of Bologna Triulza Foundation Barilla Centre for Food and Nutrition Universities’ Scientific Committee for EXPO 2015 – Municipality of Milan

“Managing Resources Equitably” […] We believe that •• everyone has the right to have access to a sufficient quantity of safe, healthy and nutritious food, that satisfies life-long personal nutritional requirements and enables them to lead an active life; •• food has a strong social and cultural value, and should never be used as an instrument of political or economic pressure; •• the planet’s resources should be managed in an equitable, rational and efficient manner, so that they are not excessively exploited or used to benefit some people at the expense of others; •• access to sources of clean energy is a universal right, for present and future generations; •• investment in natural resources, particularly in land, should be regulated, so as to ensure and maintain access to these resources for local communities, as well as access to their sustainable use; •• sound management of water resources, namely management that takes account

of the relationship between water, food and energy, is fundamental to ensure the right to food for all; •• agriculture is fundamental, not just for food production, but also for landscape design, environmental and territorial protection and conserving biodiversity. We consider it unacceptable that •• there are unjustifiable inequalities in the possibilities, capabilities and opportunities of individuals and peoples; •• there is still no universal recognition for the fundamental role of women, especially in agricultural production and nutrition; •• some 800 million people suffer chronic hunger, more than two billion people are malnourished or suffer deficiencies in vitamins and minerals; nearly two billion people are overweight or suffer from obesity; 160 million children suffer from malnutrition and stunted growth; •• each year, 1.3 billion tonnes of food produced for human consumption is wasted or lost in the food supply chain; •• more than 5 million hectares of forest disappear each year, resulting in grave damage to biodiversity and local communities, and serious impact on the climate; •• marine resources are excessively exploited: more than 30% of what is commercially fished is exploited beyond any capacity for regeneration; •• natural resources, including land, are used with disregard to the needs and expectations of local communities; •• energy poverty continues, specifically in the form of lack of or inadequate access to efficient energy services and cooking facilities that are affordable, and that neither pollute nor damage health.

renewablematter 05. 2015

Charter of Bologna against Food Waste Promoted by •• Italian Ministry of the Environment, Land and Sea Protection •• Department of Agri-Food Science and Technologies of the University of Bologna •• Technical and Scientific Office of the National Prevention Plan for Food Waste

Document available online tinyurl.com/pzrgy9y

“Introducing Measurable Targets” […] Whereas •• Approximately one-third of all food produced for human consumption is lost or wasted at global level which amounts to about 1.3 billion tons per year; •• At the same time more than 800 million of people around the world are still chronically undernourished and roughly 1 billion people do not have adequate access to drinking water; [...] •• According to FAO the food we waste every year on a global scale requires roughly 250.000 billion litres of water, 1.4 billion hectares of land and is responsible for 3.3 billion tones of carbon dioxide emitted in vain into the atmosphere; •• The economic costs of this food wastage are substantial and amount to about USD 1 trillion each year. However, the hidden costs of food wastage extend much further; •• The demand for food is expected to increase by over 60 percent over the next 40 years, as the global population reaches over 9 billion and as increased income drives dietary pattern changes towards more livestock products. The agriculture sectors (including forestry and fisheries) are also required to produce more non-food products, especially for energy (liquid biofuels, wood) and feed. •• At the same time, the resource base of the agriculture sector is threatened by environment degradation, climate change, loss of biodiversity and ecosystem services and, particularly in certain areas, urbanization and industrial use.

Acknowledged that •• International competition for access to water, energy, land and food will lead more and more to intergeneration tensions and/or conflicts. •• For future population scenarios, food wastage mitigation could play a crucial role both in reducing agriculture’s environmental footprint and assuring food availability while respecting critical planetary boundaries. •• Reducing food losses and waste is a global challenge; a global coordination is needed to join efforts and actively tackle the problem at international level with appropriate measures; We, the governments, pledge ourselves to 1. Include the problem of food losses and waste (FLW) within the international environmental agenda; 2. Adopt a common, legal and clear definition of FLW and a common metrics to quantify it, according to the outcomes of the main international projects on the issue; 3. Convene an inclusive process to identify hotspots, causes of losses and waste at different levels, potential solutions and levels of intervention. This requires identifying the actors who will directly implement solutions, individually or collectively, identify the costs they will bear, as well as potential benefits and beneficiaries. It also requires identifying constraints (including systemic constraints) and how they would be addressed (infrastructure, technologies, changes of organization in the food chain/system, capacity building, policies and institutions); [...] 6. Set measurable National FLW reduction targets along the food supply chain; [...]

Policy

Terra Viva Promoted by •• Navdanya International

Document available online tinyurl.com/njktfz5

“Biological Agriculture Can Save the Climate”

The new agriculture that the world needs integrates several elements of peasant agriculture and ages-old farming practices with the latest knowledge from ecological sciences. Agroecology and regenerative agriculture is today emerging across the world as an alternative to industrial agriculture. It radically differs from the dominant type of industrial agriculture based on fossil fuels and chemicals which is extractive in two ways: it is based on oil and its result is the robbing of fertility from the soil. The new agriculture is strongly grounded on healthy and living soils. The fertility of the soil is well-cared-for and helps considerably in reducing the dependency on fossil fuels. It is also an ecologically intensive and productive agriculture. The intensity of production is not built on an elevated use of external inputs but is rooted instead on diversity, multiple cropping, rotation, mulching and well coordinated agronomic cycles that combine soils, crops and animals into a balanced whole. The making of good manure is an essential ingredient, just as breeding and selection help to adjust plants and animals to local conditions, thus securing an optimal fit of all resources. [...] The new agriculture is basically selfprovisioning. The main resources needed for production are produced and reproduced within the farm itself or at the level of the rural community. This applies especially for energy. Instead of being a net importer of energy, the new agriculture produces energy. It also helps

to cool the planet. Instead of contributing to the emission of greenhouse gases (as previously said, some 25% of all greenhouse gases on the globe comes from industrial agriculture), it helps to sequestrate carbon. Enriching soils and strengthening soil biology help to fix carbon dioxide and simultaneously reduce the need for chemical fertilizers. [...] Research across the world has shown that organic farming increases carbon content of soil, making the soil the biggest carbon sink and the biggest water reservoir. With average potential of removing 2 tonnes of carbon dioxide per hectare every year, organic farming has the potential of sequestering 10 Gigatons of carbon dioxide, which is equivalent to the amount needed to be removed from the atmosphere to keep atmospheric carbon below 350 parts per million, and average temperature increase at 2 degrees centrigade. [...] At the global level, the new agriculture, based on intensification of local recycling of nutrients through crop-livestock integration locally represents an end to some of the major imbalances that currently characterize world agriculture. In this respect an example is the large extraction of nutrients from the soils of Argentina, or from the Cerrado in Brazil for growing soybeans, that are then exported to Europe as animal feed for factory farms where there is an overproduction of manure that pollutes the land, water and air. Another major imbalance is in the use of fertile arable lands for the production of grains to feed cattle (located in enormous feed lots), while at the same time large grassland areas in hills and mountains lay idle. Also, 70% of the poor of this world are rural people who are linked, in one way or another, to agricultural activities. In stark contrast with this massive rural poverty there is the huge wealth accumulated in large food empires. Finally, another imbalance is the unequal distribution of food production over different countries and different regions.

renewablematter 05. 2015

Focus Waste

Photo by Evan Amos

by Fabio De Menna and Matteo Vittuari

Fabio De Menna has a research doctorate in Diversity Management and Governance at Università di Bologna. He is a research grantee at Dipartimento di scienze e tecnologie agroalimentari at Università di Bologna, where he is involved in Life-Cycle Analysis (LCA) of food farming systems and bioenergy. Matteo Vittuari has a doctorate in International Cooperation and Sustainable Development Policies at Università di Bologna. He is a researcher at Dipartimento di scienze e tecnologie agroalimentari at Università di Bologna, where he works on sustainability in agricultural and rural policies, bioenergy and food squandering.

Unsustainability TRAP Today the food farming system has become a huge extractive technological model. It is poorly efficient too, and waste and squandering represent a serious environmental issue entailing severe economic and social consequences. In Italy, in the farming phase, 13 million tonnes of waste are generated and we must add waste and squandering from food processing industry, 3.7 million tonnes coming from vegetable processing and 9.9 million tonnes from animalbased productions. We need to rethink our production systems reassessing how, how much and from what we must produce. According to Ellen MacArthur Foundation, an economic system can be defined as circular when it is able to self-replenish stocks of human, technological, social and natural capital. This regenerative ability is based on the fundamental distinction between organic matter flows that can be

reintegrated into the biosphere and flows of technical matter that must indeed be planned, starting from resource extraction, to optimizing its reuse, fixing, restoration and recycling. The shift from the linear to the circular model should grant important economic cascading

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in several sectors, like the design of products and services, savings in waste management, the new entrepreneurship originating from their cascading reuse. In Europe alone savings for € 600 billion are expected from waste management, while the introduction of measures to increase resources productivity could lead to an increment of 1% of GDP and the creation of 2 million new jobs within 2030. In the transition to circular economy, food farming systems, given the organic nature of agricultural products and their being the interface between biosphere and technosphere, could play a key role. In history, industrialization and globalization have led to a growing use of fossil resources, making food production less and less sustainable. There are countless examples: chemical fertilizing and consequent emissions,

Figure 1 | Wastage in the Italian food farming sector (million tonnes), 2011

Agriculture

Vegetable Crops

2.2

Arboreal Crops

Processing

9.9

Vegetable Production

3.7

Animal Production

Source: Author processing based on data by Sodano and Garuti 2014; Gruppo 2013, 2009; ENEA 2011. All data refer to 2011, except data on arboreal cultivations (generic esteems).

water consume and lowering of aquifers level, the loss of soil and biodiversity etc. In an economic system based on a linear growth and increasing ecosystem exploitation model, the food farming system has lost his ability to mimic ecosystems becoming a huge extractive technological model and, most of all, very poorly efficient. Production, management and, most of all, food waste and squandering have long been a serious environmental issue with severe economic and social consequences. Circular economy represents an opportunity to invest in prevention and reuse obtaining more products and services, besides food, from the same amount of extracted resources. Agricultural Production and Processing: Opportunities to Reuse and Valorize the Wastage Yet the first two segments of food farming sector, agriculture and processing, have a high percentage of wastage and squandering. In the agricultural phase, according to recent esteems by CRPA (Centro richerche produzioni animali) relating to year 2011 (Sodano and Garuti, 2014), availability in Italy of vegetables leftovers amounts to 13 million tonnes of dry matter, and at least 6 of them are available for valorization. The annual availability of leftovers from arboreal farming is assessed as 900,000 tons from fruit leftovers, 600,000 tons from shoots (vine branches) and 700,000 tons from olive farming (Bonari and others, 2009; ENEA, 2011) (see figure 1). Collecting and managing these leftovers represent a significant cost in farms balance sheets, often with a negative costs/benefits ratio. So, despite a significant share of leftovers is already used in bioenergy and feed, they are in best cases buried to provide organic matter to soil, or left on the ground and burned. On the contrary, in a circular economic system extraction of matter and energy from these materials could also generate economic benefits for farmers through the creation of surplus value in secondary production chains. Beyond these leftovers, an equally relevant amount of primary production is wasted for economic reasons or to conform to aestheticcommercial standards (criteria relating to product shape, size, and colour). A squandering of 3% of total production, although decreasing: from 1.7 million tonnes in 2009 to about 1.5 million tons in 2011. The problems and the amount of product on the field present significant differences between different crops, with higher percentages for greenhouse vegetables farming (12.53%), legumes and potatoes (5.21%) and olives (4.85%) (Segrè, Falasconi 2011). However,

renewablematter 05. 2015 Define to Intervene Food squandering FAO definition (FAO 2013): FAO identifies food squandering as every edible matter that, instead of being consumed by humans, is disposed of, lost, degraded or consumed by parasites in every phase of food farming chain. In 2011, in a survey commissioned to Swedish Institute for Food and Biotechnology (SIK) (FAO, 2011) a distinction is proposed between food losses and squandering. Food losses happen in first phases of food farming chain (cultivation, harvesting, processing), while food squandering happens in last phases (delivery, retail and consumption). Definition by Project FP7 Fusions (Östergren K. and others, 2014): it can be considered “food waste” every food, inedible parts of food, removed from the food farming chain to be recovered or disposed of (including parts used in composting, buried or unharvested products, used for anaerobic digestion, bioenergy production, cogeneration, incineration, disposal in drainage, landfills and sea). By-Product Italian legislation, together with the definition of waste, also identifies conditions for not defining a matter or an object as waste, introducing the concept of by-product, described in this way in art. 183 bis of Legislative Decree 152/2006:

In a circular economic system extraction of matter and energy from these materials could also generate economic benefits for farmers through the creation of surplus value in secondary production chains.

“It is a by-product and not waste in accordance with the art. 183, par. 1, let. a), the matter or object fulfilling these conditions: a) the matter or the object originates from a production process, being an integral part of it, and whose primary purpose is not the production of such matter or object; b) it is certain that the matter or object will be used, during the same or a next production or usage process, by the producer or by third parties; c) the matter or object can be directly used without any further processing outside normal industrial process; d) further usage is legal, meaning that the matter or object fulfils, for specific usage, all related requirements about products and protection of health and environment and will not lead to overall negative impacts on environment or human health”. Waste Italian legislation, at art. 183 of Legislative Decree 152/2006 and next modifications: it is defined as waste, according to indications in community legislation 98/2008/CE, any matter or object whose owner does, decides or is obliged to dispose.

the size of this squandering becomes more evident considering all the resources used in production processes too. Analysing only the energetic aspect, it is possible to esteem the loss of energy from squandering in agricultural phase in about 98 Ktep (0,098 Mtep), this equals the annual thermal energy consumption of 400,000 high energy efficiency households each of a 100 square metres (Segrè, Vittuari 2012). In this case too, a circularly reshaped economy would lead to limit – structurally – the losses of organic (food) and technological (resources) flows related to food squandering. Prevention and recovery with nutritional purposes represent indeed the best method for preserving the value of produced food. There is Continuous Squandering also in Food Farming Industry Leftovers and squandering are also generated by food industry. At a national level leftovers amount to about 3.7 million tonnes coming from vegetables processing and 9.9 million tonnes from animal based production (Sodano, Garuti, 2014). If, on the one hand, industrial processes allow a longer conservation (through freezing

or canning), on the other hand they produce unavoidable waste and by-products, usually proportional to the number of processes and services embedded in end product (for instance fried and frozen potatoes) (Segrè, Vittuari 2012). In this segment too there are big differences between different categories of processed product. According to a survey made by CRPA in Emilia Romagna (Rossi, Piccinini 2007), the percentages of raw material leftovers range from 2% (fruit and vegetables for fresh use) and 10% (frozen vegetables) only in the preparation phase, and from 2.5-3.7% (tomatoes) to 65-68% (sweetcorn) in the processing phase. In animal based productions, the bovine sector has the highest squandering rate, up to 33-35% of live weight. Many companies have already implemented systems and technologies for leftovers recovery. Tomato skins, leftovers from confectionery industry, bread industry and potato processing, can all be used, both in animal feed sector and in biogas production. Nevertheless, in a cascading system, there are alternative uses enabling a further increase in efficiency and a bigger surplus value by obtaining basic molecules for

Policy Bibliography •• Bonari E., R. Jodice. S. Masini (a cura di), L’Impresa agroenergetica – Ruolo e prospettive nello scenario “2 volte 20 per il 2020”, Quaderni, Edizioni Tellus 2009. •• Campiotti C., C. Viola, M. Scoccianti, G. Giagancovo, G. Lucerti (Enea, Unità tecnica efficienza energetica, servizio agricoltura, Centro ricerche Casaccia,

Roma); Alonzo G. (Ministero delle politiche agricole alimentari e forestali), Le filiere del sistema agricolo per energia ed efficienza energetica, 2011. •• FAO, Global food losses and food waste – Extent, causes and prevention, Rome, 2011. •• Östergren K., J. Gustavsson, H. Bos-Brouwers,

pharmaceutical, food and chemical industry. For instance, from potato skins and starch leftovers we can produce bioplastic and obtain biogas by processing them. Similarly, from coffee toasting leftovers we can obtain a silvery film (silver skin) that – if opportunely processed – can be a source of precious nutrients, cellulose and energy. Beyond by-products, processing is anyway characterized by a relevant amount of food squandering. These losses are about 1.8 million tonnes, most of which are in beverage, dairy, and fruit and vegetables processing industries (Segrè, Falasconi 2011). Totally this squandering amounts to 2.6% of final product and entails an esteemed loss of energy of 80 Ktep (0,08 Mtep), corresponding to annual thermal energy consumption of 330,000 high energy efficiency households, each of a 100 square metres (Segrè, Vittuari 2012). Therefore as in agriculture prevention of food losses during processing would be an effective strategy also in limiting inefficiencies in terms of technologic resources consumption.

T. Timmermans, O. Hansen, H. Møller, G. Anderson, C. O’Connor, H. Soethoudt, T. Quested, S. Easteal, A. Politano, C. Bellettato, M. Canali, L. Falasconi, S. Gaiani, M. Vittuari, F. Schneider, G. Moates, K. Waldron, B. Redlingshöfer, FUSIONS – Definitional Framework for Food Waste, 2014 •• Rossi L., S. Piccinini,

“Sottoprodotti agroindustriali, un potenziale da sfruttare”, L’Informatore Agrario, 34/2007, pp. 67-70, 2007. •• Segrè A., L. Falasconi, Libro nero dello spreco in Italia: il cibo, Edizioni Ambiente, Milano 2011. •• Segrè A., M. Vittuari, Libro verde dello spreco in Italia: l’energia, Edizioni Ambiente, Milano 2012. •• Sodano M., M. Garuti

M., “Il valore dei sottoprodotti agricoli e agroindustriali”, Agricoltura – Mensile della regione Emilia Romagna, 12, dicembre 2014. •• Ellen MacArthur Foundation: ellenmacarthur foundation.org •• EU Circular economy: ec.europa.eu/ environment/circulareconomy/index_en.htm

How to Shift to More Circular and Productive Systems Thus overriding linear development limits in favour of a circular system without natural resources squandering represents a big opportunity to rethink the growth-development dichotomy. Shifting to a circular economy means rethinking whole productive systems, reassessing how, how much and from what we must produce. The shift to more circular and thus more efficient, production systems should, indeed, enable to produce better and less, because with the same amount of used resource it’s possible to obtain more products and services. Prevention, recovery and reuse of food leftovers, for instance in bio refineries integrated in the area and with the aim to produce energy, bioplastic and chemicals or nutrients from renewable sources, are fundamental landmarks towards productive processes looking at the opportunity of a “second life” before thinking about life-end and disposal of used materials (resources).

A circularly reshaped economy would lead to limit – structurally – the losses of organic (food) and technological (resources) flows related to food squandering. Prevention and recovery with nutritional purposes represent indeed the best method for preserving the value of produced food.

renewablematter 05. 2015

Focus Waste

BIOMASS: Balance is the Secret by Aldo Femia

Most of residual biomass – coming from agricultural and forestry activities, from zootechnics and organic waste – doesn’t go back to soil, it goes to landfills in instead. So, in terms of nutrients, soils are depleted. To close the cycle and reduce squandering the role of composting and energy recovery through anaerobic digestion is fundamental.

Aldo Femia is first researcher at ISTAT (Istituto nazionale di statistica, National Institute of Statistics). He is an expert in satellite accounting, and particularly of environmental accounting in physical terms and he worked at Wuppertal Institut Für Klima Umwelt Energie and at OECD.

An ideal circular economy is one that, beyond circulating as much as possible materials in the community before giving them back to nature, gives them back paying attention to replenish natural stocks where they have been undermined. Therefore creating a condition of equilibrium between natural materials input and output where the repetition of starting conditions secures – theoretically to infinity – the reproducibility of the economic process. The essential renewability condition about biomass cycles is the conservation of balance in nutrients stocks and in the composition of topsoil, especially for the organic component. The soil, indeed, provides nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium and other chemicals to the plants, that get the other elements they need from water and the atmosphere (carbon, hydrogen

Policy

over-offset, with negative consequences on water quality). But in this way the physical cost of this real nutrients squandering is only transferred somewhere else, due to matter and energy needed for producing synthetic fertilizers and to atmospheric emissions of chemical compounds. So the design of usage chains must be part of

©Gesina Roters, Dutch postal stamps on the theme of recycling and energy savings, 2011

and oxygen). Yes, there’s no guarantee that human consumption model will maintain a balance between flows and right composition of stocks, but certainly if part of the biomass ending up in landfills, the nutrients in it are not given back to the soil where come from. These shortages can be – and indeed are – locally offset with mineral and synthetic inputs (in fact,

renewablematter 05. 2015 a global system and they must tend to close cycles and reduce squandering about biomass in general and the leftover part in particular, favouring the small scale and local level to have a accounting of environmental costs of cropping and transportation. Biomass from agricultural and forestry practices, from zootechnics, organic waste from farms and the wood-paper chain and the organic part of municipal solid waste are the core of two chains tending to close cycles: composting and energy recovery through anaerobic digestion. These allow to close the nutrients cycle while maintaining the fertility of soil, using compost and digested material as soil inputs while improving the carbon exchange balance with the atmosphere.

The chains [...] of composting and energy recovery through anaerobic digestion allow to close the nutrients cycle while maintaining the fertility of soil, using compost and digested material as soil inputs while improving the carbon exchange balance with the atmosphere.

Some numbers can help us figure out an overall picture. We have two apparently very different assessments about the entity of residual biomass from primary activities. ISPRA (Istituto Superiore per la Protezione e la Ricerca Ambientale/The Institute for Environmental Protection and Research), in 2006 evaluated them as 18 Mt for Italy, but considering only the main crops and expressing data as “dry material”. The other one is the most complete assessment and is expressed in weight “as is”, provided by SERI (Sustainable Europe Research Institute) in Vienna: about 76 Mt (year 2011). Indeed, the methodological differences in these two assessments can be dramatically reduced actualizing them, spreading them to all crops and expressing them in terms of weight “as is”. In this way we reach at least 60 Mt. The residual difference is likely due to inclusion in SERI’s assessment of parts of plants not included in ISPRA’s one (e.g. roots, woody plants ending

their life-cycle) and to the use of specific coefficients for Italian cultivar. In addition, ISPRA’s study – in order to establish the potential for energy recovery from these and other combustible and residual biomasses – highlights other topics that must be considered: the periodicity of availability for these materials, the pulverized distribution with related costs for collection and transportation. Concluding that “any technicaleconomic feasibility evaluation for their recovery must be done at the local level”. Finally, ISPRA points out, 43% of dry matter and one third of actual weight is already being used; and meanwhile this share has probably grown. We need to point out that quantity esteem and knowing the actual destination of crops and pruning waste could be made, for recent years, more simple and accurate by ISTAT introducing some ad hoc questions in agricultural sector structural surveys. The 2013 animal dropping esteem, obtainable from data supplied by CRPA (Centro Ricerche Produzione Animale/Research Centre on Animal Production) and reported in ISPRA’s study is 117 Mt, including sewage (68 Mt) and manure (49 Mt). Most of the manure is given back to soil, but the energy recovery usage is rapidly growing. Among the 312 anaerobic digestion plants for biogas production recorded by ISPRA in 2007, the ones processing sewage and manure were 147, exclusively (88) or in combination with organic waste (from agro-industrial activities and organic fraction of Msw) and/or crops totally used for energy production, with a total usage of about 3 Mt of matter per year. Over the last 7 years we reached about 1,300 plants (including the ones processing slurry from municipal water treatment plants) with an

Policy Biomass used in Italy Textile products and clothing

Agricultural matter

1 Mt

19 Mt Paper 2 Mt

Firewood 1 Mt

Products by zootechnics and fishing about 1 Mt

Beverages and tobacco about 16 Mt

Industrially processed food 33 Mt

installed power of 1,000 MWe, and as Piero Gattoni (President of CIB, Italian Biogas Consortium) stated in an interview with the Italian newspaper La Stampa, it is provided that “an increase to about 2,300 plants and double the current installed power is expected by 2030”. In Italy the amount of used biomass, excluding the crops waste not given to the market, shows that inputs to household final consumption reach a total of about 73 Mt. Only 3 Mt of these are recovered as composting waste. Of course,

not all the 73 Mt could be recovered: about 16 Mt are beverages and tobacco, 2 Mt are paper, 1 Mt is textile products and clothing and 1 Mt is firewood. So the remaining part is made of 53 Mt of agricultural matter (19 Mt), products by zootechnics and fishing (about 1 Mt), and industrially processed food (33 Mt). Allowing a large uncertainty range, we can say that these two last voices equal 27 Mt of dry matter. About food squandering, a 2011 survey by

renewablematter 05. 2015

Bibliography •• European Commission – DG Environment Unity C1, Food Waste in the EU: a study by the European Commission, Workshop on Municipal Waste Prevention, Barcellona, November 24th, 2011 •• Waste Watcher – Knowledge for Expo 2015, www.lastminutemarket. it/media_news/wpcontent/uploads/2014/05/ Knowledge-for-Expo-

Rapporto-2014.pdf •• Segrè A., L. Falasconi, Il libro nero dello spreco in Italia: il cibo, Edizioni Ambiente 2011 •• 4. SDA Bocconi, Analisi della filiera del compostaggio, giugno 2014, www.slideshare. net/MilanoRecycleCity/ analisi-della-filiera-delcompostaggio •• WWF Italia, Quanta natura sprechiamo? Le

pressioni ambientali degli sprechi alimentari in Italia, Roma 2013, awsassets.wwfit. panda.org/downloads/ report_quanta_ natura_sprechiamo_ ottobre_2013.pdf •• Ispra, Rapporto rifiuti 2013 •• Istat, annali di statistica, serie XI vol. 2, Contabilità ambientale e pressioni sull’ambiente naturale:

Quantity of wasted food per year in Europe

89 million tons of wasted food

1. From the most recent Rapporti sullo spreco domestico (Reports on household squandering) by Waste Watcher it emerges that less than 1 Mt of this huge mass is directly coming from families (639 grams/week/ family, about 800 Kt per year).

The weight of

8,900

Tour Eiffel

Dipartimento di Scienze e Tecnologie Alimentari at Università di Bologna assessed it as 20 Mt for the whole food farming chain. In the same year a report by European Commission esteemed the amount of wasted food in 89 million tons per year, that is 179 kg per person. For Italy this means 10.8 Mt, an amount more compatible with the 7 Mt of industrial leftovers we esteemed (not completely wasted), and to this we must add household squandering. More than 40% of total food squandering happens, indeed, at household level. According to data provided

dagli schemi alle realizzazioni, pp. 176-181 •• Istat, Questionario e libretto indagini: legnose agrarie e Spa •• La Stampa, interview to Piero Gattoni, president of Consorzio italiano biogas, 2/1/2015, www. lastampa.it/2015/02/01/ scienza/ambiente/focus/ biogas-litalia-terzoproduttore-al-mondodopo-germania-e-cina-

OSjLZIsghgUmMloNF 7mxIN/pagina.html •• Piccinini S., M. Soldano, C. Fabbri, “La produzione di biogas del settore agricolo in Italia”, Agriregionieuropa, anno 7, 24, marzo 2011, agriregionieuropa. univpm.it/content/ article/31/24/laproduzione-di-biogasdel-settore-agricolo-italia

by ADOC (Associazione per la Difesa e l’Orientamento dei Consumatori/Association for the Defense and the Consumer Orientation) “35% of fresh products, 19% of bread, and 16% of fruit and vegetables” goes into garbage. “Without taking into consideration squandering by restaurants, bars and canteens”. In 2012, to produce what was squandered, 143,100 tons of reactive nitrogen were emitted into the environment (while 85,800 tons of nitrogen were wasted due to losses along the chain). Accepting as good that 40% of squandering in the food chain is due to household final consumption, and applying it to estimated 20 Mt of total squandering, we have 4.3 Mt of food wasted by families,1 that is 8% of 53 Mt delivered to consumers. Biomasses consumed by humans (about 5 Mt of excrements expressed in dry matter) also represent a valorized resource in biogas production. Part of these, indeed, after water treatment feed digesters for biogas production (up to 40% of those recorded in 2007). The numbers provided here, as well as the ones in previous articles, are just some of the numbers needed to figure out a general quantitative picture of biomasses usage cycles. We could provide many more: for instance some details on composition and destination of leftovers from food farming industries and from wood-paper chain, or – for some topics – territorial details. However, unfortunately, we don’t see through them a complete and consistent picture exact enough to plan a widespread circular economy necessary for Italian biomasses.

Policy

Focus Waste

by Marta Antonelli

WATER:

A Contended Resource In 10 years, 1.8 billion people will live in areas with severe water scarcity. In this sector, competition will be even more intense because not only the world population will grow but food and meat consumption will also increase. And consequently the use of water as well, since it takes 15,000 litres of water to produce 1 kg of beef. Water consumption for energy and biofuel production will also increase. Marta Antonelli is a development economist and a geographer. She currently works as a post-doc researcher at the University “Roma Tre” and collaborates with the Barilla Centre for Food and Nutrition Foundation. She was awarded a PhD in Environment Politics and Development at King’s College London.

“Water, water, everywhere, / And all the boards did shrink; / Water, water, everywhere, / Nor any drop to drink”. Samuel Taylor Coleridge wrote these lines at the end of the eighteenth century, but they ring dramatically true for many countries in the world also in present days. Despite the planet is literally covered by salt water, only a tiny proportion (nearly 1%) is freshwater accessible for human purposes. Water scarcity, occurring when the requirements of all sectors cannot be met fully due to constraints related to water quantity or quality, currently affects about 40% of the world population. Future projections are not reassuring, as they predict that, in 10 years, 1.8 billion people will be living in areas suffering from absolute water scarcity and about 60% will be living in water stressed regions. Unfortunately, the development of desalination facilities is not an option for many of these countries due to poorly diversified economies and adaptive societies. Physical water scarcity is particularly pronounced in the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia, but the lack of adequate infrastructures, institutions and socio-economic diversification (economic water scarcity) also prevents water resources to be used by a number of African countries, which have attracted, by virtue of this unexploited potential,

renewablematter 05. 2015 the largest share of investments in agricultural land (and therefore water resources) by foreign investors, that are often referred to as land grabs.

1. The water footprint is an indicator of freshwater use, defined as the total volume of freshwater used to produce goods and services. Water use is measured in terms of water volumes consumed (evaporated or incorporated into a product) and/or polluted per unit of time. The source of water used (whether soil water or water from groundwater and surface bodies) is also distinguished.

The challenge reaches even bigger proportions if we consider that the populations are growing and that, as economies develop, dietary preferences shift towards an increased demand for animal-based products. As demand increases, supplies shrink. Climate change is already modifying precipitation patterns, evapotranspiration and temperatures, as well the frequency and severity of extreme events. These new conditions will pose huge challenges especially for societies lacking social, technological and financial adaptation measures. How to tackle water resource scarcity problems? Addressing the challenges associated with agricultural water use is essential, as the production of crops is the biggest water used worldwide and fundamentally competes with other uses not only by households and industry, but also aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems, which is fundamental to keep healthy as they provide ecosystem services. Over the past century, water use has increased more than twice the rate of population growth. About 70% of the water withdrawn by aquifers and surface bodies is deployed in the agricultural sector, which entails the most critical impacts of all anthropogenic activities. This proportion goes up to 90% in some economies in the developing world. The food supply chain also accounts for about one third of global energy consumption. Projections of future agricultural water use predict an increase of about 20% of water use by 2050, also in countries suffering already from water deficit, even in the presence of productivity improvements through technological development. Agricultural

water use is also intertwined with land degradation. Agricultural production covers about 11% of the land surface, 52% of which moderately or severely degraded. Annually, about 12 million hectares of land become unproductive due to droughts and desertification. However, only a few countries in the world have a national policy on droughts. In 15 years, an additional 47 million hectares of land will be needed for food and animal feed production, 42-48 million hectares for large-scale afforestation, and 18-44 million hectares for producing biofuel feedstock by the year 2030. Better land and water management are necessary to provide food security to next generations by increasing productivity not only of existing irrigated land but also rainfed areas, where the greatest potential lies. The growth of the world’s population from 6.5 billion in 2005 to 9.6 billion by the year 2050 and almost 11 billion in 2100, coupled with changing lifestyles and urbanisation, is expected to call for 50% more food in 2030 and 70% in 2050. In developing countries, the increase will reach up to 100% by 2050. Food consumption is water consumption due to the close connection between food production (through photosynthesis in plants) and water consumption (through crop transpiration). About 90% of the water consumed by societies is food-water. Changing dietary preferences thus also play a role. According to the World Health Organisation, global average annual meat consumption will reach up to 45 kg per capita in 2030. As the demand for high-value animal protein increases, more cereal grains are diverted from human consumption to animal feed. At present, more than one-third of global cereal production is used either for animal feed or other uses, including biofuels. About 26% of the world’s land area is used for grazing livestock

Policy and 21% of arable land is used for producing cereals for feeding animals. Livestock products are highly water intensive due to the large volumes of water “embedded” in animal feed, which range from 4,000 litres for a kilo of chicken meat to over 15,000 litres for a kilo of beef even if the impacts on water bodies is shaped by the context of water withdrawal (water rich or poor area) and the source of water used (soil water or freshwater from aquifers and surface bodies) as well as whether livestock production has occurred in an intensive way or not. The factors shaping the water footprint1 of animal products range from feed composition, the production site, as well as the origin of the feed ingredients. Meeting the growing demands for energy is also a challenge for the years to come. In 2010 energy production was 15% of total withdrawals, of which 11% was consumed. By 2035, global energy demand will grow by one-third with respect to 2011, especially in the world’s emerging economies (China and India, but also countries in the Middle East and South East Asia). Energy water demand will increase, as a result, up to 20% of total withdrawals and the use of higher efficiency power plants with more sophisticated cooling systems will drive an increase in the share that is consumed (85%). In the transportation sector, the demand is shifting away from conventional fuels to unconventional water-intensive fossil fuels, which include fracking, oil sands, biofuels and electricity. Despite the EU is revising its energy policy, biofuels will continue to account for a substantial component of its fuel energy mix. The demand for energy feedstocks has been by far the largest source of new demand for agricultural products in decades. It currently occupies some 2-3% of the world’s arable land. Moreover, the production of feedstock for biofuels destined to the transport sector competes with food production not only on significant tracts of prime cultivated land,

Bibliography •• Allan J.A. (2013), “Foodwater security: beyond water and the water sector”, in Lankford B., Bakker K., Zeitoun M., and Conway D. (eds), Water security: principles, perspectives, practices, Earthscan, London •• UN-Water, Fao, 2007, Coping with water scarcity. Challenge of the twenty-first century •• Erd (Report on Development 2011/2012) (2012), Confronting

scarcity: managing water, energy and land for inclusive and sustainable growth. Available online at: erd-report.com/erdreports/erd3-2011-2012/ •• Gerbens-Leenes P.W., van Lienden A.R., Hoekstra A.Y., van der Meer T.H. (2012), “Biofuel scenarios in a water perspective: The global blue and green water footprint of road transport in 2030”, Global Environmental Change, v.

22, pag. 764-775 •• Hoekstra A.Y. (2013), “The Water Footprint: The Relation Between Human Consumption and Water Use”, in M. Antonelli e F. Greco, L’acqua che mangiamo, Edizioni Ambiente •• Iea (International Energy Agency) (2013), World Energy Outlook 2013. Executive Summary, Oecd/ Iea. Available online at: www.iea.org •• Molden D. (2007), Water

but also because growing biomass requires large volumes of water. Biofuels are in fact among the most water intensive types of fuel production, due to water usage in the cultivation phase. It has been shown that freshwater scarcity will be exacerbated in the next 15 years as the water footprint of biofuels is expected to grow by more than ten times compared to 2005. The increase in biofuel consumption in European countries will be high both for bio-ethanol and bio-diesel, with France, Italy, Germany and the UK among the top consumers in the world. Achieving the triple goal of ensuring societal needs, contributing to development and preserving ecosystems requires new policy thinking and, more importantly, political will to go through a politically contentious process of reforms. This process include considering rain as the ultimate source of agricultural water that can be managed and relieving the pressure on blue water sources, which have the highest opportunity cost as they can also be used for other purposes yielding more value per drop. Efficiency of rainfed agriculture can be increased through management of soil moisture and soil fertility, and providing supplemental irrigation when needed. It has been estimated that 75% of the global requirement for increased food productivity could be met by improving the productivity of low-yielding agriculture in developing regions to a level of 80% of the productivity of high-yielding agriculture. Boosting data is also a fundamental step to put water resource management as a priority issue on the agenda of policy makers. Developing an integrated approach that takes into account the multiple interactions between different domains and cross-sectoral implications of water use is key for societies to move forward in a sustainable way.

for Food, Water for Life: A comprehensive Assessment of Water Management in Agriculture, Earthscan, London •• United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs [Undesa] (2013), World Population Prospects: The 2012 Revision, Highlights and Advance Tables, United Nations, New York •• UN Water (2014), The United Nations World Water Development Report 2014.

Water and energy, v. 1 •• Who (World Health Organisation) (2013), “Global and regional food consumption patterns and trends”, Nutrition Health Topics. Available online at: www.who.int/ entity/nutrition/topics/en/

renewablematter 05. 2015

BUILDINGS: The Circular Economy’s Challenge Brussels: Building The Future This article is featured in Issue #16 (Summer 2015) of Revolve Magazine on pages 68-73, revolve.media/brusselsbuilding-the-future

In Brussels, the building industry – with over 25,000 employees – is responsible for 70% of green-house gas emissions. Therefore it is the most important opportunity for energy saving and it is essential in order for the country to meet the EU targets on energy and CO2 reduction. But, besides energy performance of buildings, quality and durability of materials used for construction and their entire life cycle should also be taken into account.

Policy Brussels is known for making its buildings more “passive” or energy efficient. Regulations are in place to meet the highest energy saving standards for constructing new buildings or retrofitting older structures. Brussels-Capital Region also has an effective mechanism in place to train professionals in more efficient building techniques, and has created incentives for young professionals to gain real experience in making more high energy performance buildings. From the training workshops a building contest between schools to new “passive” nurseries, Brussels is moving towards a more energy efficient future.

Céline Fremault

Interview with Céline Fremault

Céline Fremault is Minister of the Government of the Brussels-Capital Region, Responsible for Housing, Quality of Life, Environment and Energy.

Left: Brussels view

What are the main aspects of Brussels-Capital Region’s circular economy? “The financial, economic, social and climatic crises we are facing are opportunities for change that should be seized. We must have the audacity to completely rethink our development model. The overconsumption of goods and services is not a credible or desirable prospect. I wish to foster a development model that is more sustainable, and more humane; one in which economic growth is not an end in itself but a means for a better quality of life. Such are the priorities of the development model I wish to support with my roadmap for the circular economy. Applied at the scale of the Brussels-Capital Region, this new model aims to direct the economy towards a rational and intelligent management of resources – ranging from raw materials to energy and including water, air and soils – by limiting externalities and developing shorter circuits of economic value chains that can benefit both our companies and our workers. This is also an opportunity for the citizens of Brussels to reconcile economy and environment without dogmatism through new ways of considering the city of tomorrow where the quality of life is ubiquitous, even for those least fortunate among us.” How can renewables be better integrated in the energy system? “Today, in Brussels, we have very few mechanisms to support the development of sustainable energies. I am in the process of reforming the ‘green electricity promotion’ regulation dating from 2006 and which introduced the ‘green certificates’ system. In terms of developing renewable energies, this mechanism is the most effective one the Brussels Region has at its disposal.

The CDR construction workshop in Anderlecht provides training in passive building techniques such as insulation and air tightness

Buildings are our primary living spaces: a house, an office, a nursery or school for our children. This is why we must guarantee the best possible quality in terms of energy performance, management of energy flows, or acoustic insulation.

The Passive Sustainable Building Contest offers students the opportunity to gain real work experience (www.cdr-brc.be)

Practically speaking, for every electrical megawatt hour (Mwh) produced, a pre-defined number of green certificates are issued, which ensures the amortization and profitability of the installations within seven years, maximum. Guaranteeing the stability of the green certificates market remains my primary concern, given that over two thirds of the green electricity produced in Brussels benefits from the support of the certificates system. In parallel, I have already submitted to the Government my new Air-Climate-Energy Plan, which puts forth different measures aimed at encouraging public institutions with renewable energies. When it comes to renewable energies, I intend to act as much on supply as on demand.” What is the importance of energy efficient buildings? “The European objectives to address climate change, to which Brussels ascribes, are extremely ambitious in matters of energy and CO2 reduction. Buildings and transportation are the only two sectors upon which Brussels can act to meet these objectives. Renovating our existing infrastructure is thus a capital dimension, one in which we must put all of our necessary energy, otherwise there is a risk that the European objective will not be reached in Brussels. This is why any new or assimilated building in Brussels must now meet the PEB 2015 (quasi-passive) norm. Within this framework, it is now essential to take into account the energy performance and its impacts, as well as the quality and durability of the materials used, plus the building’s life

Source: Michel Petillo

renewablematter 05. 2015

cycle, which must correspond to the needs of the city’s different functions. Buildings are our primary living spaces: a house, an office, a nursery or school for our children. This is why we must guarantee the best possible quality in terms of energy performance, management of energy flows, or acoustic insulation.” How to communicate better with citizens? “There is a certain paradox we can see today: more and more citizen initiatives are being developed while a large majority of the population still gives too little attention to environmental and climate questions. Since July 2014, I chose to meet the challenge of bringing citizens and companies closer to environmental issues. Since then, I have had the opportunity of talking with committed people, who give their time, who engage and search together in order to transform their living conditions towards more sustainable and durable forms that respect our environment. Working on projects together with other citizens creates connections and a dynamic that gives an impetus to collective action, which allows us to go further, to get behind the same objective together.” What are some concrete examples of sustainable projects in the Brussels-Capital Region? “1. The sustainable building week – a plan that will allow participating schools to both conceive and complete a passive construction project that corresponds to sustainable building criteria. www.cdr-brc.be

Policy

relevant training modules and to facilitate financial help. www.confederationconstruction.be

Working on projects together with other citizens creates connections and a dynamic that gives an impetus to collective action, which allows us to go further, to get behind the same objective together.

4. Brussels Retrofit XL – a platform aimed at sharing technology from research centers to companies in Brussels. It comprises 11 research projects with 13 teams from Brussels universities and research centers. www.brusselsretrofitxl.be 5. Opalis – a website addressed to contractors and architects who wish to buy or sell reusable materials. www.opalis.be 6. Baticréa – a specialized cooperative for all professions linked to the building sector. www.baticrea.be”

Towards a Circular Economy

A pilot project drawing by Reginald van Oldeneel for the Passive Sustainable Building Contest

3. The training platform of the Confédération Construction Bruxelles-Capitale (CCB-C) – a platform set up to analyze companies’ training needs for their employees as well as to develop

Source: CDR

2. The passive sustainable building contest with schools – 47 students and 18 teachers from eight technical and vocational secondary schools worked with La Cambre-Horta (ULB) architecture students on a sustainable, passive and modular building project that is transportable. www.cdr-brc.be

Among the concrete examples cited by Minister Céline Fremault to support sustainable construction in Brussels, there are numerous activities put in place within the “Alliance Emploi-Environnement” (EnvironmentEmployment Alliance). Launched in 2010 by the Government of Brussels-Capital Region, the EnvironmentEmployment Alliance is an innovative and inclusive approach that aims to make the act of improving the environment an actual source of economic opportunity and of job creation for the inhabitants of Brussels. The project goes beyond classic consultation and participation by closely associating all the stakeholders to work together in developing green sectors and sustainable jobs. In Brussels, the building sector represents

renewablematter 05. 2015

Also very interesting is “Passive Sustainable Building Contest”, run by Brussels Environment in collaboration with the Brussels Reference Center for the Construction Center (CDR/BRC) (see box). Considering the challenges in Brussels, identified in the new Declaration of the Regional Policy (2014), including the improvement of the quality of life and economic development, job

Left: Saint-Francois nursery

creation, training and education, the objectives of the Environment-Employment Alliance remain primordial today. The future Regional Roadmap for the Circular Economy will bring a clear vision to orient the process of co-development inherent in the Environment-Employment Alliance. The opportunity exists to reformulate economic development to be more equal and properous for human development, to improve the quality of life in Brussels (for citizens and the city alike) and thus respond to the main environmental and societal challenges confronting urbanization today. The Brussels Government chose to seize this opportunity by pursuing the Circular Economy. The Circular Economy was the central theme of an international symposium in Brussels at the end of May 2015; this economy aims to highlight the preservation of resources and to diminish the impact of respective sectors on the environment while creating economic opportunities. From now on, the Environment-Employment Alliance will pursue this path in Brussels. As this roadmap is one of the commitments of the 2025 Strategy, it will bring better coordination and coherence to the actions of the other policies in Brussels-Capital Region. “Passive” Nurseries: Exemplary Buildings for Future Generations

Maquette presented to the jury of Phase I in June 2014

Source: Nicolas Neefs/CDR

The Brussels “demographic shock” entails major implications regarding educational, cultural, sports and other civil amenities. The Brussels Statistics institute expects an additional 32,500 pupils by 2020 and estimates a need for 79 new schools by 2015. This is quite a challenge.

25,000 salaried and independent jobs (2011 numbers) and accounts for 70% of the green-house gas emissions, thus constituting the greatest opportunity for energy savings. Through the 64 concrete actions planned in the Alliance, the Brussels-Capital Region pledged to help the building sector respond to the growing sustainable construction market. After four years of implementation, the Alliance’s first axis (sustainable construction) has generated real and significant effects in the sector. As of now, public and private operators recognize one another: several solid partnerships have been established around concrete projects, each being aware of the challenges of sustainable building as well as the companies’ and sector’s needs. This type of networking generates real value.

Source: Yvan Glavie

Policy

The Brussels-Capital Region’s call for projects “Exemplary Buildings” (Batex) has encouraged new schools and nurseries to be built as energyefficiently as possible. In 2011, a thirteenth nursery adopted the “passive” building standard in Brussels; most nurseries applying these standards use renewable energy sources via solar thermal collectors. Resulting from competition organized as part of the Méridien Quarter Contracts, the Rue SaintFrançois nursery, located in Saint-Josse-tenNoode, has 30 beds and three apartments, and was designed by O2 Architects. The architects opted for a concrete structure, which gives rigidity and inertia, which is complemented with wooden frame walls assembled and insulated on site. Airtightness was achieved to neutralize air leakage between the flats (without any thermal consequences), the flats were tested simultaneously by a blower door. The nursery requires 13 kWh/m2 per year and the flats between 6 and 12 kWh/m2.

Source: CDR

First meeting between the conceivers and the builders of the projects in february 2014

The Passive Sustainable Building Contest Interview with Julien Holef, Project Manager of the “Passive Sustainable Building Contest” for CDR/BRC. “The Passive Sustainable Building Contest was carried out in association with the Employment-Environment Alliance and really took shape in September 2013. The aim is to allow students from Brussels building schools to try their hand at completing a real-life building that will be used as a training room.” Beyond the fact that it is a sustainable building that can be taken apart and transported, the specificity of this competition lies in the variety of people taking part, and in the possibility for the participants to understand and take into account the particular challenges construction trades faces. “Following the project from beginning to end, seeing people who take pleasure in building this pilot building and sharing their

enthusiasm, that’s what I am most passionate about,” says Julien. “The schools’ engagement was total, from the students but also from the teachers and the administration. “It’s a project that one can’t carry alone and it’s thanks to everyone’s participation that we will achieve something that the students can be proud of.” The participants included 47 students, future building professionals from eight schools in Brussels, and future drawers and architecture students. Combined into two multidisciplinary teams, they each presented their best possible building project. In February 2015, the participants started building the pavilion in the workshop, then the roofing was completed as well as the module’s partitions. The next big step will be the assembly of the different elements. In June 2015 the project has finished. The passive module will then be taken apart, transported and reassembled at another site to serve as a training space.

The schools’ engagement was total, from the students but also from the teachers and the administration. “It’s a project that one can’t carry alone and it’s thanks to everyone’s participation that we will achieve something that the students can be proud of.

renewablematter 05. 2015

by Peter Viebahn

Critical Mineral

Resources for Renewable Energies in Germany Wuppertal institute conducted a study to assess which materials must be considered critical relating to expected increase of renewable energies in Germany. Problems concerning materials like rare earths and vanadium are related to the dependency on a few provider countries and competitive use. Contribution to Ecoscienza 6/2014.

Challenge The German Federal Government’s energy concept ascribes renewable energies the role of an “important pillar of future energy supply”. According to its targets, renewable energies are to account for 18% of gross final energy consumption by 2020, rising to 60% by 2050. If only electricity generation is considered, the proportion of gross electricity consumption contributed by electricity from renewable energy sources is to increase to 80% by 2050. However, it is not only energy supply or climate protection criteria that play a crucial role in realising the Energiewende and, in particular, the development of renewable energy sources. A comprehensive sustainability assessment of the individual technologies must be made taking into account a variety of criteria. Such criteria include short- and long-term cost considerations, energy security, the impact on land use and the countryside, social acceptability, environmental impacts and resource requirements. When it comes to resource assessments, it is recognised that the overall resource utilisation of an energy system is generally considerably lower if it is based on renewable energies (albeit not primarily on biomass) rather than on fossil fuels.

Policy

However, this does not necessarily mean that renewable energies must always be considered as being unproblematic with regard to the use of resources. In particular, limited research has been undertaken on the consumption and longterm availability of minerals, usually required in the manufacture of energy converters and infrastructure. In this connection, the availability of rare earth elements, such as indium, gallium, lanthanum and neodymium, and other raw materials that play a significant role, such as nickel and vanadium, is of particular interest. Assessment Approach The Wuppertal Institute conducted a study which attempts to close the previous assessment gap, contributing to the holistic sustainability analysis of renewable energies. The aim of the study finalised in 2014 was to provide an indication as to whether and how the transformation of the energy supply system can be shaped more resource-efficiently with a high

degree of expansion of renewable energies. To achieve this, the study involved investigating which “critical” minerals are relevant in Germany for the production of technologies that generate electricity, heat and fuels from renewable energies in a time perspective up to 2050. In this connection, the assessment of being “critical” comprises the long-term availability of the raw materials identified, the supply situation, recyclability and the environmental conditions governing their extraction. The analysis was undertaken with reference to different long-term energy scenarios created in recent years for the energy supply system in Germany. These scenarios describe different trajectories for the development of renewable energies up to 2050, right up to the extreme case of the full coverage of electricity and heat requirements from renewable energies. Figure 1 and 2 show, for example, a possible development of some mineral resources according to different scenarios for the deployment of wind power and photovoltaics by 2050.

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Wuppertal Institut, KRESSE – Kritische mineralische Ressourcen und Stoffströme bei der Transformation des deutschen Energieversorgungssystems, Final report (in German), 2014, wupperinst.org/de/ projekte/details/wi/p/s/ pd/38/

Need for neodymium of newly built onshore wind power plants in Germany – specific (line) and absolute (bars) consumption per decade kg/MW

Tonnes per decade

Figure 1 | Wind power

Peter Viebahn is Co-Director Research Group 1: Future Energy and Mobility Structures, Wuppertal Institute for Climate, Environment and Energy.

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renewablematter 05. 2015

Achievements

China is the only relevant dysprosium-producing country at present, for example. It is currently unclear whether other supplier countries will be able to become established in the long run and under which conditions the mineral would be extracted.

The study shows that the geological availability of minerals does not generally represent a limiting factor in the planned expansion of renewable energies in Germany. It may not be possible, however, for each technology variant to be used to an unlimited extent. Of the technologies investigated, the following have proven to be most probably non-critical with regard to the supply of minerals. •• Use in the electricity sector: hydropower, wind turbines without rare earth magnets, silicon-based crystalline photovoltaics, solar thermal power. •• Use in the heating sector: geothermal energy, solar thermal energy. •• Infrastructure: electricity grids, specific types of electricity storage devices, alkaline electrolysis and solid oxide fuel cells. The supply of minerals in the use of biomass and biofuels in the electricity, heat and transport sectors cannot be classified as being critical either. However, the availability of biomass itself and the associated problems, especially land use and competitive usage, depending on the type of biomass, would have to be taken into account. These are not within the scope of this study though. Specific elements or sub-technologies of wind energy, photovoltaics and battery storage were identified as being critical with regard to the supply of minerals. However, there are non-critical alternatives to these technologies that could increasingly be used

in future or that already dominate the market. The use of wind energy was investigated with regard to the consumption of neodymium (Nd) and dysprosium (Dy), which are increasingly being employed in high field strength permanent magnets in generators. In spite of a high degree of availability, an adequate supply of the required quantities cannot necessarily be guaranteed for Germany. One main reason is the excessive dependence on a few supplier states

Policy Acknowledgements The author thanks his colleagues Christine Krüger, Arjuna Nebel, Michael Ritthoff, Sascha Samadi, Ole Soukup and Jens Teubler for their contributions to the results presented in this article and the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy for their financial support.

Pubblication Viebahn P., O. Soukup, S. Samadi, J. Teubler, K. Wiesen, M. Ritthof, “Assessing the need for critical minerals to shift the German energy system towards a high proportion of renewables”, Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, 2015, 10.1016/j. rser.2015.04.070

with a concomitant effect on security of supply. China is the only relevant dysprosium-producing country at present, for example. It is currently unclear whether other supplier countries will be able to become established in the long run and under which conditions the mineral would be extracted (production costs, quality of storage sites, environmental legislation, and so on). However, the use of Nd and Dy is non-essential for onshore facilities, since problems such as very heavy nacelles and expensive maintenance work for turbines mainly affect offshore facilities. In the case of offshore facilities, novel technologies not requiring any rare earths are in development and might play a role in the long term. As long as facilities with rare earth magnets are used offshore, they should ideally be designed to be recyclable. Regarding photovoltaics, selected thin-film technologies were identified as being critical. The demand for indium in CI(G)S (copper indium gallium diselenide) cells does not appear to be secured in the long term. In particular, there is a major competitive usage due to increasing demand in LCD production, and simultaneously a high dependence on one supplier country (China). It would even be difficult to maintain the current market share

For this reason, strategies for prolonging the useful life and life cycle of systems should be pursued alongside recycling strategies.

in Germany (3% in 2012). It appears uncertain whether the need for selenium can be met from conventional sources. Hence a major expansion of this thin-film technology at least must be considered as being critical. In case of CdTe cells, it was assumed for various reasons that the technology would be phased out in Germany by 2020. The quantities of cadmium and tellurium required up to 2020 are regarded as unproblematic. In case of electricity storage, consideration was given to battery storage for short-term, large-scale storage (redox flow batteries and lithium-ion batteries) and to alkaline electrolysis and hydrogen storage with reconversion in solid oxide fuel cells for medium- and longterm storage. From these technologies, only commonly available vanadium-based redox flow batteries must be considered as being critical regarding their raw material supply. In particular, there is a major competitive usage because vanadium is an important alloying element, e.g. for tool steels. This is compounded by the fact that there are only three relevant producer countries, namely China, South Africa and Russia. It is recommended to use lithium-ion batteries, which are considered to be less critical from the perspective of resource availability, or physical storage facilities (pumped storage plants, compressed air reservoirs) for short-term storage. Conclusions Whilst the heating and transport sectors are most probably not considered as being critical in the event of the direct use of renewable energies, attention needs to be paid to the electricity sector with reference to the research question raised. Even if the availability of minerals for the relevant technologies is not a problem, potential supply risks owing to dependencies on a few supplier countries and competitive usages should be borne in mind. One central aspect of the policy recommendations derived from the study is the proposal to focus in the medium term on efficiency and recycling strategies in the bid to secure Germany’s raw material supply. For example, increasing resource efficiency and recyclability should be key elements of technology development, and existing potential for recycling should also be exploited. However, every recycling process entails a considerable loss of material in some cases as well as a high energy input. In many cases (for example, where rare earth magnets are concerned) top-quality recycling is altogether difficult. For this reason, strategies for prolonging the useful life and life cycle of systems should be pursued alongside recycling strategies. In this case, close cooperation with industry is required.

renewablematter 05. 2015

How to Turn an Old Sofa into Biofuel A Dutch initiative explores methods on how to use solid urban waste to produce liquid biofuels and biochemicals. by Mario Bonaccorso

Mario Bonaccorso is a finance and economic journalist. He works for ASSOBIOTEC, the Italian Association for the development of biotechnology.

Old furniture, sofas, nappies and bar receipts are solid urban waste. Globally, according to a World Bank report carried out in 2012, we produce 1.3 billion tonnes of it every year. Only 34% is recycled. The rest ends up in landfills or incinerators. A Dutch project, led by the chemical colossus AkzoNobel, is exploring the possible to use part of this non-recyclable waste to produce liquid biofuels and bio-based chemicals. With a plethora of advantages: on the one hand, it would solve the age-old problem of waste ending up in landfills, on the other it would provide

companies with matter which does not compete with food production and without soil impact while being already included in the collection and distribution logistic systems of waste managing companies. The leading figure in this project is Enerkem, a Canadian company (based in Montréal, Québec), that has developed a technology able to turn waste into synthesis gas, a common feedstock for products such as methanol and ammonia. In November 2014, a public-private Dutch partnership led by AkzoNobel signed

Case Histories

Given the current growing concerns with raw materials and energy shortage, the need for innovation and developing less traditional solutions is ever more important.

an agreement with Enerkem to explore the use of waste as feedstock for the production of biofuels and chemicals and the construction of a dedicated new biorefinery. Rotterdam and Delfzijl (Groningen province) are competing for this biorefinery that according to the partners’ plan should be built in the next 2-3 years and will be the first of its kind in Europe. The first in Europe because Enerkem’s technology is already proving successful in Edmonton (Alberta, Canada): the biorefinery opened on 4th June 2014 has enabled the Canadian city to increase its waste diversion share from 60 to 90%, producing ethanol and methanol. It is already considered by insiders a real model of the circular economy. While in China, the Qingdao City Construction Investment Group has already started a plan to build a biorefinery that will use Enerkem’s technology after an agreement signed in October

Use of waste as feedstock for the chemical industry

©AkzoNobel

Fourteen Dutch partners joined forces to explore the use of waste to produce biofuels and chemicals. The public-private partnership will explore the options to build the first biorefinery of this kind in Europe, either in Rotterdam or in Delfzijl.

renewablematter 05. 2015

34% of managed urban waste in the EU28 countries is disposed of in landfills, 24% is incinerated while 27% is recycled and 15% composted.

with the company created 15 years ago by its current President and CEO Vincent Chornet. According to Werner Fuhrmann, a member of AkzoNobel’s Executive Committee and in charge of chemical specialities, “Given the current growing concerns with raw materials and energy shortage, the need for innovation and developing less traditional solutions is ever more important. To accelerate these innovations, we are forging strategic partnerships, all focused on substituting non-renewable raw materials to achieve environmental benefits”. The partnership with Enerkem is just one of these. However, what does the Quebecois technology basically enable to do? It recycles carbon contained in non-recyclable waste into renewable chemical products, complementing existing technologies such as recycling and anaerobic digestion. In Edmonton, a required stop for those wishing to see with their own eyes a successful case of urban waste management, every year 100,000 tonnes of post-recycling dry waste are gasified to produce initially 10 million litres of biomethanol, a chemical intermediate, and then cellulosic ethanol.

Info www.akzonobel.com enerkem.com

The biorefinery is part of an integrated waste management where 20% is recycled, 40% composted and 30% is used to produce biofuels and biochemicals. “We use heat and pressure to process materials that normally end up in landfills to transform them in methanol and ethanol”, CEO Vincent Chornet explains. “In total, the process from waste to end product requires about four minutes.” In Edmonton, 38 million litres of ethanol are produced every year, enough to run 400,000 cars with a 5% ethanol blend. The good results achieved in Edmonton have increased the interest towards the Dutch initiative. If at the beginning the partnership included AkzoNobel, Enerkem and four regional partners, in June eight new partners joined in, including industrial colossuses such as French Air Liquide and Veolia and the Port of Rotterdam Authority. Before the end of the current year, the results of the biorefinery construction feasibility study will be published. If they are positive, we hope that other EU countries will follow the example. Waste: What do we do with it in Europe? According to a study carried out by ISPRA (Istituto superiore per la protezione e la ricerca

ambientale – Italian National Institute for Environmental Protection and Research) on Eurostat data (Urban Waste Report, 2014), 34% of managed urban waste in the EU28 countries is disposed of in landfills, 24% is incinerated while 27% is recycled and 15% composted. As far as landfill disposal is concerned, shares vary greatly, from 0.5% (Germany) to about 99% (Romania). Besides Germany, other countries such as Sweden, Belgium, The Netherlands, Denmark and Austria present very low landfill disposal (maximum 3%) while at the other end of the spectrum we find Greece, Latvia, Croatia and Malta where urban waste disposal in landfills varies from 82 to 87%. And in Romania it reaches 99%. Apart from Greece where landfill disposal of managed urban waste reaches 65%, all the other countries in this group have only recently joined the EU. The amount of landfill disposal in the EU28 is on average 161 kg per person per year. Data vary greatly within the EU, with lower amounts in the EU15 countries (on average, 140 kg per person per year) where measures to avoid landfill disposal are already well-established, while they are higher (on average 241 kg per person per year in the NMS (New Member States) where the application of the EU regulations has only recently been introduced. But in both groups there has been a reduction compared to 2011 (-7.9% in Old Member States and -5.1% in New Member States). In 2012 in the EU 57 million tonnes of urban waste were incinerated. 97.7% of this in the EU15 countries. Compared to 2011, at EU28 level, there was a reduction of 4.1%. It is worth mentioning that incineration also includes waste sent for energy recovery. As for landfill disposal, incineration data also show a very heterogeneous panorama amongst the member states: about 28.6 million tonnes (equal to 50.2 % of the EU28 total) were incinerated in France and Germany alone, while 5 member states (Bulgaria, Greece, Cyprus, Latvia and Romania) do not use this treatment at all and four others (Croatia, Lithuania, Malta and Slovenia) send to incineration very scanty amounts of urban waste (2,000 tonnes, 8,000 tonnes, 1,000 tonnes and 10,000 tonnes respectively).

Case Histories

90%

100%

10%

80%

20%

EU28 70%

30% 60%

40% 50%

Landfill Incineration Recycling Composting

Source: ISPRA’s elaboratin on Eurostat data.

Greece

Spain

Italy

Ireland

United Kingdom

Luxembourg

Portugal Romania

40% 50%

Malta

60%

Croatia

30%

100% 90% 80% 70% 60% 50% 40% 30% 20% 10% 0%

Latvia

70%

Finland

NMS

Lithuania

20%

France

80%

Cyprus

10%

Slovakia

100%

Austria

90%

40% 50%

Poland

60%

Denmark

30%

Bulgaria

70%

The Netherlands

EU15

Belgium

20%

Czech Republic

80%

100% 90% 80% 70% 60% 50% 40% 30% 20% 10% 0%

Sweden

10%

Slovenia

100%

Germany

90%

Estonia

Landfill disposal data arranged in ascending percentage order

Hungary

Percentage share of urban waste management in the EU in 2012

renewablematter 05. 2015 Interview

Fourth-Generation Biorefineries from Urban Solid Waste Vincent Chornet, President and CEO of Enerkem

Obtaining bioproducts from urban solid waste to speed up the transition towards the circular economy, where waste becomes resources rather than a problem with a cost attached. This is the subject of the interview with Vincent Chornet, co-founder, President and CEO of Enerkem, the Canadian company that is making progress in the global bioeconomy thanks to a technology enabling the transformation of non-recyclable and non-compostable waste into biochemicals and biofuels. Founded in 2000, the Montreal-based company currently employs 160 people between Canada and the United States, where many projects to build what President Barack Obama defined “fourth-generation biorefineries” are underway. These are the very words that he used during a speech at Georgetown University in 2011 describing Enerkem’s project to build a biorefinery for advanced biofuels in Pontotoc (Mississippi). Thanks to the company-owned technology, Enerkem was awarded several prizes, including one for the 50 most innovative companies worldwide in 2011, awarded by the prestigious American magazine Fast Company. Enerkem claims to produce clean fuels and green chemicals from waste with better economics and greater sustainability than other technologies relying on fossil sources. How is this possible? Enerkem chemically recycles the carbon molecules contained in non-recyclable waste. In less than 5 minutes, our exclusive process first converts these carbon molecules into a pure synthesis gas (also called syngas), which is then turned into biofuels and chemicals, using commercially available catalysts. We operate at low-severity conditions using temperatures under 760 °C and pressures below 5 atmospheres, or atm, which reduces energy requirements and costs. Enerkem’s attractive cost structure is therefore driven by low-severity operations (lower temperature, pressure and energy requirements), compact facilities built according to our modular and standardized approach, and a low-value feedstock. According to the World Bank, 1.3 billion tonnes of municipal solid waste are generated each year around the world. Where are located your waste-to-biofuels facilities? And where are you planning to build new facilities? Enerkem currently has a full-scale commercial facility in Edmonton (Alberta, Canada), a demonstration facility in Westbury (Quebec,

Canada), and a pilot facility in Sherbrooke (Quebec, Canada). We are also developing additional commercial biorefineries in North America and around the world. Are your facilities accepted by the public opinion? Our compact facilities are socially acceptable for a number of reasons: Enerkem’s technology provides a sustainable solution to the growing demand for renewable fuels and the challenges associated with waste disposal and greenhouse gas emissions (GHG). Our technology equally answers the question of how to dispose of rapidly accumulating nonrecyclable and non-compostable garbage, while creating value-added products from what would otherwise be perceived as useless waste. In addition to reducing landfilling, the use of municipal solid waste as feedstock for the production of biofuels offers many advantages: it is the cheapest feedstock,

Case Histories

Enerkem currently has a full-scale commercial facility in Edmonton (Alberta, Canada), a demonstration facility in Westbury (Quebec, Canada), and a pilot facility in Sherbrooke (Quebec, Canada).

does not compete with food supply, does not have land use impact and is already collected via the waste management industry’s existing collection, distribution and logistics infrastructure. Last November you signed an agreement with AkzoNobel, a leading global paints and coatings company and a major producer of specialty chemicals, to develop a project partnership to explore the development of waste-to-chemicals facilities in Europe. Could you explain us more about this project? Initially formed by AkzoNobel, Enerkem and four regional partners, this public-private partnership has since attracted eight more commercial parties. The primary aim is to use Enerkem’s proven conversion process to turn domestic and other waste into useful products, such as methanol and ammonia. This major Dutch initiative designed to investigate how waste can be used as a raw material

to produce chemicals has more than doubled in size since being launched late last year. Together, the 14 partners have all the expertise needed to make the initiative a success, from waste collection to conversion to industrial plants and sales. They will study the options for setting up Europe’s first plant, either in Rotterdam or Delfzijl. As far as you are concerned, what’s the role of waste in the bioeconomy of the next decades? And what is the circular economy? Enerkem’s technology is complementary to recycling and composting. We only use the non-recyclable and non-compostable portion of the waste, such as textiles, non-recyclable plastics, wood residues, or soiled food containers. Producing renewable chemicals from waste does help accelerate the transition to a circular economy where waste becomes a resource for the production of everyday products.

renewablematter 05. 2015

THE SOIL’S Perspective

Sustainability Strategies for Resources and Communities: A New Pact for Agriculture edited by Marco Moro

By only planting suitable varieties, adopting a good crop rotation and tilling the soil as a function of weather forecasts, environmental impacts and costs can be reduced by 30%. Improving yelds and reducing risk of diseases.

Interview with Luca Ruini Marco Moro is editor in chief at Edizioni Ambiente.

“On a global scale, our analysis systems show that farmland expansion has reached a point of no return”, these are the words used by Johan Rockström in the interview published in issue n. 2 of this magazine. The Swedish scientist has thus posed a tragic question, “Are we seriously

considering the threats of the effects of climate change, which over the next years will bring more and more shocks to agricultural production?” At the same time, current agricultural practices are one of the major causes of the environmental crisis and those more

Case Histories

Luca Ruini

affected by it. Research into this phenomenon can only start with the more vulnerable part of the front – agrifood businesses – where the relation between economic activity and natural capital is direct, and its protection is a necessity. Barilla, the company with Italy’s second-highest turnover, over the last years has embraced a sustainability project for the whole production chain, conceived to produce positive effects on the natural, social and economic capitals involved in its activities. During a meeting in our newsroom, Luca Ruini, company representative on these issues, told us about how the project was born and about its benefits. A model for supply chains other than durum wheat.

Luca Ruini is Vice President HSE&E-Health, Safety, Environment & Energy for Barilla G. and R. F.lli and spokesman for Fondazione Barilla Center for Food & Nutrition for the Sustainable Growth Area. He is a member of the CONAI Board of Directors, National Packaging Consortium.

“The project of sustainable agriculture was born out of curiosity. I have been researching into the life cycle of food products for years, evaluating how the environmental impacts are distributed along supply chains. When I first carried out this analysis over ten years ago, I was amazed: I would have expected to find a heavier impact in the transport, production and packaging phases, but it turned out that the impacts were linked to the agricultural and cooking phases of pasta. Obviously, this did not hinder the activities on the other aspects, but it led me to try and understand how the upstream impacts before production, namely farming, could be reduced. So I asked the colleagues who dealt with the improvement of wheat quality to show me who

I might contact to fully understand how to optimize the use of fertilizers in particular and of chemistry in general. I was referred to the people who follow all our experimental fields in order to improve cultivation practices. The interesting thing that emerged from it was the availability of a bulk of data and historical analyses that could be used for a comparative analysis amongst different cultivation modalities. It was highlighted how a correct rotation amongst various species improving soil fertility (such as leguminous plants) and species absorbing nutrients allowed an optimal use of fertilizers, by reducing the quantities used, and of chemistry in general. I then asked them to carry out an analysis on rotations as they were done at the time, in the various areas from where our company buys wheat, in the north, centre and south of Italy, comparing the data with those that would be achieved with more efficient, alternative and localized practices, in order to improve the use of fertilizers and phytosanitary products in general. And I also asked them to carry out an analysis with a mix of environmental (carbon footprint, water consumption...) and ‘classic’ agronomic indicators (efficiency, costs, risk reduction). The result came as a surprise: all the alternative correct rotation solutions suggested achieved some advantages in all indicators: they had a lesser environmental impact, occasionally increased the yield while reducing costs besides lowering the risk of some diseases. I did my calculations three times, because before reporting back to the company such a big result, one needs to be absolutely sure... I reckon this is a textbook example of sustainability: by changing point of view,

renewablematter 05. 2015 some old practices have been revived (correct crop rotation) and actually, when chemical fertilizers did not exist, either you applied a correct crop rotation or soil depletion occurred, weeds and diseases took over and farming was no longer possible.”

During three consecutive years, from the experimental fields, we got the exact confirmation of our theoretical results and from there we drew up a set of rules, which we regarded as our basic tool to go around and tell farmers how we thought it was the best way for them to farm in a more sustainable and efficient way. [...] The set of rules that we propose contains a series of recommendations applied according to the context and the type of crop cultivated. This has a very different impact on soil quality. By correctly rotating, for example, I can achieve a balance enabling me to reduce the use of fertilizers.

Info www.barilla.it

Based on the evidence emerged from the analysis, how did you then implement the project? “Actually, the second step was quite critical: I am an electronic engineer and if I go and talk to farmers, they just don’t believe me. So an interim step to test the model in practice was needed. We chose some farms in the north, centre and south of Italy that work with us to improve the quality of wheat farming and we tried to compare traditional farming systems (often in continuous cropping) with crop rotation. On top of that, a Decision Support System (DSS) was set up, allowing farmers to adopt specific strategies. The idea was to use models to predict the onset of diseases and to assess the best times and doses to use fertilizers, according to weather forecasts. By uploading data onto a web platform – about the various types of soil, which variety was

sown that particular year and which one the previous one – and by associating the data to a weather forecast station located near the field, indications on what and when to take action can be obtained, so that farming techniques can be optimized. Often, in the past, farmers carried out chemical treatments (fertilization, weeding and fungicides) according to a calendar, without taking into consideration the state of crops and real infestation conditions (diseases or weeds). With this new Decision Support System, the indication is to treat only if and when needed, i.e. when the weather can cause the onset of diseases. Otherwise, no action is required.” What kind of results did you achieve? “During three consecutive years, from the experimental fields, we got the exact confirmation of our theoretical results and from there we drew up a set of rules, which we regarded as our basic tool to go around and tell farmers how we thought it was the best way for them to farm in a more sustainable and efficient way. Moreover, we started to expand the test basis so that we could gain more confirmations and involve more farmers, until last year when we left the experimentation phase and harvested 80,000 tonnes, almost one third of the quantity we buy every year. Such good result has been possible thanks to the fact that we have drawn up farming contract with our suppliers for over fifteen years.” Could you expand on that? “Both to guarantee us quality (in order to produce pasta wheat must have certain qualitative characteristics, above all with regard to protein content) and to secure us the necessary amount to satisfy our high production volume, we drew up farming contract with the producers’ organizations. Thanks to our established connections, we made DSS available for free and the abidance to a set of rules for the production of Quality Durum Wheat, on top of the use of a very high quality variety. This combination of factors led us to a

Case Histories production of 80,000 tonnes of wheat, which we know who farmed them and where. Behind this Decision Support System is the work carried out by the spin off Horta, from the University of Piacenza offering farmers simple tools to read that have behind them a very high level of complexity and therefore an important know-how. As a result (and here I am referring to the effects of human and social capital), a series of competences have been brought towards the agricultural world, enabling to carry out farming practices in a more sustainable and correct way.” So it was a well-structured strategy, integrating research, use of pre-existing tools, definition of a set of rules and transfer of competences. Did this experience occur only in Italy or also elsewhere? “We started off in Italy, because obviously in Italy the “catchment area” for durum wheat is larger, but we didn’t stop there. We are actually expanding the use of these instruments to Greece and Turkey where we are noticing significant changes. Instead in France – where the agricultural world is already more organized, competences are there, farms are bigger, important farming support is there – we found who had already applied these practices in a structured way for a long time. There it was just a matter of singling and working out what the impacts for the single productions were. We are also developing a project for the United States, and the interesting thing is that when I first did my calculations about the environmental impacts of durum wheat, I got a phone call from Canada where they claimed that my figures were wrong and they explained why. What happened? There they had also adopted the rotation method between lentils and peas because already thirty years previously an association called Pulse Canada had been created, with the aim of teaching farmers how to adopt cereal-legume rotation. Canada is an exporting country and in order to be competitive on the European market it was necessary for it to reduce the use of fertilizers. In this way, starting from a criterion of pure efficiency, they also decreased environmental impacts. In the last thirty years, by adopting this kind of farming practices, they reduced their impact and consumption by 30%. And their results were the same that we found.

Since we started reporting the results achieved applying correct crop rotation we found up to 30% reduction. so this a very good result that means 400 kg of CO2 equivalent less per tonne of durum wheat. So, by only doing what one is supposed to do, when it is necessary to do it according to microclimatic conditions, the environmental impact and costs are reduced, yields are improved and the risk of diseases is lowered, just because things are done as and when needed.” An operating procedure that challenges the increasing standardization process experienced by agriculture over the last fifty years. “Yes, in agriculture sustainability means being able to adapt to the context: when the context changes, the solution also changes. We can have the same analysis model but with different solutions. If the geographical area where I cultivate changes, the type of rotation I need also changes because I must combine the characteristics of the soil, climatic conditions and raw materials required locally. An example: in Emilia Romagna, Barilla buys tomatoes, basil and durum wheat, so it can propose farmers to rotate these three crops and then it is Barilla itself that buys these crops directly from them. Easy, isn’t it?” What kind of results have been achieved in therms of valorization of a common key asset such as soil? “The adopted cultivation method protects the quality of the soil because I decide how much soil to use, if and how much to plough,

what and how to sow... The set of rules that we propose contains a series of recommendations applied according to the context and the type of crop cultivated. This has a very different impact on soil quality. By correctly rotating, for example, I can achieve a balance enabling me to reduce the use of fertilizers.”

In agriculture sustainability means being able to adapt to the context: when the context changes, the solution also changes. If the geographical area where I cultivate changes, the type of rotation I need also changes because I must combine the characteristics of the soil, climatic conditions and raw materials required locally.

renewablematter 05. 2015 So, by intervening on a vast range of what we call somewhat paradoxically “externalities”... “In general, nowadays, there is less care for the environment. So we have tried to understand if by promoting a certain model of agriculture positive impacts can be achieved in this respect, above all if applied to “disadvantaged” areas where I would not normally go for a series of reasons, first of all economic ones. We were interested in ascertaining what kind of benefit it could offer to communities and how it could be exploited. For instance, there are very few studies trying to quantify the damage caused by land abandon. Basically, the cost of not doing. And let me be clear, we do not do it out of philanthropy but understand if and how some practices should be supported to guarantee environmental protection. An assessment of costs and benefits should be carried out because there is not one yet.”

In general, nowadays, there is less care for the environment. So we have tried to understand if by promoting a certain model of agriculture positive impacts can be achieved in this respect, above all if applied to “disadvantaged” areas where I would not normally go for a series of reasons, first of all economic ones.

So have you tried using this kind of procedures on marginal or disadvantaged areas? “Not yet. We are thinking of experimenting in some areas, especially in Southern Italy. In Southern Italy, in some cases landowners either do not work the land or give it to contractors whose only interest is to sow and harvest. Not to protect soil. Wheat is very easy to grow so in some areas suitable for durum wheat cultivation, the soil is overexploited and the environment neglected. Again, this has led us to understand that a change of perspective is needed: here the problem is not in the relationship between Barilla and farmers to guarantee wheat of a certain quality, but it is how to be able to optimize that specific soil from an economic and environmental point of view. The point of view is that of the soil. So I had a little chat with my colleagues. We sign contracts for the cultivation of durum wheat but then we also buy sugar, tomatoes, basil, often in the same areas, form the same farmers, from the same cooperatives. What I asked them was: would it be possible to sit around a table with different actors, that is with farmers cultivating tomatoes and sugar beets in order to understand if we could propose rotations of these crops able to perfectly complement each other from the soil’s nutritional point of view? Nothing of this kind had been tried before. Today we managed to sign four agreements enabling farmers to carry out a correct soil planning. It is a completely different way of interacting, it puts the soil at the centre, the natural capital, that is the common asset. In a year and a half, we managed to sign agreements that nobody had ever thought. Because the point of view was different.”

Changing the point of view has enabled you to intervene simultaneously and effectively both on the natural and human capital, on these people’s involvement and on their supply chain awareness. From this point of view, how would you describe the results achieved so far? “On the one hand, I am surprised because it is interesting to see how effectively a sustainable approach offers you a different perspective on a problem, leading obviously to different solutions combining and optimizing several aspects: the natural capital and economic aspects because farmers reduce costs and thus benefitting even at business level, because they produce more and better quality durum wheat and their production is more constant. In this way through farming contract, I can make sure that I get the wheat I need. A series of cascading benefits. The other positive aspect is that it introduces an element of planning that in recent years, both at national and local level, has been missing. It is not easy to put across the message that acting in a certain way we can achieve a general benefit for all. It is necessary for different interest holders to recognize that there is a common interest and that its pursuit by all can lead to economic advantages. Adopting the soil point of view is not very common, a big role is played by the market and its dynamics that are not only linked to production costs but also to how much rain falls

Case Histories in Canada or to the weather in Australia. But this is a necessary perspective change that leads companies to question the way they interact with the supply chain. Not any easy thing to do because we are dealing with complex systems involving many actors. But in my opinion it is a must.”

The aspect of this operation that surprised me was that the more we reduced the environment impact the more we reduced production costs.

Has it been well received? “Of course. And this year we even expect a further increase. On one occasion, we included in these projects a farmer linked to Coldiretti (Italy’s largest agricultural professional organization) and he had to cultivate just a plot of land to start with. Then, when he discovered he could save money he used the same method on all his land and he started talking about it, and that is exactly what we wanted. At the beginning, we struggled to convince him, but when he understood how it worked and the expected results... and then the results came... it is perfect.” What about the effects in terms of improvement of product quality? “There is obviously an increase in the quality of the product because, since one of the main characteristics is the quantity of protein, and the quantity of protein in wheat is strictly linked to the quantity of nutrients in the soil. Moreover, historically Barilla has taken part and been involved in improving the quality of wheat varieties working on cultivation

methods. In recent years, we have introduced new high quality wheat varieties suitable for pasta-making. In particular, we selected more than one variety with the same qualitative characteristics of the best American wheat varieties, but that were suitable for Northern and Central Italy’s environment. Introducing in Italy the cultivation of these varieties, with a production of 40,000 tonnes – previously grown in irrigated areas in the USA – has meant saving 35 million m3 of water per year. In the USA, it was irrigated, in Italy it is not. In its factories around the globe, Barilla uses 2-3 million m3 per year, this gives you an idea of the scale of the water savings achieved.” One last question, a key question for a company, what about the cost effectiveness of this kind of strategy? “The aspect of this operation that surprised me was that the more we reduced the environment impact the more we reduced production costs. As we mentioned before: farmers spend less and the company has the quality and the quantity of wheat it needs. An important advantage: thanks to farming contract I can avoid supply scarcity and price increases. In this way last year, we satisfied most of our needs. Supply security is a crucial aspect. Otherwise, we would have to buy wheat around the world, running the risk of having to pay a higher price than the wheat that we get farmers to grow for us. And in Italy we try to source it locally, near our grinding plants. Lower costs, lower environmental impact. The benefit is self-evident.”

renewablematter 05. 2015

CARDBOARD

Beats Decay

by Sergio Ferraris

In Rione Sanità, a Naples’neighbourhood, every day 2.3 tonnes of cardboard are collected. An excellent result thanks not only to the collaboration between citizens and retailers but above all to having been able to use recycling as an opportunity for social promotion and job creation. Now the idea is to transfer this know-how to create a model to be exported to the rest of the city, and beyond.

Sergio Ferraris, an environmental and scientific journalist, is director of QualEnergia.it.

It is one of the areas with the highest population density in Italy. It is an old town centre. It is in Southern Italy, but recycling is working. We are talking about Rione Sanità in the centre of Naples, 67,000 inhabitants with a population density of 13,400 people per km2 (Casavatore, near Naples, one of the most populated municipalities in Italy has “only” 12,253 people per km2), where since December 2014, the collection of cardboard, especially, has become a real success story. Narrow lanes, often uphill, small trading

outlets with two markets are just some of the peculiarities that Ambiente Solidale, a social cooperative, has to tackle daily to carry out its cardboard collection in this neighbourhood. A business that very few people would be brave enough to start even in more “welcoming” areas such as Rome’s historical centre, where in early 2015 daily cardboard collection amounted to 4.7 tonnes but with a population of 196,000 people. “In Rione Sanità we now collect 2.3 tonnes of cardboard daily and we estimate that there has been a 200% increase compared to the previous collection

Case Histories

The project received an important push from Father Alex Zanotelli who got the church involved as well as Rete Sanità, a citizens’ organization. It was also embraced at institutional level, especially by Tommaso Sodano, who at the time of the project opening was deputy mayor of Naples. As far as rooting the project in the local reality is concerned, the work of 35-year-old Father Valentino De Angelis, Santa Maria dei Miracoli’s parish priest who had served in Rione Sanità for two years, was crucial. “An impartial moral authority was absolutely

In Rione Sanità we now collect 2.3 tonnes of cardboard daily and we estimate that there has been a 200% increase compared to the previous collection system.

Antonio Capece

Rione Sanità’s urban and social topography is indeed complex. “We use a small vehicle to be able to reach all areas, with 6 employees, 6 days a week”, Capace continues. “With these restrictions, we have to unload six times a day at the collection centre, but we collect almost exclusively clean and top quality cardboard, especially thanks to citizens and retailers’ great collaboration.” And this collaboration, crucial for the success of this initiative, is not taken for granted and is made possible by a mix of social rather than technical elements. Indeed, the cardboard collection project was created after years of mishaps and changes of direction in the waste management front. In the 1990’s, waste management was outsourced by municipality-owned ASIA and was later internalized by De Magistris Council to check scandals and bad management of the service. Early in the 21st century, this led to outof-control waste fires in the city. On this basis, it is understandable that citizens’ confidence for sustainable waste management was in reality minimal. “In summer 2012, I got a telephone call from Luca Meldolesi, a professor of economics at Università Federico II in Naples, who after a meeting with Marco Vitale, a business economist, and Carlo Montalbetti, Comieco CEO, told me that problems in Naples were severe and that cardboard collection was even decreasing” Paolo Caputo says, a business economist who together with Roberto Celentano, a development economist, promoted the experiment. “So, we started working, bearing in mind that in a difficult city such as Naples it is necessary to create some kind of concurrence of interests amongst citizens that also offers economic implications. That is, retailers or citizens have percentage in keeping the city clean while other citizens have percentage in transforming the solution to this problem into job opportunities.” And it was exactly a grassroots network that enabled the cardboard collection project to take off.

necessary to make this presence real, especially in an area where people had forgotten all about the environment.” Alex Zanotelli’s proposal on cardboard collection was a tangible way to make hope equally tangible in area where people had forgotten about the environment. Father De Angelis’ Parish became an important point of reference for this initiative, so much so that the church’s premises became a “collection point”. “Parishioners’ response has been very positive and I would say that the initiative has been welcomed with enthusiasm because the citizens’ desire to do something for Rione Sanità is very strong”, Father De Angelis continues. “What is lacking in Rione Sanità is the presence of the institutions, it is difficult to see them, and it often seems that the neighbourhood is a

Father Valentino De Angelis

system”, declares Antonio Capece, Chairman of Ambiente Sociale cooperative. “But it is not just a simple collection because the neighbourhood is a complex reality and we had to use novel resources and methods.”

Father De Angelis’ Parish became an important point of reference for this initiative, so much so that the church’s premises became a “collection point”

renewablematter 05. 2015

no man’s land where controls are non-existent. This is the very reason why the parish can play such a crucial role.” And the references to the importance of recycling and respect for creation that Father De Angelis throws in during Sunday mass are also very important. “It is not true that these are ‘waste’ people and that the whole neighbourhood must be recycled”, Father De Angelis concludes, talking about Rione Sanità people while trying to reach a family in the neighbourhood on his scooter. “Rione Sanità is perfectly capable of recycling and I think that the future will follow this trend, with the collection of other materials.” Also, we must not forget that Rione Sanità, besides presenting social and urban planning problems, is beset by high unemployment as well and this is why even the choice of the company appointed to carry out the collection has been strategic from a communication point of view. “Choosing a cooperative that employs former

Waste collection operators are [...] people who know the neighbourhood and its inhabitants well and they are also recognized by citizens. This enables us to have monitoring devices, antennas in the area, proving that recovery and recycling can offer an improvement opportunity for people with a difficult past.

Delia Del Gaudio

inmates and drug addicts is a strong signal”, Antonio Capece states, coming out from Santa Maria dei Miracoli Church. “Besides being a signal, it is also a symbol and a value combining the environment, economy and employment, strongly characterizing recycling.” Ambiente Sociale cooperative pays particular attention to the integrated aspect of its activity when it comes to social as well as environmental sustainability. On well-established activities such as used clothes, it allocates a share of its revenue to fighting food poverty, but for Rione Sanità it has done even more. “Waste collection operators are people from the neighbourhood” says Delia Del Gaudio, Ambiente Sociale Communication manager. “People who know the neighbourhood very well, its inhabitants and in turn they are also recognized by citizens. This enables us to have monitoring devices, antennas in the area, proving that recovery and recycling can offer an improvement opportunity for people with a difficult past, through work and at the same time an opportunity of amelioration for Rione Sanità.” In just a few months, the cardboard collection experience in Rione Sanità highlighted a lot of positive signals and potential for this method and the top echelons of the Municipality got involved. Tommaso Sodano, as deputy mayor, created a call for tenders to expand Rione Sanità’s experiment to 675,000 citizens in Naples, that is 65% of the Neapolitan territory. The challenge is to use a recycling experiment to create a model to be adopted in the whole city and beyond. Ambiente Solidale took part in the call for tenders in partnership with Cooperativa Arcobaleno from Turin. The aim is to export the know-how developed in Rione Sanità to improve cardboard collection and using recycling as a means of social promotion. A new model to find a connection between the environment and social protection, two aspects that in Italy still have great difficulties even just to communicate with each other.

Case Histories Interview

Widespread Collection Roberto Di Molfetta, manager of Comieco’s Recycling and Recovery Department

We talked about Rione Sanità’s experiment with Roberto Di Molfetta, who highlighted both good and bad points of this experiment. Photo: Tommaso Gesuato

How was Rione Sanità’s cardboard collection project created? It is a project born out of a need to find methods of increasing cardboard collection in the most problematic city centres but with a huge collection potential: we thought about an experiment in Rione Sanità where we found a welcoming and fertile fabric of society and the enthusiastic support of Tommaso Sodano, the then Naples’ deputy mayor. And this is how we were able to start this experiment which lasted 6-8 months. Since Naples already had an agreement with ASIA within the ANCI-CONAI contract, we developed a specific agreement for the experiment in Rione Sanità. What’s your target for this experiment? Our target is to locate both retailers and production sources generating cardboard as waste. But we also intended to fathom the possibility of developing a widespread collection service which could go further than ASIA’s in an area where geography and the low involvement of users represent a real problem. In doing so, we made sure that our experiment did not overlap with ASIA’s service but rather integrated it.

Info www.ambientesolidale.it www.comieco.org

What about the social aspect? Rione Sanità’s experiment was also characterized by the fact of going beyond the environment embracing social targets, that is enabling disadvantaged people from the neighbourhood to find a way to make a living. On this front, Alex Zantonelli’s Rete Sanità and Father Valentino De Angelis’s Santa Maria dei Miracoli Parish were crucial. Could you give us a general overview of the results achieved so far? Yes. It has been an experiment with both positive and negative points from which we have learned a great deal. On the one hand, we saw an increase in cardboard collection with the participation of people who had not got involved previously. And now the experiment is being expanded to a bigger area through ASIA’s call for tenders partly created thanks to this experiment. The most difficult part was to find an optimal area, big enough to balance the accounts. Finally, in Rione Sanità it would have been useful to have a larger vehicle that, together with the small one, would drive through the narrow lanes in order to increase quantities while containing costs. What is the difference between this type of collection and the traditional one? The difference is huge. We went from the collection

of cardboard left near un-separated waste to a collection tailored to the needs of each user. It must be highlighted that ASIA, in order to assess this method in a bigger area, got Arcobaleno involved, a cooperative from Turin and pioneer in Italy in the applied social cooperation in the separate collection sector, to carry out in collaboration with a local cooperative another experiment in a different area of Naples. In this case, the experiment also proved successful. ASIA reduced its costs while increasing collection. Comieco has got plans for Southern Italy. Do you think you will use this experience? Yes. We believe that a series of aspects of this experience can be used in our project for Southern Italy, which involves the funding of means and vehicles. We envisage that in Southern Italy collection can be doubled, from 624,000 tonnes collected every year to 1.3 million tonnes. In Naples, for instance, we think we can exceed 40,000 tonnes in a short period of time, starting from 30,000 tonnes in 2014. Naples’ collection potential varies between 60 to 70,000 tonnes, improving paper collection both at family and office level and cardboard collection across the board. So do you think that this experiment can be replicated? We think so. The Municipality of Naples’ call for tenders for the collection of cardboard involving about half of its territory draws a lot on Naples’s cooperative experiment. All areas with logistic problems are suitable, but other factors must also be taken into consideration. Local authorities must be interested in developing this kind of service and the optimization of the service must be carefully assessed as well as the disappearing costs linked to the subtraction of cardboard from the un-separated waste flow. Moreover, we must use resources deeply rooted at local level with specific know-how. Improvising is out of the question. Could Rome, with its historical centre, be a test bed? Some time ago, we presented our detailed plan for cardboard collection to Ama (Rome’s Public Utility) and we are still waiting. Ama is still not able to locate all the cardboard available. We need a different type of service, much more widespread and able to make use of innovative methods such as, for example, retailers’ indication of cardboard availability.

renewablematter 05. 2015

500 MATERIALS under the lens

Every day we use goods which have an average life of a few minutes, but requiring resources needing millions of years to be regenerated. The renewability index relates the life cycle of a product to the regeneration time of the material needed to make it. This is also in order to make the customer buy responsibly. by Marco Capellini

When we talk about products, and thus about materials, renewability must be thought as a material’s ability to regenerate in time (months or years) to be again available for the system. With the growth of world population, ever changing lifestyles and consumerism, disposable products are leading to an ever

increasing exploitation of natural resources: an aspect that needs to be controlled indeed favouring renewable materials and products. Without an adequate control over consumptions, the steady growth in resources demand will necessarily lead to a system breakdown, a big defeat both on the environmental and the economic side.

Studio Marlene Huissoud

Case Histories

It came out that there are products we consume and/or use daily, who are made with materials taking hundreds of thousands of years to regenerate, while for other materials the regeneration is faster: from a few months to some years. All this must be communicated clearly and simply to the consumer to inform him about the existence of products with an average life cycle of a few minutes, but requiring resources who need millions of years to regenerate. At the international level several companies started experimenting and developing products using renewable materials only. In some cases it was a real revolution getting the first positive acknowledgement by the market, using materials who remember us the ones used in the 50’s and the 60’s, when craftsmanship and creativity had to be expressed with materials available at the time. To reach significant results and targets in protection of natural resources, we need to guide consumer’s choices through clear and transparent informational/formative tools allowing to relate choice and purchase of a product to the amount of resources and time

Marco Capellini, was one of the first people in Italy who worked on design for sustainability. He is the CEO of Matrec – Sustainable Materials & Trends, and a freelancer at his own study MarcoCapellini | sustainable design & consulting.

STUDIO MARLENE HUISSOUD: Propolis, a vegetal resinous matter that bees harvest and process adding wax, pollen and enzymes, is used to make vases. This one has been processed using glass-blowing technique. Info www.marlene-huissoud.com

Nanollose Pty Ltd

Two years ago, starting from this principle, we took up – as MATREC, in collaboration with some companies – a project to define “renewability indexes”, aiming to relate an industrial product to the regeneration time of the materials needed to make it. Thus, of necessary natural resources. The idea is the creation of a company’s accountability report about materials used, to allow the consumer to assess and define the “product’s quality” also based on the materials’ regeneration time. Today, two years after the launch of the project, we have indexed more than 500 commonly used materials both natural and recycled, classified by type and origin. To verify how interesting and valuable the instrument was, we made application tests with renewability indexes on some home furnishing products, clothes, accessories and packaging, obtaining a deep interest by the companies.

needed to regenerate. Moreover, all these aspects should be associated to adequate evaluation tools about a product’s circularity and evaluated through a measurement of final outcomes. Too many companies, indeed, use sustainability as a marketing strategy hiding behind commercials and claims who highlight the sustainability of a product, without specifically saying who will recycle that product. These are irresponsible messages harmful to the system, the consumers and those companies who, on the contrary, are able to seriously manage the whole product’s life cycle and protect resources. Renewability indexes, applied in a circular economy approach, are the solution to start a successful project preserving natural resources.

Studio Marlene Huissoud

Safety and protection of “natural” assets are among the core topics in national and community legislation. Environmental policies and international agreements of different countries also aim to protect natural resources by using tools and strategies that consumers not always perceive and understand correctly. The passionate debate about circular economy and the European Commission’s will to create a positive cycle in the matter of waste are a first important step. This is a complex topic, but it is worth to be directly brought to consumer’s attention, to allow him to know about the “renewability” of the product and to be responsible while purchasing.

NANOLLOSE PTY LTD: Microbial cellulose produced by beer fermentation and used to make sustainable fabrics. Fermentation process can be carried out without economic and environmental impacts. Info nanollose.com

renewablematter 05. 2015

VEUVE CLICQUOT: Naturally Clicquot II is a new version of eco-responsible packaging made of potato starch. The new packaging, although using the same materials, has a new shape easing transportation.

Veuve Clicquot

Info www.veuve-clicquot.com

Solidwool

SOLIDWOOL: Hembury chair, inspired to Eames Plastic Side Chair produced in the 50’s with glass fibre. In this new version the glass fibre has been replaced by a compound material made of wool (as a reinforcement) and bio-resines (as a binder).

GUAPA CYCLES: Bicycle frame made of bamboo and flax impregnated with a composite material. The frame is protected by a UV rays resistant and waterproof covering, preserving the natural wood aesthetics.

Info www.solidwool.com

Guapa Cycles

Deepmello

Info www.guapa.cc

DEEPMELLO: Leather pickled using a natural tannin extracted from locally farmed rhubarb roots. Compared to conventional one, this processing method uses no chromium salts, harmful to environment, polluting substances and heavy metals, and denim is 100% biodegradable. Info www.deepmello.com

Case Histories

MERCEDES-BENZ E CORTICEIRA AMORIM CORK COMPOSITES: Mercedes-Benz Design Studio, in collaboration with Corticeira Amorim Cork Composites, produced for American surfer Garret Mcnamara the first surf board made of Portuguese cork.

HEMP EYEWEAR: Sunglasses made of hemp and flax fibres with a waterproof natural resin covering. The polarized lenses are made of bio-based material. All materials used (including packaging) are recyclable and biodegradable.

Abeego Design Inc.

Info www.hempeyewear.com

Mercedes-Benz e Corticeira Amorim Cork Composites

Hemp Eyewear

Info www.amorimcorkitalia.com

ABEEGO DESIGNS INC.: Food packaging made of beeswax, jojoba oil and tree resin poured into a hemp and bio-cotton fabric. While being malleable at room temperature, once cooled it hardens maintaining the desired shape, creating an insulated and breathable environment. Info abeego.com

OAT SHOES B.V.: 100% biodegradable shoe. Insole is made of ethically harvested Portuguese cork; sole is made of certified bioplastic; shoe upper is made of linen, certified cotton and biodegradable leather. Temperature, humidity and amounts of microbes in the soil affect degrading speed.

OAT Shoes B.V

Info www.oatshoes.com

renewablematter 05. 2015

BIOECONOMY: The Virtuous Cooperation between National Cluster and Regions edited by Cluster SPRING

A € 2 billion turnover, 22 million jobs, 9% of the total of EU’s employment: with these numbers, the Bioeconomy represents a unique opportunity for the sustainable development of the EU and of its member states. And, as the example of the Italian Cluster of Green Chemistry shows, it has to start from the valorization of local areas’ specificities.

Cluster SPRING is Italy’s National Technological Cluster of Green Chemistry.

A national platform to promote a model of circular economy focussed on innovative, integrated and multisector value-chains: this is how the Italian National Technological Cluster of Green Chemistry SPRING presents itself, as created to foster Bioeconomy intended as territorial regeneration. SPRING represents the entire Italian biobased value-chain, from agriculture to research in the

field of chemistry from renewable sources and industrial biotechnologies, to the processing of materials and bioproducts, to industrial transformation and finally the disposal phase. Counting on the heterogeneity of its over 100 members (including big industrial players, SMSs, universities, private and public research centres, associations, foundations, innovation centres and other actors involved in environmental communication and technology

Case Histories transfer), the Cluster intends to revitalize Italian chemistry from the environmental, social and economic sustainability point of view, while stimulating research and investments in new technologies with an interdisciplinary approach and the creation of integrated biorefineries, starting from the valorization of local areas’ specificities while being in constant dialogue with local actors. Regions will play the leading role in territorial regeneration, multiplying national expertise and excellence case studies already available at a local level

Local actors represented first and foremost by Italian Regions – in particular Basilicata, Emilia Romagna, Lombardy, Piedmont, Apulia, Sardinia, Veneto and Umbria: preferential interlocutors of the association, that from the very beginning have committed to supporting its activities through development strategies and planning measures in line with its vision and goals. Today, this dialogue has been further strengthened by the creation of a Cluster/Regional Governments Standing Working Group, that in the coming months will facilitate promoting the debate on strategic local planning and creating interregional partnerships, stimulating the relationship with Italian and European institutions and stakeholders while fostering positive effects for local areas and sharing of best practices in support of research and innovation activities. If the Bioeconomy represents an incredible opportunity for the EU and its member states’ sustainable development – it is estimated that the European market is worth € 2 billion, employs

more than 22 million people, thus 9% of the total jobs in the EU – the Regions will play a key role in this strategy. Regions that are asked to become “sustainable”, as already stated by the European Commission’ Bioeconomy Panel and during the 3rd Bioeconomy Stakeholders’ Conference in Turin in October 2014: that is, to have a leading role in a territorial regeneration that could multiply at a national level expertise and excellence case studies already available at a local level. How? By promoting the efficient use of resources, the development of low environmental impact processes and multidisciplinary technological innovation projects, while implementing an integrated economic and social growth respectful of ecosystems and encouraging the development of a shared Bioeconomy culture. SPRING places itself at the service of the Regions and of this important role they have to play, thanks also to a Roadmap of Industrial Strategy and Innovation created in collaboration with the company D’Appolonia. The Roadmap is a strategic document defining the position of the Association with regards to the guidelines of the Bioeconomy sector development in Italy. On the one hand, it represents the expression of the Cluster’s stance on R&D – promoting the creation of partnerships and access to funding – and, on the other, the tool for political/ institutional dialogue that the Cluster has adopted to foster the implementation of the regulatory framework in support of the Bioeconomy, highlighting its positive aspects in terms of competitiveness, development, employment

renewablematter 05. 2015 and sustainability. In line with EC and local policies and in a coherent development framework of the national Bioeconomy, the Roadmap guarantees access to wider growth opportunities, even at a European level, as a “national system”, promoting the activation of virtuous interregional value-chains, while optimizing the complementarity between technological supply and demand within the biobased sector. The event “Dialogue among Spring and Regions on the Bioeconomy and Sustainable Strategies” – held in Terni on 29th June at Confindustria’s local seat, and that thanks to the support of Regione Umbria and the regional cluster Umbria SPRING support gathered the Regions’ representatives and a large number of stakeholders of the Italian chemistry from renewable sources supply-chain – was an opportunity to present the progress of these actions, as well as the state of the art of the four national R&D and training projects funded by MIUR (Italian Ministry of Education, University and Research) and of the local activities supporting chemistry from renewable sources.

The particular attention paid by SPRING to the local areas fits within a wider context stimulating this sector and steering it towards a model of circular economy, more and more dynamic both at an Italian and European level. Just remember, at national level, the existing ministerial directives in terms of sustainability (CAM – Criteri ambientali minimi, Environmental minimum criteria), the recent institutional event “Towards Paris 2015 – General Assembly on Climate Change” held on 22nd June in Rome and chaired by Premier Matteo Renzi, and the future finalization and promulgation of the Green Act by the Italian Government; at a European level, the already launched “Framework Strategy for a Resilient Energy Union with a ForwardLooking Climate Change Policy”, the COP21 – United National International Climate Change Conference Paris 2015 scheduled for this coming autumn – and the Circular Economy Package, the European Commission’s forthcoming new proposal. Ever changing scenarios and challenges in which in the coming months SPRING aims to officially present its strategic Roadmap to the main National Ministries.

The National Technological Cluster of Green Chemistry Green Chemistry SPRING Born as a response to the 2012 call by the Italian Ministry of Education, University and Research, with the aim of creating a national platform for green chemistry that could act as engines for the sustainable economic growth of local areas and of the entire national economy system, the National Technological Cluster of Green Chemistry SPRING (Sustainable Processes and Resources for Innovation and National Growth) was formally established in 2014 as a non-profit association by the initiative of four founding fathers: Biochemtex, Novamont, Versalis and Federchimica. Fostering the growth and development of the Italian biobased sector through a holistic approach to innovation, SPRING intends to support research, demonstration, technological transfer, dissemination and training activities encouraging the creation of biorefineries and multisector integrated value-chains, thus becoming a reference interlocutor for the Bioeconomy and for the portfolio of EU and national policies concerning biobased industries. With its current 103 members – 43% of which are industrial players (from spin-offs to SMEs and big industrial players in the field of chemistry from renewable sources), 29% are research centres and 28% other types of institutions; 60% are located in Northern Italy, 24% in Central Italy and 16% in Southern and Insular Italy – SPRING is managed by a

Board of Directors, made up of representatives elected by four Committees, respectively from the industrial, academic, non-profit and Regional Institutions worlds. Each of the four projects of industrial research, experimental development and training funded and activated within SPRING at the beginning of 2014 (ALBE – Alternative Biomasses for Elastomers; BIT3G – 3rd Generation Biorefinery integrated in the local area; LIDIA – Development of Second generation Technologies for Converting Organic Derivatives into Green Dicarboxylic Acids, as building blocks of renewable origin for synthesising chemicals and polymers; and REBIOCHEM – Biochemicals from Biomasses: Integration of Bioconversions for Producing and Exploiting Biochemicals from Second Generation Biomasses from renewable sources), focuses on a specific area within the transformation through highly innovative processes of sustainable biomasses in high-added value chemicals and products. They are carried out through partnerships based on a multiregional logic and expertise integration and on the collaboration between the industrial and the research worlds. Each one is also paired with a specific training project for young researchers with multidisciplinary skills and expertise in order to cover all aspects of the biorefinery development sector.

The Roadmap guarantees access to wider growth opportunities, even at a European level, as a national system, promoting the activation of virtuous interregional value-chains

Info www.clusterspring.it

Case Histories

Europe

38 events

Asia

events

America

events

Africa

events

Green Economy: Exporting Italian Know-How We must firmly pursue an internationalisation strategy to get our green companies closer to foreign markets. The purpose is to put in contact countries rich in raw materials with our recovery and reuse oriented model. The benefits of an IT platform to tap business opportunities on international markets. by Giorgio Lonardi

Giorgio Lonardi, economy and finance journalist.

Info www.ecomondo.com fimai.com.br/en_US/

There is an “Italian way” towards Green Economy that’s establishing in global markets. Ecomondo, the event organised by Rimini Fiera, that reaced the 19th edition, is a model able to take advantage form Italian small/medium size green companies flexibility and from ability to interweave the moment of high level technic and scientific conventions with the commercial one. This is confirmed by recent acquisition by Rimini Fiera of Fimai, the famous exhibition event dedicated to environment leader in South American market with about 500 exhibitors and 15,000 professional visitors. This is certified by next edition of Fimai Ecomondo Brasil that will happen from November 11th to 13th 2015. In fact the operation successfully concluded by Rimini Fiera in partnership with Gruppo Tecniche Nuove sets a breakthrough for Italian Green Economy. Starting from reinforcement of Ecomondo brand, yet the reference chain for Southern Europe and Mediterranean basin dedicated to environmental sustainability and particularly to sustainable development technologies. A leadership therefore destined

to spread to Latina America too. But not forgetting this is also a very good opportunity for companies in this sector who want to reach South American markets. The landing at Expo Center Norte in Sao Paulo, says Alessandra Astolfi, Ecomondo project manager, crowns an internationalisation strategy firmly pursued. It’s not accidentally, indeed, that Ecomondo itself organized the Waste & Recycling section of Indutec exhibit in Joannesburg.”The purpose”, Astolfi says, “was to put in contact a country like South Africa, rich in raw materials, with our recovery and reuse oriented model”. But this is not all. Johannesburg meeting, indeed, is part of an international program of 53 conventions in 4 continents in order to favour Italian green companies business and their growth abroad. As the same Astolfi explains, road show has a double purpose. The first is to show international buyers the distinctive features of Italian know-how in circular economy sector. Starting from traditional Ecomondo strong suits, i.e., waste valorisation, biobased industry and green chemistry. Without underrating the importance of integrated water cycle, from drainage systems to technologies to reduce

renewablematter 05. 2015 losses and increase efficiency. The aim: favour the participation of buyers themselves to next edition of Ecomondo, the nineteenth, planned for November 3rd to 6th 2015. A commitment also involving Ice (Istituto per il commercio con l’estero), Italian Environment and Economic Development Ministries which, gathering their forces, will bring to Rimini 70 Chinese companies. The second aim is to create useful contacts for companies participating to the meeting. “We don’t have to forget”, Astolfi clarifies, “that the average dimension of Italian green companies is small: 65 per cent of players has less than 10 employees. This limits the possibility to tap business opportunities on international markets. That’s why we created an IT platform that favours focused meetings with foreign buyers carefully selecting aims of both parties”. Outcome: in the last edition of Ecomondo 1,800 one to one meetings occurred. And the aim for 2015 is to do more and better. There are high expectations for Ecomondo 2015, empowered by the presence of 1,200 companies in 16 exhibition pavilions. And organisers don’t deny they want to overtake the goal

of 100,000 presences reached in last edition. This is, indeed, an exhibition with plenty of new additions: it is confirmed by Global Water Expo, the new Ecomondo proposal dedicated to water cycle, increasing the number of companies interested in participation. Within two or three years it wants to become, also in this sector, the reference exhibition for Southern Europe and Mediterranean basin. Among new proposals, arranged in the boundaries of La Città Sostenibile, there is a focus on local public transportation named Ibe Green and an area concerning urban requalification. Global Water Expo adds to thematic areas that have always been the core of Rimini exhibition: the three Waste areas (respectively dedicated to waste treatment machineries, recycling and services, collection and transportation), Reclaim Expo (technologies for recovery and management of polluted sites), and Air (monitoring and treatment for air pollution) and the last area, added some years ago, dedicated to emerging sector of economy, the BioBased Industry (integrated biorefineries).

Alessandra Astolfi

Interview

What will be discussed in Ecomondo Interview with Professor Fabio Fava, edited by Marco Moro

In last years Rimini exhibition has been able to grab and document the most interesting and concrete trends that are transforming the relationship between economy, environment and society. Since 2012 the Scientific Committee orienting the cultural program of this event has been leaded by Professor Fabio Fava, teaching industrial and environmental biotechnology at Alma Mater university in Bologna and Italian delegate for bioeconomy in program committees Horizon 2020 by European Commission. We ask him, first and foremost, which main topics have been chosen by the scientific committee while planning the event program. What are the major novelties compared to last edition? Beyond traditional conventions dedicated to presenting and discussing the new national and European legislations and policies in different sectors of Green and Circular Economy, Ecomondo 2015 will host many events dedicated to research and innovation in the same sectors, start-ups and companies internationalisation. The Waste topic will be analysed from different perspectives: from waste categorization according to recent European legislations, to new ministerial

strategies for waste prevention, to research and innovation in waste valorisation sector with the presentation of case studies including the ones related to recovering heavy metals from life-ending hi-tech products and wasted electric and electronic devices. Regarding Air topic, there will be an area dedicated to cutting bad smelling emissions coming from waste and sewage treatment plants, recently being subjected to new specific legislations about atmospheric emissions. On the Raclaim Expo side, after the first day dedicated to case studies about sustainable de-pollution and sites conversion with national and European operators, there will be a session about sustainable management of harbour sediments, a topic with specific connotations in Mediterranean area affecting harbour structures functioning and development. European classification of this issue will be furtherly valorised by a special session of European research project FP7 Killspill, dedicated to prevention and de-pollution of sea oil spills. On the Water side, a new expository area will be launched, Global Water Expo, that will bring to Ecomondo the main international networks actors. Like Water 2020, in order to demonstrate how “ready-to-market” innovation is applied in real plants, allowing reaching very high energy, economic and environmental

Case Histories Trend of Visitors to Ecomondo 101,144 93,125 84,351 75,980 64,858

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efficiency levels. Innovators will interact with companies, which are filling infrastructural gaps in Italy and abroad through operations costing hundreds millions euros. The discussion topics will include energy efficiency referring to water-energy-carbon nexus and application of recent European legislations presenting national and international experiences, including the projects in Horizon 2020, standardizing water treatment plants methods and energy certifications tools. Moreover, data will be presented concerning financing by Horizon 2020 and Public Private Partnership (Ppp) Biobased Industry to support innovation and industrial renaissance within green economy. Topics also include Joint Programming Initiatives (Jpis) and regional Smart Specialization Strategies and how to favour participation of small and medium size companies to European joint financing opportunities. Finally, we will present industrial priorities whose implementation has been planned in the new Key Innovation Community on Raw Materials that is raw materials supply. Ecomondo established as a reference event concerning circular economy in our country, its stage. Within this vision, bioeconomy sector has been reinforced too. What will the debate focus on about these two big economy transformation spheres? An important Conai initiative is dedicated to criticalities and opportunities related to circular economy and strategies for its effective implementation (plus the international convention

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promoted by Consiglio Nazionale della Green Economy, Comitato Tecnico Scientifico di Ecomondo Fiera and “Renewable Matter” magazine about the role of collective waste management in valorisation of materials flow, ed.). Mostly relevant, on biobased industry side, will be the international event co-organized by Cluster SPRING and OECD focused on criticalities and opportunities of multi-product biorefineries fed with organic waste and by-products. And the event dedicated to Key Enabling Technologies use in food industry to make it more efficient – and thus more sustainable – and allow the valorisation of its by-products and waste in a circular economy perspective. Again the green chemistry cluster offers the event about Public Private Partnership Biobased Industry, a European initiative supporting research and innovation in this sector with 3.7 billion euros in 2014-2020 period with the participation of Italian Regions, to advocate an alignment of regional, national and European financing to research and innovation reducing fragmentation and duplication. The bio-waste topic will also be discussed in a big event concerning biogas production from agricultural leftovers biomasses and organic waste organized by Consorzio nazionale biogas and Consorzio italiano compostatori.

renewablematter 05. 2015

Columns Draught from Berlaymont

A Smart and Efficient Bioeconomy for Europe Joanna Dupont-Inglis specialized in Environmental Sciences at University of Sussex and to that of Nantes. In February 2009 she joined EuropaBio, the European Association of bio-industries, and since April 2011 she has directed the industrial biotechnology field.

Over the last few months there has been increasingly intense debate brewing in the Brussels bubble on the topic of the “cascading use” of biomass. The source of much discussion is that, although the term itself is now familiar, finding its way into a growing number of policy proposals, including the European Parliament’s recent opinion on the circular economy, “cascading” can, and often does, mean very different things to different people. The concept was initially developed by the wood sector. Here, the cascading principle is defined as: “A strategy for using raw materials or the products made from them in chronologically sequential steps as long, often and efficiently as possible for materials and only to recover energy from them at the end of the product life cycle”. Indeed, this has more recently become a guiding principle for other sectors using biomass as their primary feedstock with the aim of ensuring development of a sustainable bioeconomy. However, while this concept may be relevant and appropriate for some, many others strongly believe that the realities of the bioeconomy are too complex and diverse to apply such a principle transversally and indiscriminately. This is partly because the wood sector definition implies that the more times a product is used and can be recycled for another purpose, the more sustainable it is. Undoubtedly this will make sense for some applications. However, this definition also implies that “single use” products are, therefore, inherently less sustainable. But following this logic many vital biobased products, which can only be used once, from food, to cosmetics to solvents and detergents, which offer important environmental, economic and consumer benefits, would not fulfill sustainability criteria as they cannot be recovered and reused. Hence the need to adopt a more flexible, case by case approach. Of course, it is important that biomass is considered a valuable resource in the transition towards a circular economy and that many parameters need to be taken into account when assessing its use and the sustainability of products made from it. Indeed, a multitude of criteria, such as local economics, regional differences and specialisations, societal needs, existence of viable alternatives, etc. must also be considered in order to assess the most sustainable and efficient way to valorise the available biomass. This is why the “smart and efficient” use of biomass should be the primary guiding principle enabling every biomass fraction to be valorised

for food, feed, bio-based products and energy. It makes sense in terms of processing and production, also, since the corner stone of bio-based industries are biorefineries which focus on the sustainable processing of biomass into a broad spectrum of products including food, feed, chemicals, fuels and materials often from a single feedstock starting point. Indeed, biorefineries are sustainable by design, extracting the maximum value from biomass, optimising the use of individual fractions to deliver several end products. Naturally, this not only improves the economic viability of bio-based industries and their sustainability, but also optimizes the use of all biomass fractions in the process. The biorefinery model therefore exemplifies the smartest and most efficient use possible of the available renewables resources and will play an important role in the transition towards the “zero waste” circular economy that Europe is striving to create. Finally, in the current debate on cascading use of biomass, some organisations increasingly confuse cascading use and the hierarchy of use. However, all bio-based products have their own value in the market place and therefore the theoretical concept of hierarchy of use of biomass is not adequate and cannot be translated into regulation. Instead what is needed is a smart and efficient approach when it comes to valorising biomass. The cascading and hierarchy of use principle, as defined in the wood sector, cannot therefore be transversally and indiscriminately applied to all sectors using biomass as primary feedstock. An EU policy framework for the smart and efficient use of biomass should take into account the reality of all industrial sectors and avoid creating unnecessary new barriers to the development and commercialisation of bio-based products in Europe. As bio-based products face the continued challenge of trying to win market share on a very un-level playing field, particularly when compared to fossil based products, the adoption of support measures for the development of biorefineries in Europe are needed. If such measures can successfully address the barriers to fostering investments, facilitating the introduction of innovative bio-based products on the market and enabling access to sustainably sourced, competitively priced renewable feedstocks, Europe stands a fighting chance at reaping the rewards of this smart and efficient sector.

Columns

Natural Capital

We Have Ruined Three Quarters of the Biosphere Gianfranco Bologna is Senior Advisor at WWF Italy. He is Secretary General of the Fondazione Aurelio Peccei, which represents the Club of Rome in Italy, and was also a member of the Club of Rome. In 2013 he wrote Sostenibilità in pillole(“Sustainability in pills”) (Edizioni Ambiente) and Natura Spa. La Terra al posto del PIL (“Nature Ltd. The Earth instead of GDP”) (Bruno Mondadori editore).

Running S.W., “A Measurable Planetary Boundary for the Biosphere”, Science, v. 337, 2012; doi: 10.1126/ science.1227620

We have entered the Anthropocene epoch. A great deal of research has been carried out to pinpoint a new geological era of the history of Earth, defined Anthropocene because the effects produced by human actions on natural systems are thought to be equivalent to the great geophysical forces that have shaped and modified our planet during its 4.6 billion years of life. The panorama is so vast that it gave rise to three scientific magazines devoted to the Anthropocene (see the large research programmes on Global Change coordinated within the Future Earth Programme, www.futureearth.org.) Over three quarters of the earth’s biosphere have already been dramatically transformed in anthropogenic biomes. This – as Erle C. Ellis, an ecologist at the University of Maryland states in his essay “Ecology in an Anthropogenic Biosphere”, published in the scientific magazine Ecological Monographs – has occurred because of many factors including, for example, population growth and profound changes in the use of soil and geomorphology of the original environment. Data on energy and material flows transferred from natural systems to social ones, in other words to industrial metabolisms of our societies, are all too well known (see www.materialflows.net) and have a huge impact on the preservation of natural capital of the Earth system. By natural capital – as pointed out by the most recent scientific literature – we mean living and non living components of ecosystems that contribute to generate goods and services that humankind can utilize. In such research and application fields, great attention is being given to a very important indicator, useful to understand human-induced changes to the evolution

Krausmann F. et al., “Global human appropriation of net primary production doubled in the 20th century”, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, v. 110, n. 25, 2013; doi: 10.1073/ pnas.1211349110

Haberl H. et al., “Human appropriation of net primary production: patterns, trends and planetary boundaries”, Annual Review of Environment and Resources, v. 39, 2014; doi: 10.1146/annurevenviron-121912-094620

dynamics of natural systems and material and energy flows circulating within them. We are talking about Human Appropriation of Net Primary Productivity (HANPP), which was first investigated by Stanford University’s great ecologists such as Peter Vitousek, Paul Ehrlich and Pamela Matson, with a work published in 1986 on Bioscience, “Human appropriation of the products of the photosynthesis”. Net Primary Production (NPP) measures the net quantity of solar energy being transformed by plants through photosynthesis into organic matter and thus made available to other levels of the food chains in the whole biosphere. A significant part of NPP is then used by our species, through soil conversion and biomass production (HANPP). Therefore, this is a very significant indicator of the scale of human activities and it is strictly linked to the socioeconomic metabolism measured by other indicators such as material flows. The scholar Steven Running at the University of Montana, in his work appeared on Science, suggested that HANPP be considered as a new planetary boundary in the international debate and political actions for sustainability to be added to the planetary boundaries already indicated by illustrious scientists in the two publications on Nature in 2009 and on ScienceExpress in 2015, and already dealt with in Renewable Matter issue 2 in the interview with Johan Rockström, director of the Stockholm Resilience Centre. The latest data reveal that human appropriation of NPP went from 13% of 1910 to 23% of 2005. By 2050 it could soar to between 29 and 44%. Besides stealing vital organic matter from the rest of life on Earth, human appropriation of net primary productivity alters the composition of the atmosphere, the wealth of biodiversity, the energy flows through food chains as well as the supplying of important services to ecosystems. This is the reason why it represents a valuable indicator to assess the preservation of natural capital.

renewablematter 05. 2015

Green & Circular

Recycling Frontiers Stefano Ciafani is national Vice Chairman of Legambiente. He was an advisor for the Commission’s enquiring committee on the waste cycle of the XIV legislature and member of the Steering Committee on the management of EEEW.

The dossier Comuni Ricicloni 2015 (“Recycling municipalities 2015”) is available online: www. ricicloni.it/dossier

Progetto Second Life (Second Life Project) www.secondlifeitalia.it/ progetto-second-life

It seems a century ago when, in 1996, Milan was buried under tens of thousands of tonnes of waste along the streets because the Cerro Maggiore landfill closed down. Or when, in 2002, in the region of Campania there was a waste emergency with the ensuing confiscation of Tufino (Naples) and Parapoti (Salerno) landfills. But today Italy has turned over a new leaf. For instance, in 2014, 1,520 “recycling municipalities” have been awarded a prize for exceeding 65% of separate waste collection. And last year, 356 municipalities, besides excelling in recycling initiatives, produced also less than 75 kg of residue pro capita. The most virtuous experiences are not exclusive to the small municipalities of the North: just think of the 145 municipalities of Campania (about 10% of the national total) or about the 104 municipalities of Marche (a region which is approaching the North-East performance) or the separate collections slightly lower than 65% – very significant nonetheless – in Salerno, Andria or Cosenza, or the advanced separate waste collection adopted in Treviso (with a quantity-based tariff system in place since July 2014), Parma or in the big cities such as Milan (by now an international example). But good management is not the whole story. Italy can now rely on technological and plant innovations to go beyond landfilling. Nowadays good-quality compost is obtained thanks to anaerobic digesters and the production of renewable energy through biogas combustion. In The Marche region, the first regeneration plant for end-of-life household appliances is already operational. Such items are then resold, complete with their guarantee, in the first outlet of this kind within the Second Life project. Thanks to research, it is possible to recycle products that up until some time ago were not recyclable. For instance, thanks to the Treviso plant, disposable nappies will finally be recycled or processed as mixed plastics in the Revet di Pontedera (Pisa) or the Montello (Bergamo) plants, becoming granules to be recycled. Research programmes are being set up, sponsored by CONAI (Italian National Packaging Consortium), in order to resolve the problem of the non-recyclable nature of some packages.

Italy has become an excellent workshop of good practices, with a good blend of service management, plant innovation and research, but it is high time we completed this revolution. How? By reproducing the well-established or pioneering practices, creating many plants for reuse or recycling and managing to the best of our abilities the excessive special waste ending up in the eco-mafia network, by stepping up the level of environmental checks, regrettably still too spotty at national level. In order to achieve this, an across-the-board movement is necessary, able to bring together all the best energies present in Italy so that the governing bodies in Rome or in the various Regions can pass rules and regulations to make prevention and recycling policies more palatable. The integrated waste management must become hierarchical with regard to costs as well: a new system of incentives and disincentives is needed so that prevention and recycling become better options, economically speaking too, compared to incineration and landfilling. Time has come to present a united front. The clock is ticking. This is the only way Italy will be able to enter the European Recycling Society, as illustrated in the directive on waste passed in 2008.

Columns

Innovation Pills

Eggs and Mines Federico Pedrocchi is a science journalist. He directs and presents the weekly programme Moebius broadcast by Radio 24 – Il Sole 24 ore. He supervises Triwù, a web TV devoted to the culture of innovation in Italy. He also teaches New Media at the Master’s Degree in Science Communication and Sustainable Innovation at Bicocca University in Milan.

The thousand-year old history of innovative technologies produced by us humans follows a constant path. It is what in film jargon is called “first is good”, which means that when the first scene is well shot you can move to the second one. The first scene is done and that’s it. It is not exactly like that for all technologies, but it works for a good number of them – an important one. At the end of the Second World War, the US Navy thought about building a nuclear reactor for submarines. Westinghouse immediately constructed a model for civilian use, and over the following decades it was the only one used, even though in the mid-fifties the first projects of fail safe reactors had already appeared, those that today are defined as fourth generation reactors. They are much more secure – despite the slags disposal, obviously. No regrets for a lost nuclear energy system; what we are talking about here is the innovation mechanism which, for a set of economic and political reasons, can freeze a solution and ignore its many potential evolutions. The science of materials is generating strong pressure towards big changes of direction. One of the most recent ones seems destined to generate a conflict between calcium mines and eggs. Ivan Cornejo, a Chilean researcher who lives in the United States, has studied the environmental damages produced by calcium mines, for example in Asia, and has worked on a potential alternative: extracting calcium from egg shells that end up in the rubbish. He also discovered that different types of glassy materials can be recovered from food waste: nutshells, banana skins and corn. It is true, it seems strange that we move from mines to the vegetables that we find in markets, but we should not be surprised. The universe is immense but when we fix our spectroscopes towards far away celestial bodies we always find the same mix of elements. This is an incredible thing and at the same time it is very useful to understand how sustainability is an objective that can be pursued with some intelligent alternative alchemies. The Edmund Mach Foundation from Trento has developed a project for preserving apples

in abandoned mines – obviously not open pit ones. This is a very interesting project for a very simple reason: it is a naturally fresh environment and therefore there is no need for fridges that consume a lot of energy. But we will talk about fridges and vegetables another time. So we have been digging mines for a long time but many materials can actually be found in many places and forms around us. Today we have the instruments to recover them (maybe we have had them for a while...). One example: while cleaning the streets, we could recover precious materials from the dust that is deposited there. Platinum, palladium, rhodium. All these materials come out of catalytic converters. Angela Murray (University of Birmingham, UK) has developed a system to do that. Mats Eklund from the University of Linköping, Sweden, has analyzed how much iron, copper and aluminium is trapped in the cablings networks that lie underneath the streets of our cities, such as wires and all sorts of devices that are not used. They carried out an experiment in three Swedish towns, and by projecting the results at the national level, they have estimated the presence of 630 million dollars in recoverable materials, at a lower cost than extracting them from mines.

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