Renewable Matter #18

RENEWABLE MATTER INTERNATIONAL MAGAZINE ON THE BIOECONOMY AND THE CIRCULAR ECONOMY

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18 | September-October 2017 Bimonthly Publication Edizioni Ambiente

Michael Braungart: Being Neutral is not Enough •• The New Economy according to Tim Jackson •• Putting Madrid and Barcellona back into Circulation

Dossier Bioeconomy/Sweden: The Renewable Future is already here •• Horses Prefer Rubber •• Textile Mines in Search of an Author •• Circle Economy, Starting the Avalanche

Focus: A Journey into Recycled Matter •• Thus I shall Transform Waste into Gold •• New Declinations •• Let’s Start Regenerating Cities •• Looking after Inerts

From Micro to Macro •• Expo’s Second Life

WE REOPEN OLD FACTORIES WITH A NEW KEY: the BIOECONOMY. We are the world’s leading company in the sector of bioplastics and in the development of bioproducts obtained through the integration of chemistry, environment and agriculture. One of our main goals is the regeneration of local areas. This is an objective that we pursue by turning no-longer competitive or abandoned industrial and research sites into real infrastructures of bioeconomy, generating new value and new jobs.

Mater-Biotech plant for bio-butanediol production, resulting from the redevelopment of an industrial site in North East Italy.

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Events

Editorial

Putting Madrid and Barcellona

back into Circulation

by Antonio Cianciullo

M. Bonaccorso, “Sustainable Ambition.

Dossier Spain,” Renewable Matter n. 15, March-April 2017; www.renewablematter. eu/art/306/Sustainable_ Ambition

While we are putting this issue of Renewable Matter to bed, the conflict between Barcelona and Madrid is escalating.

One could ask, “Why should the leading article of a magazine on the circular economy be devoted to a political event?”

It seems something unrelated to the topics we deal with and it just follows other cases of clash between autonomist movements and central governments. Why is it worth mentioning?

I believe it is worth talking about it for several reasons. First of all, what is striking is the level of maturity of the societies we are talking about. Catalonia is the historical flag of cultural, technological and political openness. An area with strong links with Italy as one can promptly realize by listening to Catalan. A region that on referendum day showed its ability to use non-violent techniques (we hope this will continue in the coming weeks and months).

Spain, on the other hand, as a whole, is a social body able to go beyond the inflexibility shown by its central government by refusing to enter into negotiations about the level of autonomy of the region, which, most probably, would have defused the situation. It also reveals the worries about a possible break-up of a country with such a long and troubled history. A unilateral action

by Catalonia could become a glitch in the very system holding together not only Spain but also the European Union. But a unilateral action by Spain is also a glitch in the coexistence system of partly different traditions.

The head-on conflict thus created looks likely to weaken all parties involved. Guardia Civil’s violence against old people who wanted to vote in the referendum did not do Spain’s image a favour. And banks fleeing Barcelona have not done any good to the Catalan economy.

It is rather clear that mediation is needed.

But the European Union is a club of Countries having difficulty taking up this role. At the moment (the situation is fast evolving and it is possible that between the time this article goes to press and when you read it things might have changed), institutions appear unable to offer the necessary stimulus towards reason.

And so far we are just offering a widely shared but inadequate analysis because it does not get

to the bottom of the reasons that could provide a solution to this conflict. What could be brought in? For instance, mending could be obtained by the emergence of a wider point of view focussing on social, economic and environmental interests of a large area. Moving away from this conflict by standing on the side, aiming at a leap such as that suggested in these pages by Michaeal Braungart, one the founding fathers of the circular economy: moving from a damage reduction perspective to a benefit maximization one. “First of all we need to change our starting mindset and consider humans as an opportunity for the planet. [...] There are too many of us on Earth, therefore containing the damage is not enough.”

So, we should not settle for an armistice, but we should focus on the advantages deriving from factors overcoming national boundaries.

Economic crisis and social imbalances lead to closure, walls and identity contraposition, while growth prospects with shared benefits strengthen the tendency to include new partners.

Only sustainable environmental and social growth can last over time and spread to larger areas.

“In a country where unemployment has reached 18.4%, the bioeconomy represents a great opportunity to combine growth, skilled job creation and environmental sustainability,” we wrote on our March-April issue, in the Dossier Spain edited by Mario Bonaccorso.

Environmentally-friendly growth follows principles going beyond political borders: it follows exchanges of materials, energy, opportunities and minds without trapping them in strict geographical boxes.

This is a perspective that could help solve the contraposition between nationalisms with a series of concentric identities.

A new perspective for the Old Continent.

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18|September-October 2017 Contents

RENEWABLE MATTER

Contributors Elettra Agliardi, Matthieu Bardout, Diego Barsotti, Felipe Bastarrica, Francesca Bellaera, Andreas Birmoser, Emanuele Bompan, Mario Bonaccorso, Luigi Bosio, Michael Braungart, Rudi Bressa, Guglielmo Carra, Marino Cavallo, Roberto Cavallo, Carlo Cerruti, Daniele Cencioni, Marco Codognola, Giovanni Corbetta, Luca D’Ammando, Giuliana Da Villa, Alessandro Fabbrini, Simona Faccioli, Sergio Ferraris, Roberto Giovannini, Cristina Govoni, Tuomas Hyyryläinen, Rocco Andrea Iascone, Irene Ivoi, Tim Jackson, Tai Lee Siang, Serena Majetta, Luca Mattoni, Fabio Menghetti, Achille Monegato, Carlo Montalbetti, Sara Nicosia, Christophe Pautrat, Andrea Pavan, Carlo Pesso, Francesco Petrucci, Federico Pinato, Lena Pripp- Kovac, Weronika Rehnby, Emanuela Rosio, Felicia Reuterswärd, Fabrizio Rueca, Jan Patrick Schulz, Stefano Stellini, Karl-Henrik Sundström, Antonella Ilaria Totaro, Tim Weekes, Silvia Zamboni, Barbara Zancarli, Gloria Zavatta, Linda Zellner

Putting Madrid and Barcellona back into Circulation

Rudi Bressa

10

The New Economy According to Tim Jackson Interview with Tim Jackson

Silvia Zamboni

14

Houses like Trees, Cities like Forests Interview with Michael Braungart

Mario Bonaccorso

18

Matthieu Bardout

24

Emanuele Bompan

26

Silvia Zamboni

29

Focus on Building 2012 Earthquake: The Emilia-Romagna Model

Luca D’Ammando

33

Focus on Building Looking after Inerts

Guglielmo Carra

36

Acknowledgments Katie Hans, Nick Purser, Arianna Tonelli

Editing Paola Cristina Fraschini, Diego Tavazzi Design & Art Direction Mauro Panzeri Layout & Infographics Michela Lazzaroni

Case Studies

Managing Editor Maria Pia Terrosi Editorial Coordinator Paola Cristina Fraschini

Dossier Sweden The Renewable Future is Already Here

Policy

Editorial Director Marco Moro

Think Tank

www.renewablematter.eu ISSN 2385-2240 Reg. Tribunale di Milano n. 351 del 31/10/2014 Editor-in-chief Antonio Cianciullo

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Antonio Cianciullo

INTERNATIONAL MAGAZINE ON THE BIOECONOMY AND THE CIRCULAR ECONOMY

The Circular Economy: A Transformative Force for Climate Change

Focus on Building The Building Revolutionary from Singapore Interview with Tai Lee Siang

Translations Erminio Cella, Franco Lombini, Mario Tadiello

Focus on Building Circular Business Models for the Built Environment

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Executive Coordinator Anna Re

D. Z.

43

Horses Prefer Rubber

External Relations Manager (International) Federico Manca External Relations Manager (Italy) Anna Re

Antonella Ilaria Totaro

Carlo Pesso

46

50

Recycling is Better than Mining

Circulating Ideas and Know-How

Press and Media Relations press@renewablematter.eu Contact redazione@materiarinnovabile.it Edizioni Ambiente Via Natale Battaglia 10 20127 Milano, Italia t. +39 02 45487277 f. +39 02 45487333

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Focus Focus Recycling Quality Excellent Waste

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Irene Ivoi

66

Textile Mines in Search of An Author

Published and printed in Italy at GECA S.r.l., San Giuliano Milanese (Mi) Copyright ©Edizioni Ambiente 2017 All rights reserved

Gloria Zavatta

70

Expo’s Second Life

Emanuela Rosio

73

Circularity Travels on Two Wheels

Elettra Agliardi, Marino Cavallo and Daniele Cencioni

76

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Columns

Cover Andrea Ferrarini, Luca Franchi, Marco Galimberti (Sensory Space) cement maquette (photo edited

by Panma Bolec)

Francesco Petrucci

78

Circular by Law Brussels’ Battle for Efficiency

Roberto Giovannini

79

The Media Circle Micro and Macro

Architectural Planning Lab 2 AA 2015-2016 Prof. Lorenzo Consalez, Prof. Sergio Sabbadini, Prof. Roberto Fedele Faculty of Architecture and Society, Polytechnic University of Milan

Think Tank

THE NEW ECONOMY

According to Tim Jackson Seven years on from the first edition, a new version of the book questioning the myth of growth has been released. Such volume explains why “the current model is not improving people’s lives.”

Interview

by Rudi Bressa

Director of the Centre for the Understanding of Sustainable Prosperity (CUSP), Tim Jackson teaches Sustainable Development at the University of Surrey.

In addition to his scientific research he is also a multi-award winning playwright.

Centre for the Understanding of Sustainable Prosperity www.cusp.ac.uk

Meant as a report for the British government in 2009, Prosperity without Growth is back in the bookstores in a completely revised new edition. In such volume, Tim Jackson, professor of Sustainable Development at the University of Surrey, is tackling in an extremely clear way a theme that can no longer be postponed: creating prosperity for humankind, without further plundering Earth’s natural resources while evening out social inequality. That is an alternative concept of economics which so far has been based on endless growth. Indeed, according to Jackson, it is possible to envisage an economic model that goes beyond exponential growth, able to revise the very concept of prosperity, a shared one imbued with hope. A world in balance with nature and able to create widespread well-being.

consultation on sustainability for a governmental committee. The idea was to revise the concept of economic growth, in particular of the conflict between endless growth and the environment. A concept already elaborated in the Report on the Limits to Growth edited by the Club of Rome in the ‘70s. Prosperity without Growth tried to tackle such topics. While I was writing it, the financial crisis started to make itself felt. The interesting thing is that the report was released during the 2009 London G20, when the world’s leaders met to kick-start the economy. As I state in my book, the government did not like the report, Prime Minister Gordon Brown was very disappointed in it. Moreover, the press just ignored it. Then the report became so popular that it was published in 17 languages, including Italian.”

You are currently presenting the second edition of your book. But the first 2010 edition stems from rather bizarre circumstances. Could you expand on that?

“This book stems from a report commissioned by the British government. It was my

The book was very captivating. Probably because other people started asking themselves how they could prevent such an impacting crisis from happening again. Is it so?

“The economic crisis had a profound

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renewablematter 18. 2017 Tim Jackson, Prosperity without Growth – Foundations for the Economy of Tomorrow, 2nd Edition, Routledge 2017; tinyurl.com/hpgnh4y

The meltdown was already looming before the financial crisis. The model was already crumbling: the idea of an economy promoting more and more consumption – if necessary by generating more and more debt – does not work.

impact on our way of seeing economics and politics. It highlighted inequalities, the huge disparities between the rich and the poor. The interesting aspect is that all this happened at a time when the whole world had to come to a decision about climate change. In 2009 at the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference specific targets were set, in particular for developed countries.

It had been made clear that if we wanted to tackle climate change we would have needed investments. But in order to have investments we would have required healthy financial institutions. And this was what we were lacking. Such trend is still ongoing.

True, today the financial world is more stable, banks are stronger, but we are still missing sufficient investments in technologies in order to tackle climate change, even nine years after the crisis. This is what pushed me to revise my first book.”

On the one hand we have the financial crisis, austerity, the difficult economic conditions of some European nations and on the other there are growing economies such as China and India.

What has changed in only a few years?

What should we expect?

“Many things have changed. We are living in a completely different world. The meltdown was already looming before the financial crisis.

The model was already crumbling: the idea of an economy promoting more and more consumption, if necessary by generating more and more debt, does not work. It was already struggling in 2006. When the financial crisis

occurred, I believe ours was a very naïve vision of what the implications would be.

It seemed as everything could go back as it was before. But the model does not work: it creates inequalities, it creates environmental problems and it creates an unstable financial system. It is neither improving the life of people nor making them happier but rather it is making them unhappy. Suffice it to think of the increase in lifestyle-related diseases such as obesity. They stem from a model that is no longer working. And we cannot solve these problems only with technology or austerity, an appalling experiment.

Austerity left millions of people behind.

And that caused the growth of populist movements, both right and left, claiming some sort of hope for the future, no matter how. If necessary even by leaving Europe, as it happened in Great Britain. This is an extraordinary historical period because general consensus concerning capitalism and democracy is crumbling. True, there is technology, the circular economy, renewable energies. So, in what kind of economy should we invest?”

Meanwhile, 1% of the population owns 50% of the world’s wealth. Should we redistribute wealth? And how?

“What is happening is that an ever-smaller number of people has most assets and profits deriving from them (an asset is a resource with economic value that an individual, corporation or country owns or controls with the expectation that it will provide future benefit, editor’s note). Meanwhile, people’s working lives become more and more insecure. Paid work is a cost. Capitalism tries to continuously widen this gap, rather than narrowing it, unless assets and profits are not redistributed. This can be achieved in three ways. One is to raise tax for the richer.

But such solution is like putting a plaster on a wound that is oozing blood. It could work but it would not necessarily change inequalities amongst assets owners. Then there are other systems. For example allowing workers to share corporate assets: in this case workers own the company, so it is possible to redistribute ownership of goods and capital.

The third possibility is protection of paid employment: if we slightly slowed down job replacement with technology and protected paid employment, we could automatically redistribute wealth, because we would reduce the gap between salary and profit.”

Academia agrees with the statement according to which endless growth on a finite planet is virtually impossible.

Why politics and part of the economic world struggle to accept a concept that is so clear to ecologists?

“Because we have a growth-based model.

Think Tank Let’s think about that for a moment. On the one hand we know we live in a world with finite resources, on the other we have an economic system telling us that the more we consume, the better it is. Ecologists say that we cannot expand beyond our planet, while economists reply that technology will be able to make all processes efficient, while employing fewer resources. It is the so-called decoupling, or the magic trick we will be able to make any service or good in a more efficient manner.

But how realistic is such an idea? How fast should we develop new technology to make such magic trick work? We have clear climate targets, we know how much CO2 we can emit, we know to what extent the economy will be able to grow. So what would technological efficiency be and how much can it still grow?

True, over the years efficiency has grown, but what we are witnessing at the moment is that resources consumption is not shrinking as expected. Over the last few years, emissions have stabilized, but not reduced. All this indicates that decoupling is not enough and is not working.”

Rudi Bressa is a freelance journalist and naturalist who writes about the environment, science, renewable energy and the circular economy for various national newspapers.

What do you think about the concept of the circular economy? Can it give growth fresh impetus?

“The circular economy is a fantastic idea, like the thought of making the whole economic system more efficient, but it is not enough.

And it does not tackle economics’ main problem. If we think that the circular economy can give growth fresh impetus, we are making everything more difficult. So, if we want the economy to grow more and more rapidly, it will have to become more circular, more efficient. And this is extremely difficult.

“What we need is another kind of economy.

We have to revise the concept of business, work, investment and money. From a merely capitalistic point of view, business is nothing more than a process to maximize profits, to extract raw materials as quickly as possible, to process and sell them at the highest possible price and then discard them.

But this is the wrong concept of what business should be. Instead, it should provide us with what we need to achieve a better quality of life. This is why we should revise the business model. Do we want a kind of business that keeps on producing according to the linear model? No, we want it to produce in a more circular way. Do we want it to produce more and more products? No, we want to give people a better quality of life: health and social care, education, ecosystem conservation, urban regeneration. In other words, investments in society, culture, ability of people to live together.

It is an extremely specific task. We should start thinking – rather than about a mass production system – about one able to offer products and services people really need

for society, in order to improve their quality of life.

“It is an extremely interesting question, because it is connected to ‘blocked assets.’

This is a financial term according to which if we want to tackle issues about climate change, we cannot carry on using fossil fuels.

This means that keeping on investing in oil explorations, over time will create ‘blocked’ investments, i.e. investments that are likely to become worthless in the immediate future.

If we want to meet targets on the reduction of carbon emissions, how long will such investments still be possible, 20 more years?

While investments meant to improve society will certainly have a lower profit margin, they will last forever.”

Recent scientific studies demonstrated how only 90 large companies are responsible for 70% of CO2 emissions.

Powerful groups, able to influence public opinion and politics. Why would they want to change their economic model?

“In particular for two reasons. The first is that if governments implement a legislature to tackle climate change, all the ‘blocked’ or ‘stranded’ assets for the following 20-30 years would no longer be good investments.

This shows the ongoing struggle between politics and common people to tackle climate change. Norway is a good case in point.

It disinvested all carbon-based assets from the sovereign wealth fund. This is a powerful message for such companies: ‘The future is slightly different from what you expected.’

The other reason is that the world created so far is one world in which social instability is the main problem politics has to contend with. This boosts populist movements, more difficult to control and able to destabilize politics. Governments oriented in such manner would no longer invest in the fossil fuel industry, because they would be busy dealing with social problems and upheaval.

I am convinced that at least a small part of such big groups is realizing that social and political instability is able to damage their economic success.”

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renewablematter 18. 2017

Houses like Trees, Cities like Forests Interview with Michael Braungart

We cannot settle for climate neutrality, we must become climate positive. Also, we have to learn to do some good to the planet, following the example of trees.

Pinus Sylvestris Fastigiata, G. Nicholson, Illustrated Dictionary of Gardening – A Practical and Scientific Encyclopaedia of Horticulture, circa 1885

by Silvia Zamboni

E. Bompan, “Upcycle and the Atomic Bomb.

Interview with William McDonough,” Renewable Matter n. 6-7, October-December 2015; www.renewablematter.eu/ art/125/Upcycle_and_the_ Atomic_Bomb

Suffice it to look at how a tree functions, how it supports the life of 200 different living species, how it cleanses the soil, how it depollutes the air, how it changes colours according to seasons, how it reproduces and supports its own existence.

In 1987, Michael Braungart – a chemistry graduate – founded EPEA, the Environmental Protection Encouragement Agency based in Hamburg, of which he is currently CEO. For over twenty years his name and that of the US William McDonough have been linked to the innovative “Cradle to Cradle” design concept. Their latest book The Upcycle: Beyond Sustainability – Designing for Abundance has been translated into German Die intelligente Verschwendung.

The Upcycle: Auf dem Weg in eine neue Ueberfluss-gesellschaft. Is it purely thought provoking or can there be, in theory and practice, such a thing as smart waste?

“The concept underpinning ‘intelligente Verschwendung’ (smart waste) is that the amount of energy inputs we have is 20,000 times higher than our needs, which is why we can employ materials and energy generously.

Provided, though, that whatever we produce is conceived as beneficial to us rather than merely reducing negative impacts and that is meant for post-consumer reuse of materials, instead of becoming waste. Once such conditions are met, in the end nothing goes to waste. Such approach is an invitation to celebrate life, our role as human beings and our footprint, as opposed to feeling a burden for the planet.

In such respect, the title is partly provocative towards the cultural approach of German people, primarily orientated to reducing pressure on Earth. Anyhow, we are talking about smart waste rather than stupid waste. Nothing like what can be seen on your motorways: it is striking to see how Italians think it is funny to throw waste out of their cars in order to keep

Think Tank them clean inside. The problem is that such materials and goods are not designed to be disposed of in the streets without causing harm.”

Michael Braungart is CEO of EPEA – Germany-based Environmental Protection Encouragement Agency – the cradle of the “cradle to cradle” model. With William McDonough, he is the co-founder of the Charlottesvillebased (US) chemical design centre MBDC and co-author of the volumes Cradle to Cradle and The Upcycle: Beyond Sustainability – Designing for Abundance.

M. Moro, “Lest We Forget Beauty. Interview with Stefano Boeri,” Renewable Matter n. 15, March-April 2017; www.renewablematter.eu/ art/300/Lest_We_Forget_ Beauty

Unfortunately you are not the first foreigner to point out such bad habit in Italy. But let’s now expand on your second statement according to which today indoor pollution is higher than the outdoor because of particulates and other pollutants that are released, for instance, by wall-to-wall carpeting, wallpaper and laser printers.

“These are materials and goods that were not designed to be used indoors. Moreover, in order to achieve their thermal insulation, today sealed buildings are constructed, which contribute to a higher concentration of indoor pollutants: a typical example of wrong things perversely made to perfection. In Germany, 40% of houses are mouldy; as a result childhood asthma is soaring. Not to mention the damage from exposition to particulates and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons released into the air, for example, from rugs and carpets. How can it be that exposing a mattress just bought from IKEA to fresh air for 24 hours eliminates all problems that it can generate? On the market, though, there are innovative ‘Cradle to Cradle’ products, such as a bed that we designed with a Dutch firm, the first conceived to be used in a closed environment without any health hazard.”

In order to solve indoor pollution problems you suggest overturning the concept of passive house (energy-passive house) into house like a tree and from sealed buildings to healthy buildings. What does it mean in practice?

“First of all we need to change our starting mindset and consider humans as an opportunity for the planet. This is a completely different and crucial approach, because religions, Islam included, see in humans the evil that only God can redeem. Consequently, at best, we can only hope to do a little less harm. However, there are too many of us on Earth, therefore containing the damage is not enough. Why, instead, do we not construct buildings that, by contrast, support our own existence? Buildings with the positive characteristics of trees, i.e. able to cleanse the air by removing particulates and other pollutants, to filter water and be also beneficial to other living species.”

“Buildings like trees, cities like forests:” that’s the theme you tackled at last year’s Venice Biennale of Architecture. This is certainly a very poetic vision, but how can it be turned into practice?

“It is actually very simple. Suffice it to look at how a tree functions, how it supports the life of 200 different living species, how it cleanses the soil, how it depollutes the air, how it changes colours according to seasons, how it reproduces and supports its own existence.

These are all things that a conventional building cannot do; so, compared to a tree, it is far more primitive. This is why I urge people to take trees as an example. The right question we should ask ourselves is how we can generate within buildings clean and healthy air for those who live or work in them. The answer to this question is linked to quality technological innovation.

Why not exploit 100 square metres of flooring in a flat by covering it with a carpet able not only not to give off bad smell but also to clean up the air? This is the kind of innovation we need.

There are paints that are not antimicrobial but rather pro-microbial thanks to active microorganism in them able to clean the air by eating up pollutants: a kind of performance that only up to twenty years ago or so seemed science fiction. And precisely thanks to quality technological innovation, which does not imply extra costs, the profits of manufacturers are 20-30% higher to the standard ones in the sector. The same happens with companies producing insulation materials for buildings based on organic substances: they earn more.”

Any examples?

“As to wall-to-wall carpeting I am thinking of Desso, a company producing modular carpets with such characteristics. Then there is a firm in Switzerland that is already winning its spurs in particular in the field of airplane seats thanks to the use of materials contributing to improve the quality of indoor air, notoriously rather poor in the cabins. Such products are the exact opposite to traditional sofas stuffed with synthetic foams and upholstered with fabrics so full of toxic substances that they end up in incinerators. We are now used to producers informing us that their products are ‘free from’ specific toxic substances, but this is not enough: we need to know the quality and healthiness of all components of a product. As a student, I took apart a TV set for fun: I thus singled out over 4,000 chemical components. The question is: are we interested in having some thousands of different chemical components or do we more simply just want to watch TV? The answer to this question takes us from the concept of ownership to that of service and use of a good, as it happens with more innovative products. Still within the construction sector, today there are facades whose use is sold rather than their ownership, a solution that lowers the costs of access

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renewablematter 18. 2017 Silvia Zamboni is a professional journalist specialized in energy and environmental issues.

She has authored books on good practices of the green economy, mobility and development.

Park 2020, www.park2020.com/en

to such goods for end users. After all, we do not need to own the façade, we merely use it.

It is a totally different approach.”

right thing, not the ‘least wrong’ thing, and feel in a partnership with the natural world and not guilty.”

Are there buildings already made like trees and neighbourhoods, if not cities, planned and developed like forests? And can the experience of the one million trees planted in New York between 2011 and 2015 be considered an initiative going in the right direction?

“The most advanced examples amongst those accomplished is that of the city of Venlo in the Netherlands, where the quality of the indoor air of buildings is excellent and facades are made with air-cleaning materials. Then there is the 20/20 Haarlemmermeer Business Park, near Amsterdam, where I worked with William McDonough: it is a unique settlement in the world, inspired to guarantee people’s wellbeing, combining ecodesign with ‘Cradle to Cradle’ (C2C)-certified innovative products. Moreover, in the Swedish town of Ronneby, together with a pool of local architects I contributed to transform a vast decommissioned industrial area in a neighbourhood conceived according to C2C criteria, where everything, from nursery schools upwards, is thought and planned in terms of positivity, wellbeing, not of damage containment, or ‘less bad.’ As to the New York experience, it certainly had the effect of creating community pride and the satisfaction of embellish the city. But in terms of improvement of the environmental quality the impact is negligible.”

Why do you deem wrong the “Zero Waste” approach, a well-established must within the conventional notion of the circular economy?

“Minimizing the damage of the quantity of waste we produce is not useful for the active and positive protection of the environment: at best it helps cut our energy bills. Where is the sense in defining sustainability, as we read in the Brundtland report, as the path to meet the needs of present generations without compromising the fulfilment of the needs of future generations? How sad! Our aim should be the wellbeing of other humans, children, young people, who want to be taken seriously today.

Far from not seeing their needs compromised tomorrow! ‘Zero Waste’ is a perspective that is the exact opposite of ‘Cradle to Cradle’ because it is an approach characterized by negativity and implies keeping on reasoning in terms of waste. If I told you, ‘Don’t think about pink crocodiles,’ in your mind an image of a pink crocodile would immediately form.

Bricks containing toxic ashes from recycling are manufactured and we talk about the circular economy (and nevertheless they are considered a circular economy output)!

The ‘Cradle to Cradle’ approach eliminates the very concept of waste: only humans produce waste, no other living species do, because in nature everything is turned into useful nutrients for the life of other species. If a product is harmful for health or after its use it becomes waste and/or cannot be taken apart to recover the various components, it means that originally there was an innovation and quality deficit: it has nothing to do with ethics and responsibility towards the environment. Similarly, we must not experience by definition the role of consumers feeling eternally guilty, but we should rather consider ourselves as drivers of change: a washing machine that lasts thirty years is a nightmare, because it prevents technological innovation from reaching the market. More generally, once again it’s all about culture.

In Germany, in Italy, people feel guilty for the damage perpetrated against Mother Nature, like a baby that regrets being naughty with his/ her mum that is always so good to him/her; we wonder whether what we do is ethically correct or not. In Holland, on the other hand, where half of the country is below sea level and the risk of flooding is tangible, the cultural approach to nature is not that romantic. Nature can act as our teacher, not as a mother.”

You suggest not demonizing human carbon footprint and to embrace the concept of positive human carbon footprint. In practice, what do such passage and the replacement of the neutral carbon to that of positive carbon approach entail?

“Carbon neutral is a rather absurd concept: only if we do not exist can we be carbon neutral.

Let’s take again trees as our example: they are not carbon neutral, but carbon positive; they are not climate neutral, but climate positive.

Why don’t we try and do some good to the environment and climate by extracting carbon from the atmosphere? Instead today the opposite happens: huge fertile lands are used for biofuel cultivation. And every year we consume outrageous quantities of soil, which instead is an excellent carbon sink. The mere regeneration of soil has beneficial effects; the mere storage of carbon into the soil is carbon positive. Thanks to the enormous quantity of energy inputs at our disposal, we could act positively to capture the CO2 present in the atmosphere and with the help of solar energy we could turn it into methanol, to be employed as fuel. And since CO2 would undergo a transformation process, it would not be released into the atmosphere.

Such is the meaning of carbon positive: permanently reducing the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere. In other words, we must do the

Are there any levers that can push more than others in the C2C direction?

“The most important one is public procurement which every year is worth billions of euro in the Countries’ balance sheets: it is crucial

Think Tank that public purchases favour C2C products, so we need to work seriously in order to define guidelines for public procurements so that they can go in this direction. Such lever can also help support local economy. The second fundamental factor is taking seriously the market economy and support the opportunity offered by digitalization. There is no use in getting a product’s LCA as if it had to last forever. Instead, we must define the period of usability of a good, going for example from the sale of a washing machine, to the sale of a certain number of wash cycles. This is the key for learning and innovating. As I already mentioned, washing machines lasting 30 years prevent technological innovation from reaching the market.”

problem that must concern manufacturers who know the materials they were made with.”

Don’t you think that today we are actually faced with the problem of goods planned to last for a very short time because of the so-called planned obsolescence?

“The problem would be solved, as I said, if we moved from purchasing for example a washing machine to buying a certain number of wash cycles, let’s say 3,000. This type of new-generation appliance will have a meter that will start at 5,000 points: a 90° wash will be worth 3 points, a 30°, only 1. In this way people will be encouraged to wash at lower temperatures in order to save points and people will make sure they do a full load, since they pay according to the number of cycles washed (pay-per-wash). At this stage, planned obsolescence will no longer be relevant, because the washing machine must last for the 3,000 wash cycles that I bought. Moreover, extending corporate social responsibility prevents companies from privatizing profits while externalizing losses. Why, for instance, should we be concerned about end-of-life disposal of Chinese solar panels? If anything this is a

By way of conclusion, the C2C vision can risk, with good reason, raising the bar of the challenge to the linear economy?

“A word of caution: this is not an abstract vision to be filed away in a drawer for the next twenty years, but the opposite of the traditional philosophy of the ‘less bad.’ As far as the extent of the challenge, change requires time.

But we can do it. My office is in an old building, in Hamburg’s historical centre, where in 1762 for the first time human rights were proclaimed in Germany. Between such declaration and the achievement in 1919 of the right of vote for women, over 150 years elapsed in Germany.

The Internet precursor was born in 1969, long before the current digital revolution. It took solar technology 60 years to reach mass markets.

The ‘Cradle to Cradle’ model turned 25 and yet there are a number of products with such trademark. Personally I am very optimistic: as soon as people understand that ‘less bad’ does not mean ‘good’ but only ‘less worse,’ they can only go down the road of C2C.”

What do you teach in the course “Cradle to Cradle for Innovation and Quality” you are running at the School of Management at the Erasmus University in Rotterdam? Is it the only existing chair in the academia world?

“I chose to teach in this institute because it is one of the top public Business Schools in Europe. In my course I try to focus on the costeffectiveness of the ‘Cradle to Cradle’ industrial model. At the moment, it is the only existing academic chair, but the ‘Cradle to Cradle’ design concept is also included in many waste management curricula.”

“Zero Waste” is a perspective that is the exact opposite of “Cradle to Cradle” because it is an approach characterized by negativity and implies keeping on reasoning in terms of waste.

Cradle to Cradle The industrial revolution of “Cradle to Cradle”-certified products is going rather well in many sectors: there are thousands of products on the market with such trademark. Five are the factors assessed in the certification process: impact on health of the employed materials, making a distinction between those belonging to the biological and technological cycle; possibility of securing post-consumer recycling of materials going back to the original cycle; use of renewable energies in the production process and zeroing of CO2 emissions; responsible use of water as an inalienable resource for mankind; respect of subjects and natural systems involved in the planning, use, post-consumer management and reuse of products.

In the construction sector – which rules the roost – there are facades and interior cladding that at the end of their life can go back to the manufacturer who will be able to make other products out of them; clay bricks with a high thermal inertia potential. Instead of the conventional rock wool

there are other insulating materials manufactured with harmless organic non-flammable materials.

In the textile sector, there is a biodegradable fabric, for instance, suitable to tailor sturdy work clothes that after 50 washes are collected by the manufacturer and recycled as humus. There is a wide choice also for personal hygiene and hair products and for home detergents and cleaning products.

And there is more. In the printing industry, there are vegetable oil-based colours, biosolvents and fabric dyes obtained from extracts of olive tree leaves, which can be used for the treatment of rawhide. There is also a guitar manufactured according to the famous Fender model, but with C2C-certified materials.

There are five levels of progressive excellence according to the certification: basic, bronze, silver, gold and platinum.

Up until now only one product was awarded full marks, platinum: some external and internal cladding made with regenerated tree bark. www.cradletocradle.com

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Dossier

SWEDEN

In Sweden, the bioeconomy represents nearly 23% of goods exports. But the Scandinavian country is just at the beginning of a transition that will focus on the smart use of raw materials and recycling as well as on consumers’ habits and on the development of innovative materials. Many biomaterials are already used in several industrial sectors: paper, packaging, furniture and fashion.

Policy

The Renewable Future

IS ALREADY HERE In 2014, in Sweden, the bioeconomy accounted for 7.1% of total added value. A country with many ambitions fuelled by the vast availability of biomass and by strong support to research and innovation. But also by the role of companies that understood how the development of new materials is key to their business.

by Mario Bonaccorso

Bioeconomy in Sweden, www.business-sweden. se/en/Invest/inspiration/ publications/bioeconomyin-sweden

Mario Bonaccorso is a journalist and creator of the Bioeconomista blog. He works for Assobiotec, the Italian association for the development of biotechnologies.

A Country aspiring to have a circulating car fleet no longer powered by fossil fuels by 2030. A national chemical industry that – by the same year – aims at becoming totally oil free. A plant system for the production of cellulose and paper that is already powered by organic sources. A network of plants for the production of cellulose and paper, 96% already powered by bio-sources.

It is easy to understand why Sweden “is blazing a trail for a renewable future,” as proudly claims the Swedish Trade and Invest Council in its document Bioeconomy in Sweden. The Scandinavian Country, which closed 2016 with an economy growth of 3.7% and that is ranking sixth in the world for competitiveness according to the Global Competitiveness Index (GCI) 2016-2017, “aspires to become a leading player in the change towards a society with a wider use of renewable materials.”

A legitimate ambition, if we consider its strengths: the vast availability of biomass, strong support to research, development and innovation, great environmental awareness of population, the presence of a technologicallyadvanced industry and of a vast number of multinational corporations in various sectors – such as Tetrapak, Ikea, Volvo, Ericsson, H&M, SCA and Sandvik – which deem the development of new materials crucial for their business.

According to Growth Analysis, a governmental agency controlled by the Ministry of Enterprise and Innovation, in 2014 the Swedish bioeconomy accounted for 7.1% of total added value (two thirds of which deriving from the forestry sector), with 350,000 employees and 22.9% of total exports of goods.

A Strategy Focusing on Renewable Resources Replacing fossil fuels with renewables is one of the pillars of Swedish strategy on the bioeconomy commissioned in September 2011 by the Stockholm’s government at the National Council for sustainable research and development (FORMAS), supported by the Agency for innovation (VINNOVA) and the national Energy Agency. Obviously, wood has the lion’s share. “Sweden’s natural geographic conditions – as it reads on the Swedish Research and Innovation Strategy for a Bio-based Economy – have always meant that products derived from agriculture and forests, as well as from fishing, have been of great importance for social development.”

The other three pillars are the development of smarter products and a smarter use of raw materials (including by-products and recycling); the change of consumer and attitude habits; the implementation of new policies eschewing conflicting objectives while creating a system optimization.

The challenge launched by the government is to find solutions improving both commercial and environmental benefits, while conserving and augmenting biodiversity and reducing, amongst other things, the use of pesticides and antibiotics.

The Forestry Sector The forestry sector is of great importance, boasting a huge raw material heritage.

Since the end of the 19th century the Swedish industry of cellulose and paper has increasingly led the world markets.

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renewablematter 18. 2017 Swedish Research and Innovation Strategy for a Bio-based Economy, www.formas.se/ PageFiles/5074/Strategy _Biobased_Ekonomy_ hela.pdf

According to the Swedish Forest Agency, the average value of a cubic metre of forests is about SEK300. Multiplied by the total value of 3 billion cubic metres, it comes to SEK900 billion, or about €90 billion. It is about one fifth of Sweden’s total GDP. The transition phase of the sector, caused mainly by the decline of the demand of paper for newspapers and offices, pushed companies to search for new application fields. Thus new research centres cropped up such as SKOGFORSK (Forestry Research Institute of Sweden) dealing with applied research in order to close the gap with the industry. Or the Forest Machinery Cluster, facilitating cooperation amongst researchers, forestry enterprises and the industry and that allowed Sweden to become a leader in the world market of forest machinery.

An iconic example of reconversion of the forestry industry to the bioeconomy is that of Stora Enso, the paper and cellulose giant that has created a Biomaterials Department aiming at extracting hemicellulose, sugars and lignin from production waste in order to obtain products with a higher added value. In 2015, in Stockholm, an Innovation Centre has been inaugurated hosting research, application, business development and strategic marketing.

“Another important step forward towards Stora Enso’s transformation into a company of renewable materials,” as Karl-Henrik Sundström – the Scandinavian company’s CEO – put it. “We are convinced that our access to biomass, in combination with the competence of the forestry sector the world over, will bring advantages to our clients in the future, in new and innovative ways. Our aim is to develop a competitive supply, serving clients in a variety of industries and markets, while adding value to our cellulose flows.”

In such direction, the Sundström-led company invested €12 million last January in order to build a new production line for biocomposite granules in the Hylte plant in Sweden. The production is expected to start in the first quarter of 2018, with an annual capacity of about 15,000 tonnes.

The biocomposite granules are a mix of wood fibres, polymers and additives which are used as raw materials for injection moulding and extrusion of products traditionally manufactured with plastics. The material can be used in a vast array of products, from consumer goods (dish or pot brushes etc.) to industrial applications such as pallets or load-bearing structures reinforced with glass fibres.

Big Corporations: Producers and Brandowners The chemical industry too looks to the sector of biomaterials, led by Perstorp Group,

allocating 85% of its expenditure in Research & Development to environmental sustainability.

A world leader in the production of polycaprolactone polymer (PCL), traded under the Capa trademark, over the last few years the Swedish group is investing in the development of new bioplastics: in 2014, a new pilot plant has started in Warrington (UK) and in 2015 a research and development lab in the small town of Perstorp has become operational.

“We are improving our competitiveness in bioplastic – Linda Zellner, in charge of the Perstorp’s Bioplastics Projects, informs us – where we are going to be at the forefront in the development of new products, since Capa Thermoplastics adds significant value to the performance of biopolymers and end-of-life solutions.”

In particular, according to Perstorp, Capa is certified as compostable and 100% biodegradable within 45 days, it is hydrolitically stable and thus usable for a number of applications and is compatible with biopolymers such as PHA and PLA. Today the company focuses on three main growth segments of bioplastics: paper lining, bags, films and packaging.

In the field of packaging and food packaging, Sweden can boast one the world’s top players: Tetra Pak. The company founded in 1951 in Lund has already marketed a Tetra Rex, a package 100% made from a renewable source, exclusively produced with paper and polymers derived from vegetable sources.

Just as the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certified paper, the polymers can be traced back to their origin and this allowed the container to receive the highest level of bio-based certification by Vinçotte – a Belgian accredited inspection and certification organisation recognized worldwide. The vegetable-based polymers used by Tetra Pak are not made in Sweden, but they are manufactured by Braskem, a Brasilian biochemical company deriving its raw materials from sugar cane farmed on degraded soils.

Tetra Pak cartons are already used by the dairy giants such as Finnish Valio and Danish Arla to market milk-based drinks. This is just a first step, because Tetra Pak is currently in talks with a number of companies in various parts of the world to launch the container.

“We estimate – the Swedish company states – that considering the product’s whole life cycle, the choice of biopolyethelene compared to fossil-based polyethelene will reduce the carbon footprint by 20-35%.”

From packaging to furniture, an all Scandinavian partnership between Ikea and Finnish Neste. The Espoo-based company will provide the Swedish furniture giant renewable and biobased plastic materials. Such collaboration combines Ikea’s commitment to reducing its own reliance on virgin fossil

Policy materials and Neste’s competence in the development of new products from renewable sources, as residues or waste. “We are very pleased – asserted Tuomas Hyyryläinen, Senior Vice President, Strategy and New Enterprises in Neste – to create a partnership with Ikea.

Ikea’s commitment to starting a change in the industry is an extremely important step in the redefinition of the way products will be manufactured and of how raw materials will be used in the near future.”

“Ikea is going to contribute to a transformation of the industry and the development of plastic materials produced from recycled or renewable sources. In line with our objectives, we are moving away from fossil-based plastic materials towards those produced from more sustainable renewable sources, such as waste and residues, not using palm oil and byproducts as raw materials,” added Lena Pripp-Kovac, Ikea’s Sustainability Manager.

The theme of sustainability is also a fundamental point for Hennes&Mauritz AB, another Swedish multinational company, commonly known as H&M, the clothing giant with 116,000 employees scattered around the world, since 2015 a partner for the Ellen MacArthur Foundation for the circular economy. “At H&M we have a long-term vision to become 100% circular, using for instance recycled materials or from other sustainable sources,” states Felicia Reuterswärd, H&M Sustainability Manager.

One of the most promising research spheres, in which Stora Enso itself is heavily investing, is the use of wood as raw material to produce textile fibres. “The world is using more and more fabrics and there is a growing demand for sustainable materials, such as wood fibres,” affirms Weronika Rehnby, in charge of sustainability for TEKO, Swedish Textile and Clothing Industries. “We are searching for renewable and reusable materials, and in this respect sustainably-produced viscose is an excellent alternative to cotton.”

High-Quality Research

RISE, www.ri.se/en

Rise Bioeconomy, one of six divisions of RISE (Swedish Institute for Research), co-managed by the Swedish government is leading the Swedish transition. In 2016 Inventia AB, the company of active research in the sector of cellulose, paper and packaging also joined the team. Already in 2011, in Stockholm, it had opened the first pilot plant in the world for the production of nanocellulose (a new entirely renewable, light and sturdy material that can be used in many sectors. In the production of paper and cardboard it can act as a reinforcing agent, in the lining for food packaging it can be used as protective material against oxygen, water vapour, fat and oil).

The new 2018-2020 research programme for research on the bioeconomy is the

work of RISE. Such initiative is conceived as an accelerator in its own right based on the research for the Swedish bioindustrial transformation.

“The programme – RISE say – offers a unique company network, a meeting point for debating and conceiving binding ideas.”

The research topics stem from industrial needs, global trends and market drivers and will be constantly reviewed, refined and classified throughout the programme.

The target is the production of new biomaterials, but also bioenergy, bio-based chemical product and biofuels for transport, that “nowadays – the RISE people claim – are at the top of the political agenda, as a way to reduce fossil-derived CO2 emissions while increasing the use of renewable materials with the use of local resources.”

Within the framework of policies supporting research and development on biochemicals, “BioInnovation” is also worth mentioning, which with a yearly budget of €10 million it involves 60 players of the Swedish bioeconomy, one half of which are companies and the other is made of research organizations. Its target is to develop innovative and high-yielding materials, as well as services and products based on renewable raw materials in four areas: chemical products and energy, construction and design, materials and new uses.

Universities do not just stand by: research on the use of biomass is carried out in over 30 top universities’ departments and centres including Royal University of Technology (KTH), Chalmers University of Technology, Lund University and Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences.

Their work created Gobigas, the first plant in the world for the continuous production of high-quality biomethane from biomass through gasification. The relation between the industry and academia underpins the growth of the bioeconomy, according to Growth Analysis. “Encouraging exchange and collaboration amongst companies, universities, research institutes and other stakeholders in the fields of the bioeconomy and in other sectors where new markets can be created is a priority measure,” equal to the creation of a market through a system of green public procurement.

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renewablematter 18. 2017 Interview

by M. B.

From Wood to Biomaterials Andreas Birmoser, Stora Enso

“Stora Enso will continue to expand its biomaterials focus while remaining committed to its current customers in pulp, paper, cardboard and wood products. Wood is our most important raw material and we know more can be extracted from wood and other non-food competing biomass to create a range of high-performance, bio-based products.” To say it – in this exclusive interview with Renewable Matter – is Andreas Birmoser, SVP Strategy and Business Development at Stora Enso Biomaterials.

With the manager of the Scandinavian pulp and paper company we talk about its trasformation into a renewable materials company, the bioeconomy and the circolar economy.

Stora Enso, www.storaenso.com

Stora Enso is increasingly a renewable materials company. What are your next steps to replace fossil-based products?

“Indeed, Stora Enso is transforming into a renewable materials company. We are exploring new ways to efficiently use wood and other non-food competing feedstocks to meet customer and consumer needs with alternatives to fossil-based materials. Paper, cardboard, commodity and specialised pulp are our largest market segments. However, with paper use

declining, the company is diversifying its offer and developing new products.

New technologies are enabling Stora Enso to extract hemicellulose, sugars and lignin from biomass and use these fractions more efficiently for new applications.

“The Stora Enso Biomaterials division was set up in 2012 to focus on innovations in bio-based materials and further develop our market pulp business. Through our four innovation clusters, the Biomaterials division is working to transform non-food-competing, non-GMO, second-generation biomass into solutions for its customers. 11 years ago, paper was 70% of Stora Enso’s business, while today it only represents 31%. Biomaterials account for 14% of total sales.

“One of the main focus areas for the Stora Enso Biomaterials division is the development of its extraction technology platform, based on biomass. Technology was acquired from Virdia in 2014 and is being developed at a plant in Danville, Virginia. Later this year, a demonstration and market development plant in Raceland, Virginia will come online.

At Raceland, xylose will be produced from sugarcane bagasse, which can be transformed into

The four innovation clusters of the Stora Enso Biomaterials division

Pulp applications

Cellulose modification and pulp process by-product

Develop extraction technology platform

Transforming sugars

Policy xylitol and demonstrate the acquired extraction technology.

“Lignin extraction has also been a recent focus.

In 2013, we began commercialising dried Kraft lignin, having invested €32 million in new lignin separation technology at our Sunila Mill in Finland.

Using LignoBoostTM technology, Sunila has been producing lignin since 2015.

“Lignin is an ideal candidate for producing new materials and intermediates. Refined lignin can be a replacement for oil-based phenolic materials which are used in resins for adhesives e.g. in plywood, veneer applications, laminates and insulation material. In the future, Stora Enso is looking into the possibility of developing lignin into carbon fibre applications.”

Today it seems that the bioeconomy paradigm has been surpassed by the circular economy, although the latter is in many ways still fossil-based. How could your company fully integrate these two paradigms?

“The circular economy is rapidly gaining momentum and awareness as a concept.

Much like the bioeconomy, it has the potential to create new jobs while reducing dependence on energy and primary materials. Stora Enso sees the bioeconomy and circular economy as complementary concepts – the bioeconomy’s strong research and innovation dimension can contribute to the circular economy transition while also reducing dependence on fossil fuels and reducing carbon emissions. Bio-based products have a more balanced carbon cycle and a shift to biorefineries, which use renewable resources, will make the circular economy more sustainable.

“The focus of Stora Enso Biomaterials’ business platform, based on biomass, is to efficiently extract different fractions from wood and other biomass, leading to cellulose fibres, C5 sugars, C6 sugars and lignin. Once the technology is demonstrated, this biorefining model could be integrated in existing pulp mills.

“Recently, Stora Enso EVP Per Lyrvall was appointed one of 25 representatives for the Swedish government cooperation programme ‘Circular and Biobased Economy,’ which aims to grow the bioeconomy and promote circular solutions.”

Stora Enso, whose packaging users around the globe include Nestlé, Starbucks and Barilla, now aims to become market leader in China on high-end food and drink packaging. Is there now a demand from consumers for new forms of more environmentally-sustainable packaging?

“Demand from consumers – and brands – for more environmentally-friendly packaging has certainly been increasing over the last few years. This is why we are developing extraction and separation technologies, to get the most out of non-food-competing biomass and reduce costs. However, an issue which continues to

limit uptake of bio-based packaging is a lack of awareness and misunderstanding of what bio-based means, as well as what the difference between bio-based and biodegradable is.

It is vital for businesses to acknowledge this and educate customers and brands on the sustainability and performance benefits of bio-based products.”

Do you use a specific labelling system for biobased products?

“All of our wood is 100% traceable to its forest of origin. Stora Enso promotes credible forest certification and works actively with stakeholders to promote sustainable forest management.

Our wood comes from forests in the Northern hemisphere and eucalyptus plantations worldwide.

“Currently, Stora Enso uses existing ecolabels (such as the Nordic Swan and the EU ‘Flower’) for its products.”

How relevant are the policies implemented

by Finnish and Swedish governments in supporting your R&D in the bioeconomy?

What are the strengths and weaknesses of the bioeconomy in the Nordic countries from your point of view?

“Finland has a bioeconomy strategy which strongly supports Stora Enso’s goal to become a truly renewable materials company.

The current governments’ key development areas, ‘Bioeconomy and clean solutions’ are also well in line with Stora Enso’s transformation.

“The Swedish government is working on strategies to support production based on renewable raw materials. Their environment and climate strategy is being updated and a national forest strategy, which will support bioeconomy development and therefore Stora Enso’s business, is also being developed.”

In a nutshell, is your future fully bio-based?

“Stora Enso will continue to expand its biomaterials focus while remaining committed to its current customers in pulp, paper, cardboard and wood products. Wood is our most important raw material and we know more can be extracted from wood and other non-food competing biomass to create a range of high-performance, bio-based products.”

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renewablematter 18. 2017

The Circular Economy: A Transformative Force for Climate Change

We need to deal with the core issue of climate change rather than settling for treating symptoms.The circular economy’s transformational power.

by Matthieu Bardout

Previously published in Swiss ECS, NZZVerlagsbeilage, 18 September 2017 (www.swissecs.ch/ de/medien-kontakt/ medienecho)

Expert in energy’s geophysics and infrastructure sectors, Matthieu Bardout was formerly consulting on climate finance and policy, renewable energy and sustainability. Today he is leading Circle Economy’s consulting services.

1. Jelmer Hoogzaad is a low-carbon and circular economy expert who recently conducted a metabolic study of Laos for the UNDP tinyurl.com/yddte6y3

The circular economy offers transformative mitigation opportunities to tackle energy and material efficiency in parallel. It addresses the root causes rather than the symptoms of climate change, and will significantly alter the way we think about and work with materials, products, services, and waste, so that we not only meet but exceed our current mitigation commitments.

The past few months have seen a number of developments that set off alarm bells and further mobilised the global community in the fight against climate change. In March, the Ellen MacArthur Foundation (EMF) released a report forecasting that there would be more plastic than fish in the world’s oceans by 2050 under a business-as-usual scenario. Later in June, president Trump announced his intention to withdraw the United States from the Paris Agreement, despite the international community’s best diplomatic efforts to prevent him from doing so.

Both developments are deeply embedded in the fabric of our linear economy. Our “takemake-waste” culture continues to generate unfathomable quantities of waste, and our addiction to fossil fuels is incompatible with the aspirations of the 194 countries that have signed on the dotted line. And while citizens, businesses, cities, and countries are all taking increasingly bold action to combat climate change, current commitments are still not enough to meet the 2 °C, let alone the 1.5 °C targets we have set for ourselves.

The link between plastic waste and the Paris Agreement does not stop there either: plastics, and more broadly the materials we use, are intricately linked to greenhouse gas emissions.

As Jelmer Hoogzaad1 explains, “as we continue to rely on fossil fuels to extract, process, and transport materials, as well as to deliver, consume, and dispose of products, ineffective material management ultimately accounts for as much as two thirds of global emissions.”

It’s become clear that pledges to incrementally reduce the emissions of our industrial systems are no longer enough, and that the climate mitigation community needs innovative and systemic solutions to bolster its efforts.

This is where the circular economy comes in.

Defined by EMF as “an industrial system that is regenerative and restorative by design, rethinks products and services to design out waste and negative impacts, and builds economic, social and natural capital,” the circular economy calls for a paradigm shift. Its adoption relies on both material and systemic approaches, captured in Circle Economy’s “7 key elements of the circular economy:” prioritising regenerative resources (including renewable energy), preserving and extending what is already made, using waste as a resource, rethinking business models, designing for the future, collaborating to create joint value, and incorporating digital technology.

Applying these principles to our economies opens up additional and innovative mitigation opportunities that step away from traditional efforts – such as renewables and energy efficiency – and prioritise the use of low carbon

Policy

Circle Economy, www.circle-economy.com Report Ellen MacArthur Foundation, The New Plastics Economy: Rethinking the future of plastics, tinyurl.com/znkjp7j Circle Economys’ Seven Key Elements of the Circular Economy, tinyurl.com/y8ngqfvo

THE SITUATION Under a business as usual scenario, the global temperature by 2100 will be more than 4 °C above pre-industrial levels

materials, dematerialisation, and system change. Using wood instead of concrete in large scale structures, for example, effectively transforms carbon sources into carbon sinks. Similarly, developing digitally-enabled product-service systems considerably reduces the need for physical assets, and in doing so positively impacts mitigation. Perhaps more importantly, the circular economy calls for us to rethink the functional needs of our society – from mobility and shelter, all the way to energy – and enables us to design a system that delivers these services more effectively.

Tapping into the circular economy’s climate

THE END GOAL To limit temperature rise to 1.5 °C, we need to cut greenhouse gas emissions from 65 to 39 billion tonnes CO2eq per annum by 2030

National commitments Renewable energy Energy efficiency Reduced deforestation

Business as usual

Circular Economy Recovery and reuse Lifetime extension Sharing and service models Circular design Digital platforms THE GAP

Impact of current commitments

COP21 ambition

THE SOLUTION Current national commitments achieve about half of the required emissions cuts.

Circular economy may fill about half of the remaining gap

Other measures Further scale up of renewables and energy efficiency Reforestation Climate-smart agriculture

change mitigation potential, however, requires for key levers to be activated in climate policy, negotiations, and finance.

For instance, while emissions are currently accounted for on sectoral and national levels, the circular economy promises to deliver cross-sector and cross-border mitigation by improving efficiency across value chains (e.g. through cooperation) and allowing for synergies across industries (e.g. industrial symbiosis). As such, it is key for policymakers and negotiators to recognise the need for these new mitigation options and to support and enable them with adequate policies and implementation frameworks such as consumption-based accounting.

As the circular economy concept matures and implementation efforts multiply, pioneering initiatives and organisations also need high-risk catalytic capital to push the circular snowball down the hill. National and multilateral development banks should therefore scrutinise their investment portfolios to understand how they have supported circular initiatives in the past, and how projects they support relate to climate finance.

Such analyses will enable us to better understand the adequacy of existing financial instruments to support the circular economy’s scale-up, and to develop new ones as needed.

The circular economy is here to stay.

Now is the time to make it a driving force for the ambitious climate action we need!

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Focus on Building

The Building Revolutionary

from Singapore

Interview with Tai Lee Siang

An interview with World GBC president Tai Lee Siang about zero emission building and the difficulties of the circular economy in the construction sector.

by Emanuele Bompan

LEED – Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, leed.usgbc.org Greenbuild International Conference and Expo, www.greenbuildexpo.com

Images: Evo Tre studio dealt with the sustainability aspect of Palazzo Ricordi (Milan)

World GBC, acronym for Green Building Council, is one the leading global association whose goal is to make the building sector sustainable. Born in 1999 in California, with member organizations in over 80 countries, it is the largest international organization influencing the green building marketplace.

It represents over 30,000 property and construction companies, while supporting existing and emerging GBCs at national scale, and provides them with tools and strategies to promote green building across the globe, with the clear goal of reducing carbon emissions, build healthy and regenerative environment and support a new vision for the built environment. GBC is associated with the development of the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) green building rating systems and its annual Greenbuild International Conference and Expo, the world’s largest conference and expo dedicated to green building, both created by the US branch of GBC. After becoming prominent at global level, thanks to the work of the ex-president Rick Fedrizzi, who has been able to re-tool the World GBC creating a path forward, the association is now poised to lead the acceleration of the building sector transformative process under the guidance of its new president, Singapore born Tai Lee Siang. His philosophy revolves around

some key pillars: transformation should be holistic and at grand-scale. The green building revolution can no longer be done one building at a time. Blocks, neighbourhood and whole cities should be either retrofitted or built with a solid near-zero emission, no-waste, regenerative philosophy in mind.

Renewable Matter interviewed Lee Siang during his visit at Palazzo Ricordi, a benchmark LEED-certified building, in Milan.

The WGBC challenge is larger and more complex than ever. A herculean task ahead: accelerate and industrialize the building sector and support the retrofit and regeneration of millions of buildings around the globe to cut CO2 emissions.

What is your plan?

“Let me explain the context. I think there are two things we are looking at. One: how much time do we have? If we keep maintaining our business as usual soon global warming is going to be out of control, with a well-over 5 °C increase. So I think we agree that we have to look at 2030/2050 targets very seriously.

We have to focus on bringing building standards to the highest level: Zero carbon emission by 2050, whether is new or whether is an existing building. Second: how can we involve a large number of stakeholders?

We have to get our members to push

Case Studies initiatives, and focus on building aiming to the Zero carbon goal. In order to do so we need to engage citizens. This requires a great communication effort. We have and will have campaigns to reach out to ordinary citizens, community groups, to educate them on the benefits of green building. Scale is key in my visions. As I always said, buildings exist not in isolation, but in cities. Therefore, systemically, if the city is not green, no matter how green the building is, it’s not going to work in the long term. We need governments and PAs to green infrastructure may it be an entire city. We will be studying how we can do that. If we want to reach the target of the Paris Agreement and stay below the 2 °C we definitely cannot focus on single construction.”

Tai Lee Siang is the new chairman of World Green Building Council. He held the position as President of Singapore Institute of Architects and is currently the Group Managing Director of Ong and Ong Pte Ltd, a multi-discipline consultancy firm that provides 360º solutions encompassing Urban Planning, Architecture, Engineering, Landscape Architecture and Interior Design.

During your presentation you affirmed that is very important to focus on developing countries. Is your goal to increase the number of GBCs in areas where there is more potential to achieve a green building revolution?

“Yes indeed, I want to see the number of Council rising in the gap regions, especially Africa and Middle East, where GBC has historically less impacts, measured in countries where we have members. I’m not saying that those countries don’t have green movements but they are not organized to tackle the construction industry and there

is a massive potential to address development now while under process, than later. Therefore those are the two regions we want to spend more time investing our manpower and our resources.”

Talking about the low-hanging fruits to tackle green building, what should be done?

“I think we have to look at two priorities, both involving people. The first one is involving civilian governments and administrations.

Once you have engaged with them, they will multiply and spread the vision, pushing for a top down leadership. This is why while in Italy I met the administration of the Municipality of Milan, Turin and many other cities, thanks to the support of GBC Italy.

“The second group of people we need to target is actually the building community making them understand the huge economical opportunity. Then of course you have an interesting opportunity given by social media and online newspaper: today with our campaigns we can reach millions in an instant.

I do believe in the power of communication.

GBC national communications offices play a key role and we need to acknowledge that.

I think with a coordinated effort we can turn the tide a lot faster.”

Not only zero carbon emissions, but also future buildings will need to be circular, designed using recycled materials and constructed to be reused, recycled, and ready to function as a regenerative body. This is even harder than just going low-carbon. Do you think it is too premature to go circular?

“The concept of circular building is not easily understood, because in a country or city where you have vast resources, where every day you could generate new materials locally, it is hard to understand the need for recycled or renewable materials.

“However, I worked in Singapore, a very small city-state, where we have no natural materials, everything has to be imported from overseas.

There, we must, for example, recycle concrete.

To the point that now it has become very popular, because the costs of demolishing buildings are higher than just recycling them.

It instantly turned into a business. Now they are using recycled aggregate, generated from buildings that are demolished.

But it is only possible because the costs of removing demolitions are higher than recycling. I am not sure this is really feasible in a country with resource availability like Germany.”

How about other materials?

“I see great opportunities for renewable materials, like wood or flooring materials such as nylon carpet or bamboo flooring, something that’s really user- and recycle-friendly.

27

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renewablematter 18. 2017 Emanuele Bompan, an urban geographer and environmental journalist since 2008.

Together with Ilaria Brambilla he authored the book Che cos’è l’economia circolare (“What’s the circular economy”), Edizioni Ambiente, Milan 2016.

Overall I think we have an issue with perception: today people do not appreciate the use of recycled materials in brand new properties, especially if they are paying higher prices. However, people who have the right motivations and see the importance of renewable materials will accept using them, regardless of costs. Here I am not thinking about the builders, rather the end-users.”

How can we overcome this?

“In a very high-end environment it is very hard to change mind-set. Unless you create a culture, you won’t change it. Supposing, instead, everybody understands the importance of sustainability, as a culture, then using all renewable matter becomes a no-issue. It turn to be a pride of life, it becomes an identity. This could be the way.”

Info www.worldgbc.org

Singapore for you has been very instrumental in looking at cities in a different way. The city is known to be a great example of regenerative city due to land constraint. In particular, water availability is very limited, a key element to conserve in the future. What type of strategy should architects adopt for water?

“Water is not an issue for a single architect or a group of architects, water is an essential means of sustaining life, it has to been tackled at least at the city level, if not at a national level.

So in countries like yours, where you have a lot of water, I assume, you may not feel it much.”

For now.

“In Singapore water comes from another country. So it means that if there’s no

agreement, we have no water! Our security is at stake. So we learn to preserve every drop of water we have on the island, creating reservoirs, recycling water, even sewage water for drinking. So we are completely sustainable in terms of water supplies, despite not having ground fresh water.”

Not only does the building sector have to change to be future-proof. How will the city form change? What will the main driver be?

“Internet is definitely the answer to this question, in particular for Millennials.

I truly believe sky-high property prices will not last for ever, Millennials already cannot afford them. So they have to think of new ways of living, new ways of working.

They can no longer afford to live in the city centre. The only ones that can afford it are middle-aged people and businesses.

This means that new communities have to be built far away from the city.

Either regenerating old villages or new sites, completely zero emissions, where new generations can live, work and play, where they are connected with the rest of the world.

They are very savvy Internet users and the greatest technology is the one could conserve your energy without moving unnecessarily. So you have more time to spend and improve the quality of your life.”

Is the city of the future not a megalopolis?

Is it a smart village?

“Smart is up here in the head, knowing how to live and play, and have time and resources in your hand, because you don’t waste.”

For now GBC goals remain Zero energy emissions or will we see more work toward circular economy models?

“We are looking at working with all the GBCs to define a broad set of parameters, where we can have to slowly bring in the issue about recycling, embodied CO2, reuse, in addition to just energy factors.

Materials have become important, but we can’t do this overnight, because countries need time to build their resources and capability. Right now we need to focus everybody’s attention to achieve GBC national target for buildings. But we will take into account any variables that can improve life on this planet.”

Focus on Building

2012 EARTHQUAKE:

The Emilia-Romagna Model A year and a half on from the quake, over 90% of the 600,000 tonnes of rubble had been removed. An example of excellent management based on teamwork, stringent deadlines and operational financial reporting.

by Silvia Zamboni

Silvia Zamboni is a professional journalist specialized in energy and environmental issues.

She has authored books on good practices of the green economy, mobility and development.

While an increasingly vehement debate is still ongoing over the failure to remove debris and rubble in the Municipalities of Central Italy hit by the quake a little over a year ago, a Region – Emilia-Romagna – proved extremely efficient in managing rubble from the seismic tremors of 20th and 29th May 2012 in an area between the Provinces of Modena and Ferrara.

Result (shrouded in an inexplicable media blackout): one year on from the quake, about 70% of rubble had already been removed; a year and a half later from the earthquake, over 90%.

It begs the question of why – as far as we know as we go to press – in the more recent 2016 quake it never occurred to anybody to ask for advice from those who demonstrated the ability to deal with the same emergency so successfully despite the fact that Special Commissioner Vasco Errani oversaw the reconstruction effort both in Emilia-Romagna (up until July 2014) and, for a year, in Central Italy.

True, the circumstances are different: in Central Italy, the municipalities involved are scattered within four regions (Marche, Umbria, Abruzzo and Lazio) and in geomorphologically more complex territories compared to the Po Valley because of, amongst other things, several mountainous bottlenecks. Numbers are also

different: in Emilia-Romagna the rubble to be disposed of was a little over 600,000 tonnes, about a quarter of the estimated two million tonnes in the 2016 quake.

Nevertheless, the doubt remains as to whether it is not worth resorting to something more than a couple of perfunctory and fortuitous contacts in order to establish what to transfer to Central Italy of the innovative Emilia-Romagna know-how. It should be borne in mind that everything was devised from scratch, following an earthquake hitting houses, private and public facilities, churches and monuments, affecting a production area with a high concentration of premium companies in the biomedical, precision mechanics and agri-food industries which people avoided to relocate from the very beginning. Yet another reason that spurred the local government to swiftly remove rubble to allow reconstruction and start afresh. Suffice it to think that a few hours after the quake the regional experts had already got hold of the aerial snapshots of the affected area. Those images, together with municipalities reports, helped provide an early estimate of the rubble to be removed and to calibrate the extent of the necessary intervention accordingly.

So what are the ingredients of the “Emilia-Romagna model,” praised by the very European Commission that with €15 million

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renewablematter 18. 2017 Removed rubble and rubble transport 268,575

REMOVED RUBBLE (t) tot 612,841.51

Source: Regione Emilia-Romagna.

48,472 2012 14,975

RUBBLE TRANSPORT (number) tot 31,895

289,707

2013

2014

3,526

848

1,713

2015

2016

2017

14,397

2,267

2012

2013

2014

143

37

76

2015

2016

2017

co-funded the necessary construction work?

“The trump card was teamwork: regions, municipalities, integrated waste management and storage sites services which after protracted debates, sometimes overnight, bonded into a harmonious team where each and everyone contributed,” states Francesca Bellaera

– Regional Directorate for the protection of the territory and the environment – who managed the whole intervention together with colleague Simona Biolcati, under the supervision of executive Cristina Govoni.

“The Emilia-Romagna Region, in particular, which has supervised the whole operation from day one – continues Bellaera – first of all dealt with the localization of initial facilities situated within the area affected by the earthquake where rubble would be stored; meanwhile it also defined a catchment area for each storage site.” Such task was achieved within about ten days (as testified by the Regional Circular issued on 6th June), “bearing in mind two basic criteria for choosing the facilities: proximity to municipalities and storing capacity,” points out Govoni.

Another winning factor was “naming” ordinary rubble as urban solid waste, a choice that avoided holding the necessary public tenders had waste been classified as special, thus entrusting local integrated service managers with transporting rubble. They, in turn, subcontracted the job to other companies.

“In this way, the initial removal of soil rubble or from damaged and unstable buildings to be demolished started as early as June, with an escalation of activities in which the municipalities collected the applications sent in by the owners of buildings,” explains Bellaera. Based on urgency

Rubble heap after treatment in fist reception waste facility – Medolla landfill

Top: Demolition carried out by the fire department in Rovereto (Novi di Modena) and preparation of rubble heaps for transport

Case Studies How rubble was managed TOTAL COLLECTED RUBBLE 12% 72,046

ALLOCATED RUBBLE

70% 428,084

13%

11% 69,996

6% 37,850

Recovery of selected materials

79%

Disposal Landfill road works/ daily capping

7%

Total treated rubble 612,841.51

1%

88%

Permanent landfill capping

Rubble temporarily stored Total allocated rubble 540,795.34

1% 4,864

The percentages shown in the second pie chart refer to rubble already allocated permanently, while those shown in the first one are total percentages including rubble temporarily stored.

Source: Regione Emilia-Romagna.

Bottom: Loading, collection and soaking of rubble prior to the phase of transport to first reception facility – Building site situated in Rovereto (Novi di Modena)

and characteristics, municipalities drew up lists of sites (nicknamed “building sites”) to be removed, which were sent every week to waste disposal managers and to the region.

“Taking into consideration the need to accurately trace movements and quantities of materials from the initial undertaking up to final disposal, an all the more sensitive subject when dealing with waste – highlights Govoni – a shared tool has been created, the so-called ‘dashboard,’ where every haulier, municipality by municipality, building site by building site, recorded the quantity of rubble removed. Such mechanism allowed the Emilia-Romagna region to monitor in real time the post-removal opening and closing of each building site. On average, such operation took three to four days.”

First reception facilities, in turn, weighed the incoming loads, lorry by lorry and reported them to the region that checked figures tallied, without grey areas or discrepancies amongst various sources. But that’s not all: lorries were monitored according to their registration and chassis numbers, load carried and obviously destination. This further stringent checks paid off and allowed highlighting abnormal situations: for instance, thanks to data cross-checking with those owned by law enforcement authorities, means of transports have been detected (used by a sub-contractor outside the region) associated to the registration number belonging to... a Fiat Panda. Investigative bodies are obviously on the case.

Besides traceability, the other motivation that pushed the Emilia-Romagna Region to devise such strict schemes was the accountability of the allocation of public funds (€4 million at the end of August) and the European ones.

The latter, in particular, had to be allocated to companies by the end of December 2013, “such deadline also played a role in speeding up operations,” points out Bellaera.

Adherence to rigourous book-keeping is also faithfully mirrored by the regional report on rubble management, extremely precise and featuring quantities (to two decimal places!) aggregated by municipalities, building sites, waste disposal management, first reception sites, both cross-referred and arranged in single-theme tables. What was the overall outcome of the operations? At the end of August 2017, 613,000 tonnes of asbestos-free rubble were reportedly removed from the 1,595 closed-down building sites out of the 1,774 recorded. 16 are still open, hindered by assets issues.

As to the ensuing reuse of the removed building material, in order to speed up the removal, rubble was loaded onto lorries as it was, without sorting it in situ, since such operation would have required more dedicated means of transport for the selected waste of wood and metal. Therefore, the sorting, was carried out at a later stage within the first reception facilities.

The only first-hand selection operated in the building sites involved on the one hand rubble containing or allegedly containing asbestos, for which, as it will be explained below, a specific procedure has been adopted and on the other, historic/artistic artifacts, entrusted with the authorities which, following some inspections, could approve or deny their removal. “After that, once the selection of valuable material to be preserved was carried out, hauliers came back into play and removed the rest,” explains Simona Biolcati.

We now come to the final destination of asbestos-free rubble removed and already treated and the reuse of recovered materials.

The end-of-August report shows 540,795.34 tonnes (88% of the total removed) allocated permanently, while the remaing 72,046.17 tonnes (amounting to 12%) are still temporarily stored.

As to the almost 541,000 tonnes of rubble which “have reached the end of their life” from

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renewablematter 18. 2017

Info ambiente.regione.emiliaromagna.it

a management perspective, 93% has already been reutilized.

More specifically, the permanent capping of exhausted landfills where rubble was discarded was the main purpose (for over 79% of the total of removed and allocated rubble); while 13% was used for daily capping and road maintenance within landfills; 1%, represented by selected iron and wood, was sent to facilities for the recovery of such materials; lastly, only the remaining 7% was disposed of.

“Unfortunately, due to current regulations it was not possible to reuse rubble, in line with the circular economy, to make new scratches from scratch, such as roads,” comments regretfully Govoni. “Nevertheless, we believe we have achieved quite a result, considering that only 6% was not recovered in any form.”

With regard to the management of rubble containing asbestos, it was agreed that if hauliers only suspected the presence of a tiny trace of the substance they would have suspended loading. Thus, the building site would be temporarily closed and recorded on the “dashboard” as “suspended building site due to alleged presence of asbestos.”

At a later stage, removal would follow, funded by the property owners, according to current

Left: Weighing of rubble in first reception waste facility – Medolla landfill

ordinary procedures, with some concessions made for timing due to the earthquake.

Then, in August 2014, it was decided that the Commissioner would also have dealt with rubble containing asbestos deriving from the earthquake (and not from ordinary reclamation not caused by the earthquake!). Then the building sites that were suspended reopened, while in collaboration with the municipalities a thorough mapping of the remaining sites with asbestos was drawn, 125 in total. So, with a first bid for tender managed by the region the final-destination landfill was identified and with a second, the hauliers. And here a snag occurred that suspended everything for a year: the company owning the Tuscany-based landfill that won with the lowest bid turned out, post audit, in breach of the antimafia regulations.

For that reason, the contract was revoked and offered to the second company down the list, at the centre of the eartquake area, that despite having made a higher bid accepted to carry out the job at the same price as the first successful tenderer.

Thus the removal and permanent storage of asbestos rubble resumed at the end of october 2015 and finalised on 29th february 2016.

Curtain.

Top: Bulk handling of rubble in first reception waste facility – Medolla landfill

Focus on Building

Looking after Inerts Rubble, bricks, sand, construction and demolition waste: every year we produce 45 million tonnes of them.

If 70% of all this were recycled, rather than landfilled, 100 quarries could be shut down for a year.

by Luca D’Ammando

Luca D’Ammando, a journalist, collaborated with the daily Il Foglio and now with Metro.

He also wrote for Vanity Fair and Sette.

Some figures first of all. At the moment, in Italy, there are 7,123 kilometres of motorways, 24,241 kilometres of state roads, 154,948 kilometres of provincial roads and 1.3 million kilometres of council roads. This means that the infrastructure sector, including maintenance and construction of new layouts, has a key impact in the production of waste and ensuing environmental pollution.

But, seen from another point of view, it is a phenomenal field where the principles of the circular economy can be applied, in order to relaunch the sector and reduce the impact of intervention, by pushing material recycling.

It is not about environmental utopia but rather concrete prospects, in fact a process already under way delineated by Italian laws and decrees but also by a European directive (2008/98/EC), according to which, by 2020, 70% of waste from construction and demolition should be recycled.

And there is no shortage of public and private

works already accomplished in Italy, albeit amongst many hurdles and slackening. The most obvious example is that of ANAS, an Italian public limited company whose only member is the Ministry for the Economy and Finance, directly managing about 26,000 kilometres of roads, including 90% of the State ones. Over the last few years ANAS has been revising its special public procurements, aiming at asking contractors the environmental certification for the construction site management.

A practical example of infrastructure made by ANAS through recovery of construction waste is the Mestre bypass, where they managed to save over 70% of material, i.e. 32,000 m3 of quarry material. In this way – and this should not be underestimated – about 40,000 lorry journeys for transport of material were avoided, thus considerably reducing carbon dioxide emissions.

A few more figures can shed some more light on the issue. Every year, in Italy, almost 45 million tonnes of inert waste is produced,

34

renewablematter 18. 2017 i.e. rubble, bricks, shards of glass, construction and demolition waste. If 70% of all this were recycled, rather than landfilled, at least 100 out of the 2,500 active quarries in Italy could be closed for a year, as Legambiente highlighted in its latest Recycle Observatory Report on construction material recycling, published last June.

Recycle Observatory Report, L’economia circolare nel settore delle costruzioni, June 2017; www.legambiente. it/contenuti/dossier/ rapporto-recycle-2017

Info www.stradeanas.it

Today, 62.5% of what is extracted from quarries in Italy is made of inerts. Throughout Italy there are at least 15,000 used or abandoned quarries, of which more than half are former gravel and sand quarries. A situation bound to repeat itself, with strong repercussions on the landscape and local areas, since the recovery of inert waste in Italy barely reaches 10%, according to UEPG (Union Européenne des Producteurs de Granulats) data, with huge regional variations.

In practice, the official estimates (Eurostat 2012) suggest 53 million tonnes of waste and recycling in the region of 70% at national level, but in Italy illegal processing distorts data completely.

Suffice it to compare, for example, Italian figures with those of the Netherlands – with a population four times lower have 81 million tonnes – to understand that something is not quite right.

That 70% is a huge step from reality.

The impact of quarries on the Italian landscape is one of the most urgent environmental issues, because Italy is still scattered with open wounds throughout the peninsula. It is a fact that today there no longer exist technical, performancerelated or economic reasons that can act as excuses not to use materials from construction recycling. In fact, the implementation of a circular economic system brings with it more than one advantage. First, in terms of employment and entrepreneurial activities, because European experiences show that both employment and number of businesses increase thanks to the creation of specialized supply chains. Second, reduced quarry extraction.

Because by reaching 70% recycling of recovered materials, over 23 million tonnes of materials would be managed which – as mentioned above – would avoid quarry exploitation.

Last, in terms of energy consumption and greenhouse gas savings. Indeed if from now until 2020 the quantity of recovered ELTs should double, thanks to the rubber powder derived from it, 26,000 km of roads could be paved. The consequent energy saving, considering that oil-derived products would no longer be used, would amount to 400,000 MWh, i.e. equal to two-year consumption of a city like Reggio Emilia, with a CO2 reduction of 225,000 tonnes.

Against this bleak backdrop, a positive example of circular economy that has been applied to infrastructure for several years is the use of rubber powder from ELTs in asphalts.

In Italy, every year, 350,000 tonnes of ELTs are recovered and stored in plants where they are ground and shredded to produce recycled

rubber, steel, textile fluff and alternative fuels to fossil ones. In 27 different provinces, 250 km of roads with recycled rubber asphalt are already in use, a technology whose strengths lies in halving traffic noise and a life expectancy three times longer compared to traditional asphalts.

Legambiente calculated that, if Società Autostrade used recycled materials for road extensions currently under way or planned over the next few years – amounting to 141 km – considering only foundation and bitumen layers, with the use of recycled materials there would be a saving of 400,000 m3 of material, equal to at least the annual production of two large to medium-sized quarries.

And yet, at the moment, none of such construction sites plan to use rubber powder in asphalts or aggregates and materials from recycling of roadbeds.

However, there are several obstacles to the 70% European target of construction and demolition waste within the next three years.

The first barrier is about construction sites of public and private works. According to many contracts, some categories of quarry or at least “natural” materials must still be used, which excludes exploitation of those from recycling.

In this respect, a substantial step forward has been taken with the introduction of minimal environmental criteria for the entrusting of planning services and works for new constructions, renovation or maintenance of buildings and construction site management by public administration.

A second hurdle stems from the absence of clear guidance and obligations for the use of materials from recycling in public works’ construction sites. In essence, the problem is that with regard to many materials from recycling there are still many uncertainties and this affects their use. This is why it is key to shed some light on the transition from waste to recycled product.

First and foremost because waste that did not successfully complete its recovery treatment, if used instead of traditional construction materials, creates serious problems for the construction business, both legal (illegal waste trafficking) and technical (failure to accept materials by managers). The objective must be to establish very specific technical and environmental criteria with rules on the geotechnical and environmental characteristics that aggregates must have for all materials we are discussing. This is a fundamental step to establish when, before specific recovery operations, waste stops being considered as such and becomes secondary raw material and therefore not susceptible to rules and regulations on waste.

Case Studies Interview

by L. D.

Reward those Using Recycled Materials Serena Majetta, head of Geology and Management of Materials for ANAS

With regard to the circular economy applied to the infrastructure sector, Serena Majetta has quite a lot to say. The geologist is Head of Geology and Management of Materials for ANAS, the government-owned company managing national roads relying on an investment plan of €30 billion a year that, for this very reason, can become the driving force for a truly sustainable development process, pointing out and highlighting management strategies for the whole nation. Such good intentions must take into consideration numbers and balance sheets. “ANAS’ objective – explains Majetta – is to find a production opportunity in a long-lasting context of effective reuse of waste from construction and demolition, while limiting the consumption processes of soil and primary resources.”

In this respect, the European directives seem stringent.

“True, the well-known 70% European target of recovered inert waste by 2020 sets specific targets and limits, but its practical implementation has not gone hand in hand, unfortunately.”

In a system with many hurdles, everything starts from public procurement.

“ANAS is setting up public procurements rewarding those using recycled materials, not just earths and rocks, but also secondary aggregates. Implementation of environmental certification for construction sites management, wherever the law does not provide for it. The objective is more and more to avoid exploiting quarries.”

An excellent intention, but is it currently achievable both from an organizational and an economic viewpoint?

“We cannot hide the fact that the sector is not ready yet. I am talking about ANAS, directly managing almost 25,000 km of roads, soon to become 30,000: it is still difficult to get hold and use without any problems recycled materials throughout such a vast network.

With reference to costs, there are already guaranteed supply chains, now the whole sector should be standardized.”

How are businesses reacting to such regulatory trend pushing for an increased use of inert waste?

“Most construction companies ANAS deals with would like more specific regulations and asks for their products to be tested, in order to have certification of suitability for the recovery materials. We often refer to former quarry companies that redirected their field of action. From this point of view, a very encouraging trend.”

Are there already practical examples of recyclable materials used in ANAS’s construction sites?

“Of course, we have been using milled material for the renewal of road foundations, blending it with foamed bitumen and cement. For example, on the A3, Autostrada del Mediterraneo, in the whole of the third macro-section the construction from scratch of the foundation layer was carried out reusing milled material. While along the State Ionian road the lime stabilization process allowed us to use materials from tunnel excavations. In practice, the stabilization process involves blending clay soils with added lime in order to make them suitable, resistant and stable.”

Have you got any relations with other bodies in order to coordinate a sustainable development of the whole sector?

“We are trying to create a consortium highlighting the main objectives and relevant strategies together with all stakeholders. In this respect, we are collaborating with La Sapienza University in Rome in order to start a virtuous circle where regulatory bodies can check construction businesses.”

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Focus on Building

CIRCULAR Business Models for the BUILT ENVIRONMENT

by Guglielmo Carra

The construction sector uses huge amounts of materials and resources and produces large quantities of waste: this model is unsustainable and inefficient. A research study by Arup and Royal BAM shows economic, social and environmental opportunities and benefits offered by the circular business.

The Circular Business Models for the Built Environment research study is available online: http://publications.arup. com/publications/c/ circular_business_ models_for_the_built_ environment

Arup and Royal BAM have been recently exploring the benefits and business opportunities that Circular Business Models (CBMs) offer to stakeholders within the built environment sector.

This research has been finalized in a publication available on arup.com.

Circular Business Models (CBMs) cannot be achieved without intervention, as in today’s economy there are numerous examples of

where it is currently perceived as more cost effective and convenient to dispose of resources after their first use rather than re-use them. By taking a systemic view across the whole life cycle of construction assets, using new technologies and applying advanced design approaches, additional value could be created. This value will demonstrate an economic business case for adopting CBMs. Funders, owners and occupiers will be fundamental to driving a “circular built

ENABLING FACTORS

Diagram: To maximise the value from a circular economy there are several enabling factors which will be needed. Generally these fall into 3 categories – design, information and collaboration. As a result additional value will be created through the operation, with benefits for the asset value and waste production. ©Arup&BAM

INFORMATION DESIGN Deconstruction Reassembly Future flexibility

Cost/condition Resource productivity Life cycle data Ownership Warranty Traceability

COLLABORATION Share incentivisation Transparency Innovation > new products Longer term business models vs short term

EXPETED OUTCOMES

OPERATION Performance over ownership Better utilisation More consumer choices

ASSET Materials and products kept at highest value for longer Maintenance and replacement certainty Total cost benefits

WASTE Material security Waste reductions over life cycle in use Open and closed loop solutions

Case Studies Guglielmo Carra, Materials Consulting Lead Europe, Arup.

environment,” by choosing to adopt alternative development strategies, ownerships structures and operations models. However architects, designers, engineers, suppliers, contractors and facilities managers will have a crucial role in creating circular solutions to facilitate a move to CBMs. Circular economy: an opportunity for the construction industry

Bottom diagram: A circular building will be occupied very differently to the equivalent building of today. Exactly how these changes impact tenancy agreements needs to be explored, with input from tenants, agents and building owners. ©Arup&BAM

The global construction industry is the largest consumer of resources and raw materials of any sector.

In the UK, the building sector uses about 60% of materials while in Europe demolition and construction waste amounts to about 25-30% of the total waste generated.

To reverse this trend a shift in the way the construction value chain has been historically seen shall be considered. Different elements such as the long-term design thinking, the role

of technology and innovation, the adoption of new production and consumption models and the importance of collaboration throughout the supply chain and the lifecycle of a construction asset can play a significant role to help businesses save on raw material and waste management costs.

By adopting the circular economy, the focus will shift to sourcing sustainably, maintaining material productivity over the lifecycle of developments, and reducing losses of non-renewable materials. This will produce financial, social and environmental benefits.

According to the ING Economics Department, the market for a circular economy is growing and it is estimated that over the next 10 years, this will boost economic growth by up to 4%.

At present, there are inefficiencies in construction business models, increasing costs at all stages of a building development cycle. From a manufacturing

Digitalization of information and the move towards a paperless office will reduce the need for office storage

Hot-desking, flexible working and mobile technology will reduce the total number of desks needed

CURRENT

FUTURE Changing patterns of work and growing pressure on land for housing may mean that our commercial building will be very different in the future and will need to flex with demand. Commercial buildings will be able to provide space for other users e.g. housing or care, thus bringing new “tenant” types as workin culture and needs change

Rather than renting floor space, tenants will rent workplace, allowing their overhead to flexibily respond to changing business needs Different users to use the same space at different times of the day, fulfilling its capacity

Office space for lease

WORK

£

£

37

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renewablematter 18. 2017 standpoint the global economy is spending 30% more natural resources than it can actually afford. During their service life, buildings and the built environment assets are not used to their full potential, e.g. it is estimated that office buildings are only used up to 65% of their capacity.

The true value of these assets is not always considered because of the cost of maintaining plant, systems, interior finishes, fit out, etc. is often not borne by the same clients.

All this presents a challenge and an opportunity for the industry to appreciate a product’s value in relation to a circular business model (CBM).

The circular economy when applied to a building development cycle will address these inefficiencies. Value is added by increasing the ability of assets to respond flexibly to market conditions, increasing asset use, diversifying income streams and maximising the residual value of a building’s materials. Challenges and opportunities exist in meeting initial research and development costs, financing

Bottom diagram: The current building development cycle creates loss of value and externalities at each stage. To reduce this inefficiency, each stakeholder within the value chain needs to interrogate their product/ role and consider how they could create further value instead of waste. ©Arup&BAM

The design often cannot account for changes to user requirements in the building

business model transitions and fostering sufficient collaboration between industry actors to achieve and share the potential system-level benefits.

Circular Business Models While traditional business models do not often favour collaboration throughout the value chain, the circular economy proposes new models that challenge all stakeholders to contribute towards an outcome that achieves the best for all parties, using components that retain the highest value throughout the lifecycle and minimises losses from the system.

Innovation (in the format of digital platforms, product passports, 3D printers and tagging sensors) will play a key role by enabling CBMs. Material databases shall be created to store the information required and facilitate their reuse and demonstrate their residual value through time and at the end of a building’s life-cycle. Furthermore, platforms like Building Information Modelling will become crucial to bring altogether people,

Components are cut and assembled on site, creating waste

Construction Contractors

Component are built and often cannot be fully disassembled

Waste is inadvertently designed into the building Manufacture Manufacturers

Manufacturers only guarantee performance at point of sale

Design Architects Engineers

Virgin materials are normally used, rather than materials with high recycled content

Briefing Client Logistic Suppliers Clients rarely consider the residual value of the building

It is currently difficult to return materials to manufacturers

Logistic companies do not track where products have been installed

Case Studies processes and technology to drive efficiency and improve performance. Alongside a new model of governance and regulations allowing the implementation of such models, this vision envisages a shift that will help to reduce relevant risk factors that might retain investments to be made as support to CBMs. To support the transition to the circular economy, investor, tenants and government will play a crucial role. More importantly CBMs would allow the retention of an asset at its highest value over time and support enhancement of natural capital. Different CBMs will be required at different stages of a lifecycle – design, use and recovery – of an asset and may work independently or collaboratively. Successful implementation of these business models will require action from designers, suppliers, service providers, contractors and end-of-life companies by sharing materials, systems, energy, as well as information and services. New business models would allow greater control of resource streams through the value chain so the added value can be identified and captured.

Additionally they will allow innovation through

Information about how the built asset is assembled is not retained in the most useful format, considering maintenance and the end of life scenarios

the supply chain, so new entities can be generated such as business in waste handling, refurbishment and reverse logistics. They will also enhance collaboration within the supply chain amongst all actors and enable the creation of services that capture valuable products/resources.

A circular value chain No company will work alone in a built environment based on a circular economy and businesses have the opportunity to expand the services they offer or collaborate with others to maximise value.

Traditional business models do not often favour collaboration throughout the value chain because businesses act independently of each other, rarely considering the aims of others in the value chain. Such a complex value chain generally has a staged approach where products and services are the inventory of one company and the receivable of another.

Therefore the risks and strengths of a company should be viewed collectively with its value chain.

High value of materials is lost at demolition because components cannot be disassembled

Demolition Demolition contractors Recycling facilities

Waste materials are often hard to segregate Materials are normally down-cycled, reducing their value

Landfill/recycling Recycling

Asset owners do not have enough information to easily reuse or repourpose their assets effectively

Use Tenants Owner Developers Facility managers Investors

Building are often under utilised.

Leases do not offer sufficient flexibility

Building is not adaptable for other uses

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renewablematter 18. 2017 For example, a business which bases their CBMs on refurbishing and maintaining their products may need to partner with a “tracking facility” provider so they can monitor and record where their products have been installed, and then work with a logistics company to ensure the expired products are returned. Technology will be used to retain data on materials locked in built assets (i.e. Building Information Modelling). At each stage of a development life cycle there are opportunities and challenges which need to be addressed. Different stakeholders will be involved in providing the solutions or may need to work together. Developing integrated value chains could give companies a competitive advantage in the future.

Future actions The complexity of the external environment still works to the advantage of the current linear model. Looking at the construction industry in particular, inherent contradictions pose challenges for the adoption of CBMs. To overcome these contradictions, the value chain needs to take the following into consideration.

Long term thinking The construction industry works in silos, with each stakeholder pursuing their own interests. For example, in a speculative building scenario, the developer tends to aim to sell the building as quickly as

Bottom diagram: This diagram demonstrates that there are multiple Circular Business Models (CBMs) which can be grouped into three categories: design, use and recovery – these relate to the stage of the building lifecycle when they will be engaged. ©Arup&BAM TRACKING FACILITY CIRCULAR DESIGN

CIRCULAR USE

This model aims to provide services to facilitates the tracking of materials, components and parts of a system so that they can be marketed and traded in secondary raw materials markets

CIRCULAR RECOVERY

PRODUCT AND PROCESS DESIGN These business models aim at providing planning and design for components, systems and ultimately the full assett in order to improve its service life. This includes specific solutions to improve how the asset is maintained, upgraded and refurbished or remanufactured

SUPPORT LIFECYCLE Consumables, spare parts and add-ons to support the lifecycle of long-lasting products

A strategic plan of process through the value chain is required for this business model to increase the reuse potential and recyclabilty of products, by-products and waste stream

Design

Procure materials

Make

Circular supplies

Logistics

Remanufacture Recycled materials becomes resource

CIRCULAR SUPPLIES These business models focus on the development of new materials to enhance renewable energy, bio-based, less resourceintensive or fully recyclable materials

RECAPTURE MATERIAL SUPPLIERS Recaptured materials, components and parts of a system are sold to be used instead of virgin or recycled materials. For example cement replacement in concrete

RECYCLING FACILITY This model focuses on transforming waste into raw materials. Additionally, revenue can be created through work in recycling technologies

Case Studies possible, which may deter them from investing in high quality materials and designing for longevity. If, however, the developer were to maintain ownership of the material in the building, there would be a greater incentive to consider the longer term.

To enable this new forms of contracts and partnerships are required. The reverse is generally true for infrastructure projects, whereby the client generally holds on to the asset for long periods of time.

Design for deconstruction The industry needs to rethink design – from designing components for maintenance, reuse or recovery to designing spaces with an asset’s reuse potential

in mind. Along with design for deconstruction the social value of circular assets should also be considered early within the design.

Innovate Solutions will develop within the value chain once requirements for the circular economy become commonplace. Contracts and the way we procure will undoubtedly change as we learn to incentivise the value chain. With increased demand from government and clients for circular requirements, innovation needs to be built into the construction process, which historically has preferred the use of tried and tested techniques, rather than utilising new technology. Pilot projects will help to

LIFETIME EXTENSION

PRODUCT AS SERVICE

In this case, the aim is to extend the service life of products, components and systems through enigineering solutions including easy disassembly and reassembly, repair, maintenance and/or upgrade SELL AND BUY-BACK In this case, a product is sold on the basis that it will be purchased back after a period of time

This CBM aims at delivering performance rather than products and the ownership of the products is retained by the service provider. The primary revenue stream comes from payment for performance delivered. This applies most obviously to mechanical plant, lighting, and fit out, but can potentially be extended to all parts of a building and infrastructure

SHARING PLATFORMS

Maintain and improve

This business model generates an increased utilisation rate of products by enabling or offering shared use, access or ownership.

At the same time it enhances off-site design and the use of collaborative production facilities

Resell

Sharing

Sell and market

In use End of life landfill

Reverse logistics

REFURBISH AND MAINTAIN Used parts and components are refurbished and mantained so that they can be sold

RECOVERY PROVIDER Provides take-back systems and collection services to recover useful resource from disposed products or by-products

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renewablematter 18. 2017 overcome potential skepticism and provide some learning to further develop the business case.

Info www.arup.com

Flexibility and durability Even if old materials can be reused or recycled in a flexible design, the maintenance work involved and the logistic processes use energy and resources.

This poses a dilemma between the flexibility of a building and its durability.

Durable buildings are built to last, whereas flexible buildings in a circular economy would allow for disassembly and reuse. Striking a balance between these two elements will be crucial.

Utilise new models of production and consumption Ideally, as little material as possible is used to optimise cost efficiency and to keep resource extraction and pollution to a minimum. However, looking at the realities of the construction process, a significant amount of material delivered to construction sites is wasted. This waste of material could be avoided considering prefabrication.

A circular economy requires changes throughout value chains, from product

design to new business and market models, from new ways of turning waste into a resource to new modes of consumer behaviour.

Collaborate Information sharing and collaboration throughout the lifecycle of a development will be key for pockets of innovation around circular design, construction and maintenance to become standard practice. This will only be achieved with co-operation throughout the value chain enabling circular economy business models to flourish in the built environment, enhancing the value of assets.

Diagram: A circular value chain as it should work in construction. ©Arup&BAM

Suppliers and manufactures have an opportunity to recovers materials at the end of a product’s life, allowing for a second source of income, through reselling or repourposing. Retaining ownership provides both long-term revenue asset security, protection from rising commodity prices and material scarcity and opportunity to further engace with costumers

Manufacturers/ suppliers

Designers will need to work closely with product manufacturers and suppliers to ensure building design allows for disassembly and adaptability

Contractors

Designers

Material extraction Recyclers/ reuse banks

Demolition companies will see an opportunity to change their business models to become material reuse providers, potentially teaming up with material extractors/producers to ensure a constant supply of materials

End users/ facility managers

Contractors will need to ensure users, facility managers and developers implement the circular solutions throughout the building lifecycle

HORSES

Prefer Rubber

In Umbria they built the first riding ground where, instead of sand, they used 30,000 kg of rubber granules from ELTs, thus ensuring advantages both for the environment and horses’ health.

by D. Z.

From car wheels to horses’ hooves the step is shorter that you might think.

To help close the gap is a project that thanks to an innovative use of recycled rubber from end-of-life tyres (ELTs) manages to merge the circular economy with animal wellbeing.

Orvieto’s Riding Centre

An ambitious project with a double goal: reducing the onset of articular and respiratory pathologies in horses and stimulating new uses of recycled rubber in the equestrian sector.

In Orvieto, in the green heart of Umbria, the partnership between Ecopneus – one of the main ELT managing networks in Italy – and UISP (Unione italiana sport per tutti, “Italian Sports for All Association”) has created the first riding ground entirely made with recycled rubber. An ambitious project with a double goal: reducing the onset of articular and respiratory pathologies in horses and stimulating new uses of recycled rubber in the equestrian sector.

Traditional flooring normally used in these structures subjects animals’ joints to excessive stress and muscular fatigue. Moreover, the use of rubber tiles in boxes and

passageways reduces the risk of dangerous slipping. But it does not stop here.

With this solution, litter materials are almost eliminated, simplifying cleaning operations while improving hygiene and healthiness of premises.

An enormous advantage since workers and horses’ most common respiratory pathologies are linked to silicosis caused by the inhalation of microsilica dust rising from outdoor grounds while training. Thanks to the Ecopneus-UISP project, in the outdoor training ground of “Happy Horse” Riding Centre in Orvieto, sand has been replaced by 30,000 kg of recycled rubber granules coated with coloured polyurethane resins, in this case brown: a process that prevents excessive heating of the material, protects it from exposure to weathering and confers the product a more natural look.

Under the layer of granules a bed of about 2,500 moulded rubber granules tiles was laid, taking the total of recycled rubber used in the centre to over 80,000 kg, a weight equalling about that of 9,000 car tyres.

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renewablematter 18. 2017

The recycled rubber was provided by two Ecopneus ELT shredding partners – Stecca in Fermo and Tritogom in Cherasco (Cuneo) – while the ground was built by Promix based in Bonate di Sotto (Bergamo).

Info www.ecopneus.it/en

From France to Italy The idea of using rubber products in outdoor areas of riding centres was first introduced in Northwest France, in a riding centre in Nantes. Ecopneus and UISP decided not only to import the solution but also to adapt it to the Italian context, adding “coating” of rubber granules to make them even more suitable for their end use. Now, a team of researchers from Perugia University’s Department of Veterinary Medicine, led by Francesco Porciello, will carry out a research project in Orvieto aimed at proving the advantages already emerged from a research study carried out in Nantes. Anyway, the first impressions from experts in this field are extremely encouraging: thanks to the use of rubber granules, dust dispersal has been reduced so much that the

ground no longer needs to be soaked before use; it is also clear that horses can move more comfortably thanks to rubber tiles compared to traditional hard concrete flooring.

Fabrizio Rueca, head of Respiratory Problems Studies at Perugia University, explains how the partnership with Ecopneus and UISP is moving in two directions. “The study involves environmental sampling carried out by the Occupational Health Institute through dust detectors on instructors, riders and in the environment. The veterinary side involves respiratory system endoscopy tests with bronchoalveolar lavage to spot chronic inflammation signs; silica crystals contained in sand can cause chronic respiratory illnesses and silicosis, noticed both in humans and horses.”

The first results of this research will be illustrated by Ecopneus and UISP at Fieracavalli in Verona from 26th to 29th October 2017, one the main international exhibitions dedicated to horses and riding, where about 20 boxes and passageways will be floored with prefabricated rubber

Case Studies tiles and where there will be a riding ground entirely paved with recycled rubber where tournaments and various activities will take place.

Searching for New Uses

Each year, Ecopneus manages about 250,000 tonnes of ELTs, amounting to the weight of 27 million car tyres: a huge amount of end-of-life products that is then destined to material and energy recovery.

Each year, Ecopneus manages about 250,000 tonnes of ELTs, amounting to the weight of 27 million car tyres: a huge amount of end-of-life products that is then destined to material and energy recovery. Despite having a calorific value greater than coal, ELTs are used to fuel power plants and cement factories, but the most interesting use – explicitly incentivized

by Community legislation – is undoubtedly material recovery thanks to which tyres get a new life and are transformed into new products.

“The Orvieto project – highlights Giovanni Corbetta, Ecopneus General Manager – epitomizes our approach to the development of markets for the use of recycled rubber derived from ELTs. We started by analysing international experiments, we carried out our field scientific research studies and adapted them to the Italian market and after improving some aspects we carried them out by combining the best expertise in each sector: veterinary medicine, sports promoting bodies and businesses of the Italian circular economy.

Our objective is to consolidate those uses where recycled rubber can represent a real turning point compared to other similar materials. This is the case of the equestrian

sector, where the benefit is to provide a fine material that in this context can offer considerable advantages.”

Currently, the sports sector as a whole absorbs over 40% of recycled rubber from the Ecopneus network: football grounds in state-of-the-art synthetic grass, indoor and outdoor basket, volleyball, handball courts, playgrounds and riding grounds already benefit from its elastic, shock-absorbing, anti-trauma and resistance properties.

Compared to energy recovery, material recovery is still the road to follow, not just for the recommendations coming from Brussels but also because recycled rubber can really make the difference compared to other similar materials from a costs, employment impact and environmental sustainability point of view.

But recycled rubber uses are not limited to the sports sector – from modified asphalt to acoustic insulation, street furniture products such as humps, speed bumps and crossing – satisfying the requirements set by the Green Public Procurement (GPP).

Not surprisingly, Ecopneus has been working with the relevant ministries to define Minimum Environmental Criteria (MECs) able to encourage public administrations to opt for the green procurement of these materials; the decisive push towards the consolidation of the market of recycled rubber products also depends on this: this is the only way to get closer to the 100% material recovery threshold.

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RECYCLING IS BETTER

than Mining

From the extraction of raw materials to the production of precious metals obtained from recycling electronic and industrial waste.

This is the story of a Belgian company that has managed to transform waste into gold.

by Antonella Ilaria Totaro

Employing about 10,000 people and with an €11.1 billion turnover in 2016, Umicore is a stock-market-listed Belgian company.

Headquarters based in Brussels and boasting a history spanning over 200 years, nowadays it is one of the leading experts on recycling complex materials (industrial and electronic waste) containing precious metals: it manages to recover 17 precious metals from over 200 input complex flows from all over the globe.

Besides its activity in the recycling sector, Umicore is one of the three global leaders in the production of catalyst converters for controlling the emissions of light and heavy vehicles and all types of fuels; it is also one the main providers of cathode materials for rechargeable

Case Studies 1. Umicore, amongst others, has an ongoing partnership with Fairphone, a Dutch company manufacturing the first circular smartphone (see A. Totaro, Fair Smartphones, Renewable Matter n. 17; www.renewablematter. eu/art/344/Fair_ Smartphones).

batteries used in portable electronic devices and in hybrid and electric cars.

While extracting more or less precious metals from old electronic devices and mobile phones1 is crucial, the most interesting thing about Umicore is its radical change of business model it has implemented over the last two decades, managing to transform itself from a metal extracting business (above all copper and zinc) into a company specialized in material technology and metal recycling. As a matter of fact, Umicore has completely abandoned mining: it recycles our waste from which it extracts metals becoming the so-called secondary raw materials.

It all started back in 1906 with the creation of The Union Minière du Haut Katanga (Umhk), operating in Katanga, a province of presentday Democratic Republic of Congo. Umhk’s extracting activity, above all of copper, contributed to the economic development of Belgium: over the years, the Union Minière became the world leader in the export of cobalt (in 1950, it controlled 75% of its production) but also of tin, uranium and zinc.

In 1989, the merger of the Union Minière with Vielle Montagne, the zinc producing company founded in 1805, Metallurgie Hoboken-Overpelt, a metallurgic company, and Mechin, an engineering company, led to the creation of Umicore. The recession of the mid 1990s hit the company’s profit pushing it to undertake

a deeper restructuring programme. In 1995, Umicore derived 90% of its revenue from commodities and mining activities and only 10% from advanced materials such as cobalt and germanium.

In the nineties, it started its transition from the extractive and metal sector towards clean technologies and special chemicals.

The company decided to change direction, starting a long transition phase requiring time, financial resources, vision and perseverance.

Its industrial plan entailed a €650 million investment in recycling and advanced materials and disinvestment in the mining sector, improving profitability and social plan. In the first step of the transition, in the late 1990s, it opened a new R&D centre in Olen, near Antwerp; it also started exploring the sector for battery materials in Korea and launched new production processes in Hoboken, where one of the historical Belgian plants of the company was based, and made its first investments in China.

The company’s positioning radical change led to two decades of investments and negotiations, takeovers and transfers needed to exit the zinc and copper market. Besides being time consuming, this process also required a lot of money: €5 billion in CAPEX (Capital Expenditure), R&D and environmental investments.

Environmental investments were also needed to tackle the legacy of Umicore’s previous activities.

In 1990, to cope with Umicore’s pollution of historical production plants, a clean-up process

Antonella Ilaria Totaro is a circular economy and sustainability expert operating in Italy and the Netherlands.

She is involved in startups and new business models, renewable energy, mobility and sustainable food systems.

She plants trees with the Land Life Company, which she oversees in Italy.

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renewablematter 18. 2017 2. 90% of the Union Minière’s workforce was distributed between France and Belgium.

Today, 46% of Umicore’s employees is based outside Europe.

was started, boosted between 2002 and 2003 (and 2006 and 2008). Thomas Leysen (the then CEO who was replaced by Marc Grynberg in 2008) committed himself to tackling any environmental legacy problems linked to sold assets. The clean-up activities posed problems, especially in France and Belgium.2

Umicore held several talks with Flanders’ authorities to reach a collective agreement and sign a deal in 2004 involving investments of over €150 million in clean-up programmes to tackle historical pollution problems. Over two decades on, the results have proved the Belgian company right. If back then, 90% of the Union Minière’s activity involved mining, today 60% of Umicore’s activity is based on recycling and clean mobility.

This Brussels-based business generates Karmenu Vella, the European most of its revenue and devotes most of Commissioner for Environment, its effort to R&D in Maritime Affairs and Fisheries, clean technologies, has recently defined Umicore such as catalyst as “great example of a company converters to that has completely reinvented control emissions and materials for itself to meet the challenges rechargeable batteries of the 21st century.” and recycling.

Umicore’s new trend makes also economic sense. If before its transformation, ROCE (Return On Capital Employed) was -2%, today it averages between +15-20.

Betting on recycling and clean technology enabled Umicore to create a closed-loop business model that now represents its competitive edge. Strategic investments that have enabled Umicore to expand even geographically, with new production and

technological activities in Poland, South Korea and Thailand. At the moment, and in the coming years, €300 million are being invested and will be invested to expand in China and South Korea in order to triple its cathode material production capacity by the end of 2018. At the same time, €100 million will be invested in expanding its plant in Hoboken by 40%, increasing its yearly recycling capacity from 350,000 to 500,000 tonnes. Thanks to its worldwide customer base and plants, Umicore builds its wealth exploiting three current very important trends: resource scarcity, air pollution reduction and electrification of transport. Umicore has been able to seize the opportunity offered by each of these three sectors entering the relevant market. To the resource scarcity, it responded with a recycling capacity enabling it to recover over 20 elements, including many precious metals. In worldwide efforts to introduce stricter regulations on emissions, it has seen global growth opportunities for auto catalyst converters, both for light and heavy vehicles.

Finally, in the growing lithium-ion battery market, Umicore has been able to become a leader in the production of cathode materials for rechargeable batteries.

From this transformation period towards recycling and clean mobility, Umicore has obtained important economic, environmental and social results also becoming a global leader in sustainability. It is no accident that Umicore’s activity satisfies UN’s twelfth Sustainable Development Goal, “to ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns.” Its knowledge acquired in the field of materials, technologies and in the material recycling sector, enables Umicore to transform waste into gold on a daily basis.

Case Studies Interview

by A. I. T.

A Transition Underpinned

by Technology and Collaboration Tim Weekes, Umicore Director of Group Communications

Info www.umicore.com

What was the main reason behind the transformation from a mining company into a recycling one?

“I think it was certainly a move to get away from very cyclical commodity production that was very unpredictable in terms of profitability, requiring a lot of the capital investment. Although not in decline, the mining sector was certainly not the most exciting place to be from a business development point of view. We decided to invest more in the downstream development of products and recycling linked to the metals that we were previously producing. So the main reason was to enable Umicore to take advantage of some new opportunities in materials like rechargeable battery materials or materials for photovoltaic. In order to do that we had to completely reorient our business and investments.”

What was the main challenge in the shifting process?

“One of the biggest challenges in the first instance was to find the way to separate and sell profitably the activities that were more cyclical and commoditised (that is with no qualitative differences on the market). It was a portfolio management challenge, to be sure that we were selling the right asset at the right time and investing in the right project at the right time.

“In 2003, we made a big acquisition that gave us a presence in the automotive catalyst market.

Certainly, you need a bit of luck; these are not business opportunities that come by every day.”

How important was the investor community?

What did your investors think of the shift?

“Investors were very understanding even though at the beginning there were some difficulties.

A number of investors were investing in Umicore purely because we were an interesting way to make money on the back of the commodity prices.

The zinc and copper price was high and so the Umicore share price would have been high. It was difficult because these investors didn’t want to invest in Umicore anymore. We got quite a number of new investors between 2000 and 2007 who really believed that the potential of the company was underestimated and as a company in transition the value would have been soon evident in the market.

As we sold the zinc asset and the copper asset we moved in some new activities like the precious metal products in 2003. These investors understood that

it was a long-term investment in a good forwardthinking company.”

Resource scarcity: what do you think will be key in the next few years?

“I think technology will be key. Umicore has developed a very competitive business model focused on a circular approach and a closed cycle.

The increasing scarcity of resources will be a value driver not just for Umicore, but for the economy in general. For example, one of the biggest growth areas for Umicore is the material for rechargeable batteries. We have already developed a system for end of life lithium batteries. When the electrical vehicles that are coming more and more on the market will need to be recycled and reach end of their life we have a technology to do that. This will alleviate some of the raw materials availability concerns that exist in terms of access to raw materials like cobalt, nickel or lithium. We need technology to be able to recycle. It takes a lot of innovation and effort, but it is worth it.”

What is the main advice you would give to anybody working in traditional sectors like the chemical or the construction one who are thinking about starting the transition?

“I think it is difficult to give advice. In the world of metals we are quite lucky. Metals are really suited for the circular economy: they are sort of protected elements with specific physical properties. Metals coming out at the end of the recycling process are in same state in which they entered, they can be recycled ad infinitum.

“Yet, over the years we have learnt that some collaboration is needed along all of the value chain, for example starting with suppliers, to understand the operations taking place and knowing their environmental footprint. Collaboration is important in all its stages: even with industries using your products and with end customers. Only by collaborating with all these players can we find a way to reintroduce materials back into the recycling loop. Having an overall understanding of the whole value chain and of the product life has a growing importance. In the battery and electronic sectors for instance, a collaboration with manufacturers is needed to be certain that products are easily dissembled. It is necessary to retrace the design, the materials used and in which proportion and their provenance to make sure their environmental footprint is as low as possible.

“No matter what industry you are in, collaboration is key to start the right transition.”

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Circulating IDEAS and

KNOW-HOW

Chemical, electrical and electronic waste, but also batteries and packaging. The Landbell Group operates these waste streams in more than 30 countries.

by Carlo Pesso

The story of the Landbell Group begins in 1995 with the advent of “take-back” policies: the set of measures that introduced the obligation for producers to recycle the packaging materials they used for their goods. It may seem strange today, but until Germany launched its Packaging ordinance in 1991, only very few materials – such as scrap iron – were routinely recycled. Until then, all over the world, consumer packaging and electronic products ended up in landfills.

Today take-back obligations and voluntary practices have spread across the planet

and across material waste streams. More importantly, consumers have adopted new behaviours, while innovative industrial and consultancy services are contributing to the development of a circular economy that is economically and environmentally viable.

As Germany spearheaded environmental measures and set up the scene for the development of what soon became the material recovery and recycling industry, many EU countries began to set up their own systems, driven by environmental, economic and strategic motives. They aimed to satisfy increasing citizen demand for a better

Case Studies 1. The concept of “co-opetition” was developed by Adam M. Brandenburger of the Harvard Business School and Barry J. Nalebuff of the Yale School of Management in a book published in 1996 with that same title.

environment and launch their own industrial recycling system. Given the dimension of the issue, the obvious solution was to entrust the EU Commission with the mission to work out a reasonable compromise that would, hopefully, satisfy all Member countries and their various stakeholders.

The process gave rise to a set of EU Directives that set quantitative recycling targets and qualitative requirements for several waste streams including packaging and electronic products. At the same time, the EU Directives gave Member countries the responsibility for setting and managing their own waste recovery systems. Although the intention of the Directives was to provide a level playing field for infra-European trade, in practical terms most firms faced the challenge of adhering to as many recycling systems as waste streams and Member countries where they traded.

Not surprisingly, perhaps, it would be left to businesses to develop an innovative approach which would lower the barriers to entry for these markets. For instance, European Recycling Platform (ERP) was created in 2002 by electronics companies HP, Electrolux, Sony and Procter & Gamble to ensure a coherent recovery system right across the continent.

In 2003, Landbell, then known as Landbell AG, emerged as one of the key players in the German household and commercial waste collection system by breaking, initially at regional level, the then prevailing monopoly and, by doing so, nurtured the development of seven other private

compliance systems. In practical terms, the company soon both competed and cooperated with the renowned state sponsored system, DSD (Duales System Deutschland). This form of co-opetition1 is a characteristic of the German relationship between central and local states, on the one hand, and enterprises on the other.

It allows companies to compete on price and service while cooperating to ensure that the DSD runs operations smoothly.

Of course, the overall fine-tuning of the system gave rise to robust conflicts and battles but this healthy co-opetitive culture provided the platform for Landbell’s recent developments and the company’s capacity to look at the bigger picture, such as the circular economy.

By 2012, having consolidated its core waste management expertise, and while already employing over 200 people, Landbell started looking beyond Germany and Austria to expand its client base and know-how into other waste streams. Accordingly, between 2012 and 2016, the company either founded, invested, acquired or merged with companies that best suited its ambitions.

These include: Terracycle (a comprehensive waste recovery system linked to an online recycled product distributor); Green Alley (a company selecting and promoting startups); ERP (the pioneering take-back specialists for batteries, packaging and electronic waste in over 30 countries); Prodigentia (a wastestream management software house, based in Portugal – see box); and H2 Compliance (the international consultancy

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renewablematter 18. 2017

Carlo Pesso, an environmental policy and sustainability expert, coaches individuals, start-ups, businesses and local authorities that are aiming to become major players in the circular economy.

company which specialises in environmental and chemical compliance).

The Landbell Group was born.

The Group now combines regulatory, procedural, technical and logistical know-how in over 30 countries and has expanded into chemical compliance and waste streams for electrical and electronic equipment, batteries, PV modules, as well as packaging.

The Group’s objective is to offer tailor-made solutions to fulfil customers’ take-back obligations for any material stream in Europe and beyond.

As Jan Patrick Schulz, Landbell’s CEO, puts it in describing Click & Comply, one of the company’s most innovative products:

“Our aim is to make sure our customers satisfy all of their take-back obligations, in whichever country they operate, through a simple click of the mouse.” Click & Comply is an evolution of EASy-Shop which was first developed for packaging in Germany and Austria.

Click & Comply is a tool for producers operating in many countries with small obligations. It helps them to manage and pay for their obligations quickly and online.

In a context of ever-increasing direct commerce through the internet, demand for such a service is booming and involves clients from all over the world. Recently launched in Germany, Click & Comply is being rolled out to more countries.

Landbell Group milestones

Foundation of

Foundation of Landbell in Mainz, Germany

Strategic partnership with

Acquisition of First to bring an online contract to the market

Acquisition of Landbell, as the second packaging scheme, ends the monopoly and starts competition in Germany

Founded in 2002

by Sony, HP, P&G and Electrolux

Acquisition of

Case Studies Landbell’s digital solutions unit: Prodigentia While the Landbell Group combines expertise all along material streams – with the aim of effectively closing the loop of circular material flows – it is the software branch of the group, Prodigentia, which delivers the tools that facilitate the overall coordination of these flows. “By bringing together our stream-specific technical, logistical and economic understanding of secondary materials, we offer our clients a comprehensive management tool.

As one of the main drivers of digital transformation in the circular economy, our technology can place our clients’ activities within the much wider global picture,” explains Christophe Pautrat, who leads the branch. He then describes where his company is making a difference by projecting European circular know-how way beyond the EU. Namely, today Prodigentia is providing a full stewardship software suite to the first compliance scheme in Brazil and supporting the operations of an existing product stewardship organisation in North America.

specific regulatory requirements. As a result, the relationship with the clients who launched the compliance scheme evolved considerably: in practical terms, from being a strategic supplier, Prodigentia has become their partner in a continuous quest for innovation and added value.

Prodigentia may also enhance an existing organisation’s efficiency and help it evolve to tackle new circumstances while improving performance. This has been the case for an important North American product stewardship organization, which was confronted with the difficult task of bringing together different regional government approved systems. Each system had implemented its own IT system, and the results were varied to say the least. So, in 2012, Prodigentia was called in to review and standardize processes, software tools and customer interfaces across the regions. The result was a single Green Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) tool which greatly increased performance and customer satisfaction. Augmenting the new ERP tool with Prodigentia’s reverse logistics module achieved further improvements, which definitely strengthened the capacity of that system to continue playing a central role in the North American circular economy.

A consortium of Brazilian manufacturers and importers have set up a compliance scheme to collect discarded lamps. To run their operations, they chose software developed by Prodigentia. The software comprises the members’ “black box,” i.e. the system that collects sensitive information about suppliers and partners, including trade and financial data relating to throughput and reverse logistics. www.prodigentia.com A great advantage of the system is that it offers bulletproof confidentiality, while providing members with reliable and timely information concerning compliance requirements. Furthermore, to ensure that the data collected is trustworthy, Prodigentia’s Cloud Platform a third party audits the collected data and procedures adopted to operate the system.

Another strong point derives from the link established between the system and the reverse logistics platform, which ensures that the information Registry Municipalities moving across the material recovery & clearing stream is fully integrated. Lastly, a user-friendly interface allows different stakeholders access to tailor-made information. It is also worth remarking that modules are integrated within a renowned Waste Compliance operators scheme enterprise resource planning Cloud Platform (ERP) solution that supports accounting and HR processes.

To achieve this important feat, Prodigentia deployed its resources locally to make sure it fully understood the customer’s needs and expectations and gained a very accurate understanding of the country’s

Manufactures

Retailers

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Green Alley Award, green-alley-award.com

Info www.landbell-group.com

Early in 2017, the Group entered into partnership with DHL Supply Chain, thus closing the circular material service loop for its customers globally. By accessing a single provider for both supply chain management and producer responsibility compliance, the new service loop offers customers the opportunity to optimise logistics and streamline operations. This combination also helps businesses reach their environmental sustainability targets, whilst reinforcing Landbell’s ability to support and optimise its clients’ internal operations.

Prodigentia’s material management software provides the framework that enables client companies to optimize internal material flows and material allocation taking into account real input and output streams. Christophe Pautrat, who leads Landbell Group’s IT Solutions division, underlines Landbell’s ability to maintain a global vision of material flows by linking it to local material generation: “Our clients track their internal material flows and Landbell’s software links these flows to what happens outside their company.”

“This is a key characteristic of our business model” – confirms Jan Patrick Schulz, Landbell’s CEO – “our clients don’t need to worry about regulatory compliance. Moreover, the Landbell Group provides them with the information necessary to improve their business.” This approach is rooted in the

co-opetitive principles that are part of Landbell’s DNA and which guided its development. The company has expanded into a very particular multinational: one that has grown by adding layers of know-how. Such expertise stems from different countries and circulates inside the group to better serve its clients. With this priority in mind, Landbell is preparing a series of circular material flow reports that will have different levels of definition: from highly confidential sector specific reports to confidential country reports.

The very special mix of nationalities, abilities and experience that make up Landbell Group’s added value is largely based on the great attention given, all along, to innovative developments. This focus can be seen in the Green Alley initiative which, since 2013, supports start-ups in the circular economy both by investing in innovative business models and by hosting a yearly Green Alley Award that brings the most promising initiatives to the forefront.

“After all – stresses Jan Patrick Schulz – the circular economy can only thrive on the circulation of ideas!”

Case Studies

Focus Recycling Quality

EXCELLENT WASTE

A journey into the Italian scenario of recycled matter, the cornerstone of the circular economy. Achievements and unfinished business to keep up with industrial innovations.

by Sergio Ferraris

S. Faccioli, “Looking After Green Spaces with GPP,” Renewable Matter n. 12, September-October 2016; www.renewablematter. eu/art/255/Looking_After_ Green_Spaces_with_GPP

Circular economy 2.0. This is how we could define the new phase of sustainable economy where the developments of the industrial supply chains generating waste are analysed, i.e. the processes that can reuse it as secondary raw materials by “inventing” intermediate stages. All this accompanied by great care for a correct economic balance of the processes that must remain on the market, otherwise the specially designed methodologies will not be utilized. It is a painstaking job, constantly searching for that balance that, up to a few years ago, seemed impossible to keep. Recycling quality is the cornerstone of the circular economy on which it depends for its very development.

Its improvement will rely on technological innovations, but also and above all on social ones in the short term, because a huge demand for recycled matter is expected over the next few years. In Italy, an update of the Codice degli Appalti (“Public Procurement Code”) demands, within the supplies linked to public contracts, an increasing share of recycled material.

This happened after the specific formulation of the Green Public Procurement (GPP), as the driving force of the circular economy.

Recognizing Quality In our quest to discover recycling quality we shall start at the end of processes, namely the

environmental label, set up by ReMade in Italy, certifying the percentage of matter from recycling within a “re-product.”

“The theme of quality of recycling and ‘reproducts’ is closely linked to that of traceability: in collections, in management at supply chain level, in the MPS and reproduct manufacturing. But this is not all” states Simona Faccioli, director for ReMade in Italy. “Today we are experiencing a new phase, where the use of recycling material is a core value for the product, while up to a few years back companies would hide the use of recycling material because they regarded it as an unrewarding factor in terms of marketability.” Tracing processes allows us to highlight excellences: “In Italy there are striking examples in this respect: besides the excellent and well-known results in packaging, there are truly innovative businesses, as is the case with the regeneration of used oils: such waste, amongst the most polluting, becomes a new product with equal or better performance, rather than being discarded with devastating environmental impacts. Or suffice it to think of the construction material sector, recovery, with innovative processes of waste and ash, the use of materials from tyres, from WEEE.” It is a matter of traces, to remember the flow of materials and their management. The fact that behind all this there are laws on waste

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renewablematter 18. 2017 providing for a series of obligations helps the certification process because it is a matter of sorting everything out according to the traceability scheme by ReMade in Italy.

“Once all the information on the provenance and processing of waste is obtained, with the flow and final mass balances we can state beyond any shadow of a doubt that a particular product contains that exact percentage of recycling material, as well as where it comes from and what route it went through” Faccioli concludes. The fact that an independent and accredited third-party body states this makes such certification a required tool in “GPP bids.” This is a growing trend that is bound to expand even more when GPP becomes even more widespread in public administration.

Hopefully, in the not too distant future.

Supply Chains of Excellence After labelling, let’s have a look at what happens in practice out there. In order to do that we are going to Veneto, to Gruppo Veritas to be more precise, a leading multiutility in the field dealing with waste and water management. The Group can boast excellent results in separate waste collection: the first five municipalities – amongst the 45 covered by the company for waste – range from collection percentages between 87.03% in Fossalta di Piave to 80.43% of Scorzè. This in a territory – the Venice province – where together with 900,000 inhabitants there are as many as 42 million tourists (almost 2/3 of the total visiting the region), that have been constantly growing over the past 10 years.

Such development has a strong impact in many sectors and also in the management of separate waste collection that in the Venice province has reached 61.5% in 2014, 63% in 2015 and 64.52% in 2016 nonetheless. For some time now, the Group has wrestled with the question of the quality of matter regenerated from recycling and also with the certification of the supply chain/platform. On the one hand, this further guaranteed the outgoing material and on the other it calibrated the recycling process. This is what is happening to the dry waste fraction, whose traceability, according to the company, is key. “The whole of our dry waste fraction is not landfilled, but it is turned into CSS (secondary solid fuels), says Giuliana Da Villa, head of the quality and environment for Veritas. “After tracing matter flows of mixed waste, it clearly emerged how many more substances we could recover and that can therefore be reintroduced in the recycling circuit.” Tracing such cycle – Veritas believes – means improving the environmental performance of recycling in general by recovering not just useful matter. The study was useful in that it determined how much can be recovered from dry waste and, through a series of detailed product analysis, it emerged

Case Studies

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

how much useful material could be recovered if all citizens were diligent and virtuous in separating waste. A system that allows having certainties with regard to objectives and to have specific industrial prospects. General waste production and in particular that of dry waste are dropping. The company is thus revising its plants with a view to selecting waste even more accurately before it becomes CSS, thus lowering its production. “Closing this loop is for us represented by the fact that the obtained CSS is used to produce power not in a dedicated plant, but as an added fuel in the neighbouring Enel thermal power plant, as a replacement for a coal share – continues Da Villa – where in an experimental phase first and then with the plant functioning at operating speed, it emerged that the environmental performance of the plant with regard to emissions can even be improved.

It is about the enhancement of waste that after being exploited to the full is recycled and is reintroduced into the network as energy.”

There is no social opposition and the 45 municipalities have accepted the decisions on change and plant upgrading unanimously.

But there is more, Veritas is also developing a direct relation with companies using the outgoing secondary/raw materials. While there is already a project for glass, with regard to wood, traceability made it possible for the material derived from separate waste collection to be directed to the production processes of Fantoni company. Not only will they reuse it, but they will also be able to certify the percentage of raw materials that have not derived from primary sources.

Result? Closing the loop of the supply chain. Traceability, which is essential for

the optimization of the recycling industrial process and to reach the environmental legal targets with regard to actual recycling, has also another advantage. That of feeding back to each Municipality the carelessness of citizens towards separate waste collection and the dry waste fraction, turning such inefficiency in environmental as well as economic cost data. This can act as powerful leverage to improve the collection phase because it allows mayors to communicate how many resources could be saved by improving and intensifying separate waste collection while improving environmental performance. Indeed, a few mayors used such data to encourage citizens to further improve the quality of separate waste collection and to decide how to use the money saved. In terms of traceability, Veritas is comparing communication with the increase in the quality of separate waste collection to ascertain whether there is a link.

Let’s now move to Tuscany where Sienambiente is operational on the intermediate phase of waste recycling after separate waste collection and focuses on plants and their modernization, achieved following two different rationales. The first aimed at meeting specific requests by bodies involved in the waste management cycle, while the second is about plant updating decided by the company.

“Either way we try and adopt innovations and improvements with great care, by applying criteria in line with current regulations but also sector directives and BAT (Best Available Techniques),” says Fabio Menghetti, Sienambiente’s technical director.

The common denominator is recovery,

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Those discarding their sneakers, a rubber hose or a football in the separate waste collection bin are hardly aware of the damage this inflicts on separate waste collection.

above all of matter but also of energy across the board not only from separate waste collection but also from residual flows.

Sienambiente also takes environmental protection very seriously by equipping its plants with the most evolved and efficient devices in order to reduce to a minimum the environmental impact and using the most suitable technologies to reduce potentially polluting emissions, but also noises, smells etc.

The same level of care is applied to the concept of matter recovery where the improvements obtained thanks to the constant updating of plants are both quantitative and qualitative, thus obtaining marketable materials at their highest possible value.

“Today, in order to obtain best value – explains Menghetti – it is necessary to insist on quality.

So, we are currently focussed on maintaining a balance between quantity and quality of the outgoing matter, giving priority to the latter.

Meanwhile, it is important to reduce waste in order to keep to a minimum the most expensive component from an industrial point of view.”

As things stand today, the quality of incoming material from separate waste cycles is not homogeneous, because it comes from heterogeneous collection methods, not carried out by Sienambiente.

“With the technologies available today for the processing of separate waste collection, there is a very close connection between quality of incoming flow to plants and quality and quantity of outgoing matter, so it is necessary to take important actions with regard to separate waste collection” claims Menghetti.

“Low quality separate waste collection means higher treatment costs and more waste as well as lower quality of obtained material. Our challenge is to update processing methods and machinery

so that we can depend less and less on collection quality.”

Sienambiente’s ultimate goal is to manage plants able to obtain usable material also with previously non-selected matter, thus overcoming problems in the separate waste collection phase. This can be achieved by adopting solutions that, thanks to their efficiency and effectiveness, will pay off investments without affecting prices.

The on-going evolution of technology with new optical and ballistic systems, for example, will help Sienambiente in such challenge, but at the same time it would also help separate waste collection, in particular the organic fraction.

Sienambiente closed 2016 with a €2.11 million profit, as a result of 1.6 million investments with the growth, as it happened over the last three years, of the operating margin. Alessandro Fabbrini, Sienambiente’s chairman, describes the company’s business model in this way: “Sienambiente has dealt with waste management and then recycling since 1988 and has guaranteed the Siena province plant self-sufficiency, totally avoiding waste exports. The company boasts a plant for selection, waste-to-energy treatment and composting. The latter offers excellent certified compost for organic agriculture identified by the trademark, ‘Terra di Siena.’”

“In such context” continues Fabbrini, “plants are the key element for the circular economy linked to waste recycling, in order to give materials from separate source collection a new life and to involve neighbouring supply chains that can bring environmental as well as fresh advantages. It is about utilising local solutions to global problems, by managing the non-recyclable or reusable fraction of materials in our waste-to-energy plant, and the remaining part, constantly dropping, in landfills. We believe we have built an efficient system for waste management.”

“The prospects for improvement are linked to raising operating efficiency of the recycling sector, as is the case with the selection plant where we have recently installed a new system for refining compost that reduces processing waste considerably. Another objective is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, for example with PVC, from the biodegradable waste fraction and the waste-to-energy treatment of the non-recyclable fraction.

This means producing 70% of energy we use from renewable sources with a drop of 26,700 tonnes of CO2 in 2016, a better result for about 1,000 tonnes compared to 2015.”

Tackling Complexity Still in Tuscany, but we are now turning to plastics. The Revet plant, in Pontedera (Pisa) produces the plasmix granule from heterogeneous plastics, representing almost

Case Studies

55% of the packaging weight, thus avoiding their incineration. Thanks to such advanced technology, a quality end product equal to the virgin material is obtained.

Any injection moulded plastic object can use plasmix from recycling made mostly of compatible polymers, low and high-density PE and PP in variable proportions. So, the problem are not recycling technologies but the quantity of discarded material due to poor quality of separate waste collection. “Today we are faced with far too much waste that must be disposed of because it is not recyclable” claims Diego Barsotti, Revet’s Head of Communication. “It is packaging not dropped in the right containers. So costs are higher and the percentage of outgoing recycled material is lower.” The cultural approach to the recycling issue is also relevant: we have been focussing on the collection quota for far too long.

Revet reports waste percentages in the region of 10-15%, but there are worse situations. Moreover, it is surprising that over the last few years the company has experienced a worsening in the quality of separate waste collection, while quantity has increased. This applies to all materials used by Revet, not just for plastic. The company claims there is a problem in the campaigns raising awareness on separate waste collection, where more detailed communication would be required. Revet can give practical examples: “Those discarding their sneakers, a rubber hose or a football in the separate waste collection bin are hardly aware of the damage this inflicts on separate waste collection, but this is a gesture fuelled by reasoning by analogy like, ‘after all rubber is similar to plastic, so it can be recycled,’” continues Barsotti. While from a certain viewpoint

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S. Ferraris, “Cardboard Beats Decay,” Renewable Matter n. 5, August 2015; www.renewablematter.eu/ art/116/Cardboard_Beats_ Decay

it is clear that product analyses on waste characteristics should not be expected from citizens, from another it should be shed some light on the difference between packaging and various types of waste to include in the flow of separate waste collection.

That’s why Revet is working on new selection plants and on supply chains. With regard to glass, it purchased a plant in Empoli, where pronto forno (“ready oven”) is produced, a semifinished product derived from cullet directly reaching glassmakers. This is the new frontier for innovation: expanding one’s reach to other pieces of the supply chain to “produce” efficiency in recycling and therefore value.

Recycling’s Pieces de Resistance Fibre has seven lives. We are talking about that of cellulose with which paper is produced.

Over time this has sanctioned the success of the recycling of such material and the establishment of its supply chain. Today the evolution of the recycling process focuses on collection with Comieco (the National Consortium for the Recovery and Recycling of Cellulose-based Packaging) that has been investing for years in order to increase paper and cardboard collection in the most problematic areas: Southern Italy.

“The 2016 data are very positive for two reasons” reveals Carlo Montalbetti, Comieco’s general manager. “First, the increase in

collection at national level is over 3%, which is a sign of consumption recovery and the enlargement of the collection area.

It means 100,000 tonnes more, of which 50% in Southern Italy where there has been a 9% rise.” So, Southern Italy confirms it has embraced separate waste collection of paper and cardboard. “It is the result of a strategy that has been set up for a long time and that is proving successful,” continues Montalbetti.

“The process of modernization of waste management of paper and cardboard saw

Case Studies Southern Italy aligning itself with the collection rates of the North and Central Italy. Southern Italy has still some way to go, but it is going in that direction.” The gap is about 20 kg per capita. The South is around 30, while the national average is over 50. But in the South the situation is uneven. Sicily and Calabria, for example, are lagging behind compared to Puglia and Campania that are rapidly catching up. Naples is a striking example: in a year there has been a 20% increase. The ingredients of such performance have been the determination of the public administration, the managerial ability in the collection management and – points out Montalbetti – “the role of Comieco, that allocated €7 million in 2015 for the industrial plans in Southern Italy, investing in means of transport and equipment.”

An essential aspect is the ability of citizens to dispose of materials in a correct way. As for the innovation process, a dozen paper factories introduced systems to monitor both moisture and the presence of inappropriate material such as plastic, in paper and cardboard from separate waste collection. There is potential for improvement. There are still 600,000 tonnes, mainly in the South, of waste paper that is landfilled which could be collected and recycled in waste-to-energy plants. Two large industrial plants for the production of cardboard are being opened. They will require a considerable amount of waste paper.

So there will be a period of development of the system of paper and cardboard collection.

Let us now talk about a material that thanks to its intrinsic properties is nearly perfect: aluminium. Recyclable ad infinitum with minimum energy consumption compared to the virgin material, aluminium offers the most efficient recycling process if carried out sticking to rules. There are two types of collection: light and heavy multi-material collections. With the first, steel, aluminium and plastics are collected, the second, in addition to these materials, also included the collection of glass. Two systems equally sharing the total of collection technologies and, as far as metallic material separation is concerned, they work in a similar way. Ferrous material is separated using magnets while aluminium, through a magnetic induction separating system (Eddy Current Separator, ECS), is repulsed instead of being attracted like steel. In practice, a can jumps into the relevant container, nearly as if it had a mind of its own to be recycled. But sometimes things do not work out as they should. Depending on the efficiency of the process, something that is not aluminium “jumps” into the wrong container. This depends on plants but also on the incoming waste composition. Aluminium’s average impurity level detected is 4%, a very positive percentage since the threshold above

Aluminium’s average impurity level detected is 4%, a very positive percentage since the threshold above which the material must be reprocessed is 5%.

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We must develop collection through a mix of communication, investments and means in order to help municipalities that must be prepared to invest.

which the material must be reprocessed is 5%. Once in the smelting works, the metal is analysed, pre-treated (heated to around 500 °C) to eliminate substances adhering to the packaging, such as paints, and then proceeds to the real melting at 800 °C resulting in the production of bars whose quality is similar to that of the virgin material. “Aluminium alloys could pose a problem,” says Stefano Stellini, CIAL Communication Manager, the aluminium packaging consortium. “Aluminium scrap is made of several alloys mixed during melting in order to obtain aluminium of the desired quality. This is a well-established practice because smelting works specialize according to market segmentation, for instance they know how to mix different qualities for the car industry.” Aluminium has also another characteristic: when it touches other waste materials, it does not undergo chemical or physical changes. So aluminium can be recovered also from mechanical biological (MBT) systems that separate dry and wet waste as well as from incinerators’ bottom ash.

The main problem with aluminium is the extra

costs incurred in the extra passage through the selection process due to the impurity of the incoming material.

Let us move on to a different metal, one that has shaped history: steel. As far as material recovery is concerned, the steel supply chain is in pole position: 70% of steel produced derives from recovery. Even from a separate collection quality point of view it does not create problems in the next steps, about 90% is sent for recycling. Things change for the fraction deriving from mixed waste. In this case, the iron remover drags with the ferrous material anything that sticks to it. Thus the foreign component is higher and in order to achieve a good quality a more complex process is needed. Another supply chain of steel is that from combusted iron, extracted from incinerators’ bottom ash. In this case there is an impurity share deriving from ash remaining on the metallic surface and we must also take into account the incidence of oxidation making the material less appealing on the market.

Quantity wise, in Italy the average per capita annual collection is good. In Northern Italy,

collection exceeds 3 kg per person, an excellent result; in Central and Southern Italy it varies between 1 and 3 kg with two exceptions, two regions poles apart, Sicily and Valle d’Aosta collect less than 1 kg per person.

“We must develop collection through a mix of communication, investments and means in order to help municipalities that must be prepared to invest,” says Rocco Andrea Iascone, in charge of Ricrea Consortium Communication and External Relations.

“We can also use new initiatives, such as the development of local circular recycling, thus reducing transportation in the recycling supply chain.”

In this case, it is also easier for citizens to use separate collection appropriately since they know the use of the material and they clearly understand its cycle. “In Sicily, we managed to keep the material in the area thus creating a nearly local cycle,” says Luca Mattoni, in charge of Ricrea Technical Department.

“On top of it, the added value was created by a local plant that installed the equipment to obtain a product suitable for the local steelworks promoting targeted collection at local level.” This resulted in a good recycling system that cuts transportation to a minimum.

But quality guarantee, whatever it is, still represents a major problem, also because in steelworks it is possible to change the quality of a product according to its end use.

New technologies, thanks to the establishment of recycling supply chains, can be developed and adopted with good results. They include packaging shredding with small mills much better suited than big ones. The advantage of smaller plants is to be able to fine adjust production to the incoming material.

These plants are spreading. It is a sign that those involved are paying more and more attention to materials deriving from separate collection. It is like discovering new urban mines.

From Collection to the New Product: As the Original, Better than the Original Let us continue our journey through the quality of recycling and meet the next players in this supply chain, those who receive the product and give it a new life by obtaining a product with a quality equal or higher than the starting one. Lubricating oil, for instance. Viscolube is one of the most active companies in the regeneration of lubricating oils and has worked in this sector for decades, certifying the whole supply chain, marketing a product with an environmental label. “Today the quality of incoming oil has a very important impact on the quality of the outgoing product because the increase of pollutants in the oil used, in theory, could lead to the production of lower quality base oil,” says Marco Codognola, in charge of Viscolube Environment Department. “This is

where technology kicks in, in the sense what in theory can be assumed, that is the lowering of quality of the product, can be offset by a series of targeted technologies that, regardless of quality variations of the incoming product, can correct these imbalances and guarantee an end product with the characteristics agreed with clients, offering them a regenerated end product with the same characteristics as the virgin product. And this is our benchmark.”

Technologies and know-how gained over the years that are now becoming essential in our processes. Once again, this is a very important aspect because the development and the chances of the circular economy depend on the quality of the output and the preservation of the value chain. Let us go into details.

An example: to eliminate the most volatile substances we must intervene on distillation columns in order to obtain a lubricant meeting market expectations. Saponification value is another important element, that is the quantity of fat in the incoming material, a factor adversely affecting lubricant performance.

To remove these substances, a series of chemical treatments is used, centrifugation and filtration must be adjusted according to the quantity of the incoming pollutant. These and other processes, such as hydrorefining catalysts, have been developed to reduce the quantity of non-usable used oil, a dangerous substance that can only be burnt. This opens up a topic linked both to regulations and collection. The fact that used oil is considered hazardous waste is an advantage, it means that a lot of attention and protection must go into the first stage of the supply chain: collection. Legal parameters regulating regenerable used oils are very strict but allow most of the used oil collected to be regenerated thanks to the widespread work of COOU (“compulsory consortium for used oils”), collecting companies carry out accurate

So, is this a perfect system? Not exactly because despite the excellent results achieved there is still room for improvement.

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Info www.remadeinitaly.it www.gruppoveritas.it www.sienambiente.it www.revet.com www.comieco.org www.cial.it www.consorzioricrea.org viscolube.it/it www.coou.it www.favini.com/en

selection and collection, this means that most collected oils are within the legal parameters for regeneration. In the field of used oils, lawmakers wanted to set limits on impurity, not for technical reasons but to avoid the “inaccurate” use in the regeneration supply chain. Lawmakers’ intention was to set a clear limit between what can enter the supply chain and what must end up as waste. So the output is almost identical to that coming from refineries treating virgin fossil products.

So, is this a perfect system? Not exactly because despite the excellent results achieved there is still room for improvement. From a collection point of view, if the upstream process were even more selective, with greater attention paid to separation by initial producers, the downstream process would definitely enjoy better quality products.

“This would mean lower regeneration costs, while the quality would stay the same.

That is excellent,” carries on Codognola.

“Maintaining a high output level is possible thanks to technology.” Thus, even in a specialized sector such as that of used oils it is still possible to do more without being carried away by the high quality of the end product.

Increasing return of the industrial activity in sectors linked to the circular economy means allowing companies to invest in research and development and devise innovative practices and technologies able to broaden the very base of the circular economy, making the end product even more competitive, in this case compared to base oils from virgin fossil materials. But we can also change processes in order to improve the supply

chain without excessive costs. In the engine oil chain, there is already a good separation process in place, staring from garages that separate oils accurately. In case of industrial oils, storage companies sometimes mix emulsions, washing and process water with used lubricants.

We are nearly at the end of our journey.

That is the stage where a mutation takes place: the transformation of waste into something different and more valuable.

We will be talking about upcycling and we are going to do it with a material with an excellent recycling record: paper. Paper made in Bassano del Grappa by Favini, a historical paper mill, where besides using recycled cellulose fibre, they also use residues, or better by-products, deriving from radically different supply chains.

“First, we must regard these residues as ordinary raw materials that we buy,” says Achille Monegato, head of Favini R&D. “These materials must have some specifications in order to determine fixed and precise characteristics of our supply.” And here we get to a crucial stage in our journey where processing by-products rise up to raw material level. In this context, controlling the quality of incoming raw materials is essential.

“It is necessary to analyse all characteristics, making sure the crucial ones are met, and establish an acceptable range,” carries on Monegato. “In order to assure a determined quality of the output. As far as we are concerned, parameters such as colour, granulometry, moisture content, water-soluble fraction and other characteristics must be constant.”

All this call for choices, as is the case with the leather that Favini uses for Remake paper.

Not all leather scraps are the same and vary according to the type of tanning. Chromium, tannin or wet white tannings produce scraps with different characteristics and thus the choice must be carried out by identifying by-products according to the supply chain they come from. “To upcycle, but above all to find new solutions, you need knowledge,” continues Monegato, “Knowledge, knowledge and more knowledge: this is what you need. Not just of one manufacturing sector, but of many fields and of various supply chains.”

But there are problems that we could define intrinsic from a supply point of view, especially because we are talking about by-products that are naturally variable, such is the case with citrus fruit processing by-products whose colour is not constant. Fruits picked in November have a different colour from those picked in March due to different beta-carotene concentrations.

And this becomes a problem when the citrus pulp, that is the residue form processing, is used to make paper or fabrics. To avoid

The quality of recycling that we have considered from many points of view is – and will be – one of the core issues in the development of the circular economy.

this, the residue must contain a precise percentage of beta-carotene already set in the specifications. It is thus crucial to use raw materials picked in a certain period and this means that both parties, supplier and product user, must be aware of all this. Crossed knowledge of supply chains introduces another problem: industrial know-how protection.

On the one hand, there is the legitimate concern about the protection of the know-how deriving from investment in R&D, on the other we must take into consideration the development and spreading of these practices that could act as a driving force for the circular economy. We are still at the beginning of these processes, but in the near future we will have to strike a balance between these different needs.

But let us talk about the crossing between supply chains and by-products’ specifications with another example from Favini’s experience.

“Grape pomace (used by Favini to make the box of Veuve Clicquot’s organic champagne line, editor’s note) for instance, can have four different uses,” concludes Monegato.

“In the first case, it is not even dried and is used as fertilizer, while in the second case – by drying it – it has three other uses.

The first is energy production though combustion, the second is that of using it as supplement in animal feed and the third is that of using it to make paper.” Thus, by adding a processing step – drying – we can expand the uses and the market of a by-product.

By-product adaptation can thus become market leverage.

The quality of recycling that we have considered from many points of view is – and will be – one of the core issues in the development of the circular economy. We must adopt the same approach used for non-renewable resources, for two good reasons: the need to adopt circular economy elements in existing production chains as well as the need to limit to a minimum the extra costs deriving from the use of materials from recycling.

Underestimating these aspects could create serious obstacles to the onset of a real circular economy.

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renewablematter 18. 2017

TEXTILE MINES

in Search of An Author By 2030, waste produced by the fashion industry will have increased by 63%. How design can contribute to transform this waste into new products with higher added value.

by Irene Ivoi

1. GFA will create a toolbox with advice for experts and case studies to support companies to keep their commitment in collaboration with I:Collect with useful instructions for collecting, reusing and planning for recyclability.

Investing in recyclability planning strategies; increasing the volume of used clothing collection and used clothing resale and the volume of clothing manufactured using recycled fibres: this is GFA’s (Global Fashion Agenda)1 latest call, taken on board by some of the most illustrious names in the fashion panorama with the objective of hitting its targets by 2020.

Nevertheless this is just one of the possible useful initiatives to join in order to become a company paying attention to sustainability, a concept that has become very dear to the fashion industry over the last few years. Actually, already in 2011 the Detox My Fashion Campaign

launched by Greenpeace had become very popular with many famous super brands.

As a matter of fact, the fashion industry presents several environmental criticalities that must be tackled. It generates considerable process waste and is characterized by several risk factors. According to the Boston Consulting Group 2017 Pulse of the fashion industry Report, from 2015 to 2030 the production of waste of this sector will increase by 63% (waste and CO2 emissions are the two factors expected to increase the most).

To this, we must add the fact that only a small amount of textile waste is recovered at the end of a product’s life: the recovery of used clothing (as urban waste) is not efficient enough and not

Case Studies Irene Ivoi deals with research, implementation and communication of product policies and strategies for environmental impact prevention for supply chain consortia, public administration and businesses. An industrial design graduate, she believes in the designer role with special attention to (eco) processes and services.

always very transparent. So much so that the search for solutions – above all at industrial level – for reducing and/or reusing process waste is the object of many projects funded by the EU. In this case as well, design and research contribution can make all the difference since – and not rarely – the quality of materials deemed waste to be disposed of is high. For this reason, its recovery represents a useful opportunity yet subordinated to some objectives: facilitating the textile recycling process, improving the (automatic) sorting of postconsumer textile waste, devising technologies to extract dyes and finish or able to separate the fibre mix of fabrics without damaging them.

Really, a Danish company that created an extremely innovative use, is moving in this direction. Founded in 2011 by Wickie Meier, Klaus Samsøe and Ole Smedegaard, Really offers to recycle textile products creating a material used to manufacture a board, the Solid Textile Board by Really, presented at the last Salone del Mobile (Furniture Fair) in Milan.

The whole operation is directed by Christien Meindertsma (a Dutch artist and designer, editor’s note) who, after gaining an overview of the phenomenon, conceived an elegant and technically accurate communication project describing how the waste from tea towels, dish towels and bed linen is transformed into the new material.

In 2015, Christien Meindertsma authored another publication with the publishing house Thomas Eyck: Bottom Ash Observatory, in which – thanks to photos by Mathijs Labadie – she showed chromatic and expressive variations of bottom ash turned into very visually-evocative works.

In both cases, she proved how it is possible to communicate effectively and attractively environmental emergency themes often seen only as ugly.

It all starts from a readily-available waste flow – in this case textile products from the fashion and textile sectors, from dry cleaners and families

Really also involved in this operation designer Max Lamb so that with his inventions he could demonstrate the numerous possibilities of using

The Danish Case

2. Company producing high quality fabrics and textile products (www.kvadrat.dk)

but also from Kvadrat2 waste – redefining its use and transforming it into a new material thanks to the help of designers who were able to create products with higher added value.

The Solid Textile Board composition reflects the availability of textile waste flows and represents an alternative to a series of existing materials since it is extremely versatile.

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renewablematter 18. 2017 3. The standard board is 3 m long, 1.1 m high and 7.8 mm thick.

the Solid Textile Board. On the one hand, his series of 12 benches represents his personal exploration journey, but on the other, it also shows the potential of the Solid Textile Board and how it compares with other materials used to manufacture boards.3 The Solid Textile Board is a high quality and technology material, 70% derived from the above-mentioned flows.

Its manufacturing does not involve the use of dyes, water or toxic chemicals and generates only recyclable waste: in the end the material can be re-granulated and transformed into new boards.

A champion of circular design, Really encourages innovative concepts capable of extending the life cycle of textile resources eventually leading to a zero-waste solution.

While in traditional recycling processes materials deteriorate, in this – perfectly circular – case the objective is to recycle them so that they can retain their full value.

The main components of Solid Textile Boards are cotton and wool, the core is made of white cotton from industrial dry cleaners while the outer layers are available in four colours: white cotton, blue cotton, slate grey wool and natural wool.

Thanks to their mechanical properties, the boards can be used as an excellent replacement for wood and various composite materials in furniture and buildings.

Their tactility and appearance, rather unique, also make them a decorative alternative to materials such as stone, wood, plasterboard and masonry.

An Alliance between Really and Kvadrat These production processes are not created overnight. It has taken Really several years to develop the Solid Textile Board patented production process. This manufacturing process of a non-woven fabric includes, amongst other things, shredding used fabrics into tiny fibres and their mixing with a special binder that does not deteriorate with reuse. With this material Really inspires many other sectors to rethink their use of resources.

Really currently owns 52% of Kvadrat, leader in Europe in the production of high-quality designer fabrics and products associated with fabrics for private and public spaces. Kvadrat has a responsible approach to production and processes, an integral part of its business and design philosophy.

What Can Be Taken away from This Case History Really’s experience proves that there is an efficient and smart way – sometimes even more creative than others – to communicate a path towards sustainability. And that there are no

Case Studies

Copenhagen Fashion Summit, www.copenhagenfashion summit.com I:Co, www.ico-spirit.com/en Pulse of the fashion industry Report, tinyurl.com/ycrsxva3 Really, www.reallycph.com Bottom Ash Observatory, tinyurl.com/y9xzgc2m Max Lamb, www.maxlamb.org Trash-2-Cash, trash2cashproject.eu Life M3P,

www.lifem3p.eu/en

limits to the ability of discarded materials to become attractive and to regain their appeal.

Bottom Ash Observatory is a trendsetter, as it should. Those aspiring to invent new materials by processing old ones, besides the necessary technology, must resort to design’s contribution, even though sometimes it might not be enough. But for designers to be able to get something vibrant out of an informal and petty material, they must be encouraged to imagine scenarios going beyond a product.

Products sometimes can be just mere proof of concept, but to make them work (so that they can be desirable and bought) it is necessary to imagine scenarios where they can be placed and know, at the same time, how to describe them and make them evocative. This is called marketing, storytelling: the name can change over time, but it is as important as the product itself.

Those dealing with communication are very familiar with this, but those starting

from a pure production experience might not know it or might not have used it.

Really and Kvadrat teach us that by combining knowledge and efforts from different fields we can really achieve appealing results extremely promising for the future.

And Europe is redesigning this future because its funding moves in this direction, in particular towards the textile sector where a couple of promising projects are under way. The first is Trash-2-Cash, funded by Horizon 2020, where 19 international partners share the objective of using textile waste and non-recoverable (zero value) cellulose fibres to create high-quality products thanks to new design-oriented technologies.

The other is the Life MP3 Project aimed at developing and promoting uses of industrial waste (including textile waste) resorting to designers and the exchange of best practice amongst countries involved.

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renewablematter 18. 2017

Expo’s

SECOND LIFE

by Gloria Zavatta

Gloria Zavatta is a Sustainability and Corporate Social Responsibility Expert and was Expo 2015 Sustainability Manager.

Today she is AMAT (City of Milan Agency for Mobility and the Environment) Sole Director.

Furniture, installations, kitchens, plants and gadgets.

Official objects together with separate collection bins.

Thousands of items to put to new uses. This is how the biggest Italian public reuse project has been managed.

Curiously enough, Expo 2015 life cycle is not over yet. Obviously it no longer involves thousands of participants (countries, civil societies and partners) and millions of visitors, but “objects” that were used during the six-month event and that now will be used in other contexts and for other purposes.

Since the end of the event, Expo 2015 Spa, a company now being liquidated, has started the project Riuso (“reuse”) with the aim of exploiting the material assets still in its hands promoting the principles of the circular economy, one of the key messages linked to sustainability as a crucial immaterial legacy of the exhibition.

From a legal point of view, its activity comes under the collection and sorting of “non-waste goods” made available for reusing, as per art.

183, paragraph 1, letter r) of Dlgs 152/2006: “Reusing: any operation through which products or their components which are not waste are reused for the same purpose they were intended.” This is why it did not need the authorization pursuant to art. 208 of Dlgs 152/2006, since it is regulated by Dm 8 April 2008.

Indoor and outdoor furniture, installations and equipment, kitchens for collective catering, potted plants, office equipment including IT material, vegetable assets, separate collection bins, official objects and gadgets, volunteer and worker uniforms are the main types of goods included in the project Riuso.

At the end of Expo Milano 2015, over 300 applications for reusing these goods for social purposes were received from various subjects: for instance, from bodies that had provided their services for free during the event, parishes, municipalities and many non-profit associations.

And from many private volunteers from Milan and beyond.

In order to manage this project, the company established some rules to allow the goods it owned to have a “second life” with the objective of carrying out with the least economic impact the operations of conservation and transfer to third parties, avoid generating waste to be sent for disposal and favour the agreements with Arexpo of reusing goods directly on the exhibition premises also within the first reuse initiatives of spaces in Summer 2016.

First, the procedure entailed verifying

Case Studies

1. a) Public bodies, meaning public administrations as per Art. 1, paragraph 2 of Dlgs n. 165/2001. All state administrations, including any institute and school and educational institution, autonomous state companies and agencies, regions, provinces, municipalities, mountain communities, their consortia and associations, university institutions, autonomous public housing institutes, chambers of commerce, industry, crafts and agriculture and their associations, all national, regional and local noneconomic public bodies, National Health bodies and institutions, the Agency for contractual representation of public administrations (Aran) and agencies included in Dl 30 July 1999, n. 300. b) Non-profit organizations meaning foundations, both recognized and nonrecognized associations, committees, NGOs for Cooperation and Development, bodies qualifying as socially useful nonprofit organizations, social enterprises, social cooperatives, ecclesiastical bodies recognized by the State.

the “history” of the different types of goods: from the purchase cost to what it was used for, from the state of preservation to packaging, stocking and transport costs as well as those that might be necessary to prepare the goods to be given to third parties. For example, functional restoration such as cleaning of kitchens, computers’ data cleansing, digging up plants or changing infographics on waste bins. Moreover, normative/contractual obligations concerning sponsored goods, market interest in buying a specific item were analysed putting in place selling procedures or free transfers. Requests received, although not bestowing any pre-emptive right for free transfer or buying, definitely helped identify needs, willingness to meet predictable costs and the different transfer options.

For the most desirable chattels, transfer procedures were put in place, both through public auctions as well as expression of interest from public bodies and partners and – if in line with public procedures’ rules – through private contracts. The objective was clear from the very beginning: procedure transparency and the chance to recover money for the company’s coffers (approximately €1,000,000 exclusive of VAT), within the normative framework of Codice degli Appalti (“procurement code”).

At the same time, at the end of 2015, Expo 2015 and Fondazione Triulza signed a memorandum for the management of free transfer of goods deemed as valueless from an economic point of view (for instance, clusters kitchens, Field Operator and volunteer uniforms, tablets, gadgets and promotional material with prestigious logos). These were intended for specific beneficiaries such as public bodies and non-profit organizations to be identified through a transparent public procedure. For the share management of this procedure, and in particular for the definition of acceptable beneficiaries1 and granting criteria, a guiding committee was

set up including Fondazione Triulza and Expo 2015 representatives as well as their partners.

For instance, the guiding committee thought it right to create lots big enough (in terms of numbers for each product category) to form a “critical mass” to guarantee a sufficient cover in case of direct reuse or charitable sale to collect funds for social projects. For instance, the minimum number of tablets per school was set to 20 so that they could be used in classrooms and to 10 for classrooms operating in paediatric units in hospitals. Moreover, it balanced allocations, planning a higher number of lots to grant to bodies within a 350-km radius from the Expo site in order to limit transport and costs.

Within the procedure of free transfer, between the end of July and the end of September 2016, 3,501 applications were received, which were analysed to establish the acceptability of applicants (who received help to clarify doubts and overcome difficulties), and then beneficiaries were drawn for group of goods divided into lots, before a notary according to criteria established by the guiding committee. Moreover, Fondazione Triulza took charge of preparing the over 230 lots and delivering them to beneficiaries, in collaboration with Expo 2015. A “monstrous” task, amply rewarded by the results achieved and beneficiaries’ satisfaction.

35% of requests received was interested in kitchens, 28% in tables and the remaining 37% in gadgets, clothing and various accessories. Anticipated reuses, that is “the second life” of these goods made the most of creativity and the ability to understand the needs by civil society organizations who, from North to South, were able to put in place initiatives to improve the use of such goods. From the reuse of refrigeration units and shelves in the solidarity emporium

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renewablematter 18. 2017 2. The Project Reuse of London 2012 Olympic Committee guaranteed, thanks to its preventative strategic approach and sharing of all objectives with all corporate functions, the reuse of nearly all goods and equipment. 40% of IT material, sports equipment and tools, memorabilia, clothing was sold, 40% donated, 10% used through other types of agreements and the remaining 10% was sent to waste disposal.

in Naples by Goccia di Rugiada charity; to the reuse of fabric bags turned into satchels

by Archè Charity who gave cotton shopping bags to the children in a village in Zambia where they can be used as school bags replacing plastic bags. Thanks to these kitchens, Civil Defence volunteer Associations in Rozzano, Pero and Fano will be able to prepare food in emergencies, while the Field Operator uniforms will be used by the young workers of Comunità San Patrignano.

Other solidarity initiatives, for instance, entailed the transfer to Regione Lombardia of 3 housing modules located in the logistic base camp of Expo 2015, requested to be donated to the Municipality of Acquaviva Picena (Ascoli Piceno area) to help the people hit by the earthquake. Another donation, despite huge managing and logistical costs

incurred by the recipient, the installation Agorà to the Municipality of Monza and Vertical farm to Enea. The last lot of IT equipment for which a buyer was not found, despite the call for tenders, will be given to schools and other non-profit associations through Fondazione Triulza and Banco Informatico, for social uses.

Expo 2015 Progetto Riuso (“reuse project”) represents – unique for its magnitude in Italy and probably in Europe,2 for the type and quality of goods involved and its practical complexity – a good example to stimulate reuse in public bodies and subsidiary companies, in order to tackle social and environmental challenges against waste and save resources, in a transparent, efficient, creative, inclusive and responsible manner.

Progress made by Progetto Risuso

Info www.expo2015.org/ rivivi-expo

ITEMS TRANSFERRED FOR A CONSIDERATION

BUYERS

Indoor furniture, street furniture, safety and IT equipment and other goods used in the exhibition site

Arexpo

Expo Milano 2015 flags “Il popolo del cibo” statues by Ferretti “Mercati” installations by Ferretti Private actors Foody’s Parade costumes Microphones used in Infopoints Base Camp housing modules IT equipment Via Rovello 2 Site’s furniture and infrastructure Via Drago Site’s furniture and infrastructure Via Viserba Site’s office furniture

Public actors

Fruit trees and 6 ornamental plants Foody costumes, furniture and equipment Outdoor waste bins Gadgets and promotional materials

Expo employees

Circularity Travels on

by Emanuela Rosio*

TWO WHEELS

For the second year, Ride Green made the Giro d’Italia (“Tour of Italy”) more sustainable – stage after stage – a new environmental culture where materials can be renewed.

It also awarded a prize to Municipalities that excelled in separate waste collection.

Emanuela Rosio, a journalist and expert of environmental communication, manages Erica Soc. Coop.

She is Chairlady of AICA (International Association for Environmental Communication, which she contributed to create in 2003) and managing director of Envi.info, an environmental communication magazine.

*With a contribution by Luigi Bosio (Engineering Office Manager, Erica Soc. Coop.), Roberto Cavallo (CEO of Erica Soc. Coop.) and Andrea Pavan (Ride Green Project Manager for Eric Soc. Coop.)

The Giro d’Italia has a history dating back almost 100 years, meandering through the roads of Italy, telling today’s Italy and Italians through unique images and impressive written words. Even today – when the Giro passes through – municipalities, volunteers, committees, companies, sports team leap into action.

Thousands of people meet along its route, while millions more around the world see Italy thanks to live TV programmes, precious activity by social networks and RCS Sport media, the organizer of the event.

The Giro d’Italia 2016 edition started to tell a new story: that of a sustainable and environmentallyconscious Italy able – even during big events – not to waste and to recycle the rubbish it produces.

Above all a story willing to communicate a new environmental culture, where materials are renewed and increase in value. A story of new objects manufactured from collected and recycled material, as is the case with aluminium bicycles produced from recycled cans.

Starting from 2016, RCS Sport chose a partner – Erica cooperative, an acronym that stands for Education, Research, Information and Environmental Communication – for the Ride Green project, aimed at helping the Giro d’Italia organizers make stages lighter and more sustainable, starting from used materials and the organization of separate waste collections along the whole route, in particular in the start and finish areas.

In late May 2017, in Milan, not only did the Giro’s 100th edition take place, but also a “competition” amongst municipalities that hosted the Giro and that competed over separate waste collection.

A small competition that saw Erica’s engineers weighing materials every day – stage after stage, municipality after municipality, from Sardinia to Lombardy – while calculating the quantity of separate waste collection carried out during the Giro. Ride Green’s story is also made of small gestures accomplished every day by fans, the very cyclists and organizers.

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renewablematter 18. 2017 Ride Green’s Key Words The Idea The project’s initial idea was simple: waste must remain at the centre of the areas where cyclists, sponsors and authorities are.

The eco-waste collection points with containers for separate waste collection must be visible: even in photos, on TV, because they do not contain waste, but materials to be recycled. So the more visible and user-friendly they are, the more effective the service is. While at the beginning such proposal raised a few eyebrows, in the end those in charge of logistics, by working on the hospitality and open village maps, managed

Award-winning Municipalities in the July 2017 final event Starts Third: Tortolì with 83% of separate waste collection.

Second: Castrovillari with 84% of separate waste collection.

First: Forlì with 90% of separate waste collection.

Finishes Second: Tortona, with 90% of separate waste collection.

First: Canazei, with 93% of separate waste collection.

Special mentions were also awarded to Municipalities that notably supported Ride Green: •• Municipality with most volunteers: Reggio Calabria.

•• Municipality with the best project for social integration: Reggio Emilia (for the participation of refugees as volunteers thanks to the help of a social cooperative that receives them).

•• Municipality with best participation of management company: Milan with AMSA.

to arrange containers even in the most exclusive areas. Moreover, thanks also to the planning by engineering partners, multi-size containers have been produced to suit every context and with the Ride Green logo, able to differentiate the various materials collected. Erica’s staff dealt with the preparation of every stage, in every start as well as finish village. The rest was carried out by volunteers involved in every city by the Stage Committees and administrations, willing to help those who were not sure where to put a certain material.

People The collaboration with Municipalities and businesses managing the public hygiene service was fundamental. They made sure that the materials collected during the event were recycled. Local partners had been contacted beforehand, they were explained the project and understood how separate waste collection was organized in every municipality, establishing where the various containers would be arranged in order to make them visible, without hindering the passage of vehicles. Getting volunteers involved, with the help of the Stage Committees and Municipalities, was not difficult. They explained how to carry out separate waste collection properly to cyclist fans that swarmed the start and finish areas, standing by the waste collection points throughout the event.

The Project The service has been studied by Erica’s engineers based on the analysis of inputs (sampling types distributed by sponsors and the convoy, throwaway products used by catering etc.) and the separate waste collection services activated in the municipalities involved in the event.

The two elements determined the choice of the type of containers, their number and distribution, with a view to recycling materials. The selected containers (specifically made by Eurosintex for the 100th Giro d’Italia) have been aggregated in collection points of the open village and hospitality centres and explained in various languages which materials would be recycled and where. Furthermore, a cooperative operator or volunteer made sure bin liners were replaced once they reached full capacity and stocked in designated spaces agreed with the Municipality.

As for catering, thanks to the agreement and the help by Novamont S.p.A. supporting the project for the second year running, biodegradable and compostable flatware in Mater-Bi were produced, to be disposed of in the organic fraction of the separate waste collection and therefore sent for composting together with organic waste.

While plastic materials have been recycled thanks to the support of Corepla, as well as all other separated materials.

Communication Communication of the Ride Green project was studied using various types of media

Case Studies Sabox company, one of the partners of the 100% Campania project, manufactured all information panels for the village collection points in recycled cardboard, thus highlighting the message that what is correctly collected can enjoy a second life. This is all the more true for paper which is the most popular material in such events: closing the production chain loop with recycled cardboard products sends out a clear and important message on recycling. Last but not least, separate waste collection became a game that occupied spaces during the entertainment phases while waiting for cyclists to start or arrive, getting the general public involved in a game where they had to show how to carry out correct separate waste collection.

Info www.giroditalia.it/eng/ ridegreen www.cooperica.it

and new media. The project started with a press conference for the launch and the presentation of partners in Milan and ended with the award ceremony for the three best municipalities in terms of best results for separate waste collection, in the category of stage start and finish and with three special mentions. Throughout the Giro d’Italia communication focussed mainly on social media offering every day Ride Green data (amount of separate waste collection stage by stage) in the “Buongiorno Giro” (“Good morning Giro”) press release with the most important news of the previous day. Social media also contained more pop news like images of characters who acted as testimonials for the projects in the exclusive areas. A considerable contribution to communication was offered by Ricicla tv that followed the project broadcasting news reports filmed during the event and a final video with interviews with the protagonists of the race.

Results During the 100th Giro’s 21 stages, both start and finish, Erica’s staff made of seven people together with volunteers weighed the collected materials, providing for each stage the data of the amount of organic, paper and cardboard, plastic, glass and non-recyclable waste.

The table shows the end result of the separate waste collection throughout the event, with details on the amount of waste and the percentage of each fraction.

The Future If in 2016 the Ride Green project was a gamble, in 2017 it became a certainty, with growing results and a tight-knit group that looked after the initiative on a daily basis. But in order to improve the sustainability of an event such as the Giro d’Italia, many more things can be done, working on input recyclability, waste reduction, energy saving and sustainable mobility.

And above all a lot can be done to make the Giro convey environmental messages, as the very Ministry for the Environment that supported Ride Green suggested. Promotion of good environmental practices and local involvement will therefore remain key also for Ride Green 2018 edition.

100th Giro d’Italia: collection numbers

Source: Erica Soc. Coop.

WASTE

QUANTITY (kg)

% (separate waste collection)

Organic

7,046.00

8%

Paper and cardboard

64,275.40

76%

Plastic

2,487.54

3%

Glass

1,730.16

2%

Dry residue

9,338.34

11%

Total

84,877.43

89%

Total of arranged and calculated eco-points

105

Total of people involved (staff + volunteers)

281

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from our partners

New Scenarios

The circular economy and eco-industrial parks in concrete terms, some practical case studies.

by Elettra Agliardi, Marino Cavallo and Daniele Cencioni

Elettra Agliardi is Full Professor at the Department of Economics, University of Bologna.

Marino Cavallo, Head of the Research, Innovation and Management of European Projects at Metropolitan City of Bologna.

Daniele Cencioni, Communication Manager at Metropolitan City of Bologna.

The current financial crisis has inevitably impeached the old mode of economic thought. On the one hand, the failures of the market mechanisms boosted the area of Keynesian economics associated with a strong criticism of distributive inequalities; on the other hand, they also opened the doors to new concepts of scarcity of resources, defence of the natural ecosystems and renewable energy (see, e.g., Agliardi, Spanjers, 2016) to provide potential solutions to the current environmental challenges. One concept that has been developed to resolve some crucial market failures is the circular economy.

Then three case studies at firm-level will be presented. They are also interesting because they are related to different industrial sectors and geographical areas.

The cases presented are developed within CESME, a European project on the circular economy in small and medium-sized enterprises, and analyzed in this context thanks to the collaboration with the Department of Economics of the University of Bologna. The research focused on small and medium-sized businesses and this experience has been summarized in an e-book that analyses the cases and the experiences shown below.

This is a new attempt to put together university skills, business experiences and a European vision on the circular economy.

One of the instruments for the implementation of the circular economy at the level of industrial processes is the industrial symbiosis and the EcoIndustrial Parks (EIPs). This is probably one of the most promising work directions in the coming years.

Three Case Studies*

*Study cases prepared

by Sara Nicosia, Federico Pinato and Barbara Zancarli, Master Degree students in Resource Economics and Sustainable Development, University of Bologna.

LoWaste (Local Waste Market for second life products) In the municipality of Ferrara, the production of urban waste decreased from 102.233 tons in 2010 to 92.678 tons in 2015. Separate waste collection increased from 48.2% (49.305 tons) to 54.35% (50.370 tons) in the same period. Production of pro capita urban waste reduced from 755 kg/ab/ year to 696 kg/ab/year.

The LIFE+ LoWaste represent a model of circular economy based on prevention, reuse and recycling of waste using privatepublic partnership. It was implemented in the municipality of Ferrara together with the cooperation of Hera Group, Impronta Etica, La Città Verde, RREUSE and co-funded by

the European Commission through the LIFE+ fund. The project lasted from 11th September 2011 to 30th June 2014. The total project budget was €1.109.000, with €554.500 financed with EU Co-financing.

The objectives of the project were: •• Reduction of urban waste through the development of a local market for recycled or reuse materials promoting a closed local waste management cycle focusing both on the supply side; •• Development of the existing green public procurement schemes in local authorities with a cradle to cradle approach, linking buying procedures to eco-design of goods and products; •• Promotion of waste prevention, encouragement of the recovery of waste and usage of recovered materials in order to preserve natural resources with a focus on life-cycle thinking, eco-design and the development of recycling markets; •• Development of a system for the creation of the Local Waste Market for second life products that can be applied in other local contexts; •• Spreading the knowledge of reused/recycled products to consumers, retailers, producers and public authorities; •• Raise awareness with consumers, retailers, producers and local bodies about the possibility to decrease waste through the reuse or purchase of recycled products.

SQUARe027 SQUARe027 is an innovative fashion luxury brand that, according to its ethic principles, designs and produces an Eco-Friendly and vegan shoes line. Between its strengths, the entirely Made in Italy handmade production. The main goal of this start-up is to provide new products able to satisfy the needs of people concerned about animal wellness and sustainability. To achieve this result, its designer Marco Zanuccoli came up with these shoes that meet these requirements providing at the same time a high quality and trendy product.

This firm, founded in 2016 in San Mauro Pascoli (Forlì-Cesena, Emilia Romagna), declares as its mission that it wants “to be able to adapt to the environment and to create something having at the same time a positive impact on the whole ecosystem.” Too many times the environment we live in has been excessively depleted: therefore, as they say, nowadays “a successful firm should act respecting the needs of our planet.”

In order to be such a firm, SQUARe027 applies some of the main principles of circular economy.

First, circular economy requires to modify the concept of waste: what once was seen as something to be thrown away, should now be

from our partners **Case developed by Felipe Bastarrica and Carlo Cerruti, Master Degree students in Resource Economics and Sustainable Development, University of Bologna.

Info www.square027.com www.lowaste.it/en www.ecopneus.it/en www.interregeurope.eu/ CESME

considered as a whole of biological, chemical and material components that must be recovered.

Every unit of matter has an intrinsic value that does not disappear as the product which it is part of reaches at the end of life.

Ecopneus Ecopneus is a non-profit Limited Company for the traceability, collection, treatment and recovery of End of Life Tyres (ELT), set up by the leading tyre manufacturers operating in Italy and based on art.

228 of Legislative Decree 152/2006, which obliges tyres producers and importers to manage a quantity of ELT equal to how much tyres they have introduced on the market the year before.

Ecopneus was born from the cooperation of the most relevant tyres producers and importers in order to permit the right management of ELT on all our national territory, guaranteeing their collection, treatment and recovery. Ecopneus’ founders are very important companies, such as Bridgestone, Continental, Goodyear-Dunlop, Marangoni, Michelin and Pirelli. The procedure for the participation to the initiatives of this company would be enlarged also to other important subject in tyres’ production and import.

In the past years, Ecopneus collected an amount of ELT higher than law-defined target. Some data (measured in tonnes) are available about that.

In Italy, the production of ELTs amounts to 350,000 tonnes per year (corresponding to 38 million of tyres) and up to now about 20% of them had been collected and sent to specific

ELTs collected (tonnes, 2011-2016) 2011

2012

2013

2014

2015

2016

+6,015

+12,462

+19,982

+32,864

+18,371

+15,000

Bibliography •• Agliardi E., Spanjers W., Rethinking the Social Market Economy – A Basic Outline, 2016, RCEA Series 16-01, pp. 1-21 •• Boons F., Janssen M., “The Myth of Kalundborg: Social Dilemmas in Stimulating Ecoindustrial Parks,” Van Den Bergh J., Janssen M. (eds.), Economics of Industrial Ecology – Materials, Structural Change, and Spatial Scales, 2004, MIT Press, Cambridge, pp.

235-247.

•• Chertow M. R., “Industrial symbiosis: literature and taxonomy,” Annual Review

of Energy and Environment, 2(1), 2000, pp. 8-337.

•• Ehrenfeld J., Gertler N., “Industrial Ecology in Practice – The Evolution of Interdependence at Kalundborg,” Journal of Industrial Ecology, (1), 1997, pp. 67-79.

•• Gertler N., Industrial Ecosystems: Developing Sustainable Industrial Structures, Master’s Thesis, MIT., Cambridge, MA, 1995.

•• Hamilton K., “Genuine saving as a sustainability indicator,” Environment Department papers, (77), Environmental economics series, 2000, The World

Bank, Washington, D.C. •• Heeres R. et al., “EcoIndustrial Park Initiatives in the USA and the Netherlands,” Journal of Cleaner Production, (12), 2004, pp. 985-995.

•• Huggins R., “Inter-Firm Network Policies and Firm Performance: Evaluating the Impact of Initiatives in the United Kingdom,” Research Policy, (30), 2001, pp. 443-458.

•• Lei S., Bing Y., “Eco-Industrial Parks from Strategic Niches to Development Mainstream: The Cases of China2, Sustainability, (6),

plants for material recovery. About 50% is destined to energy recovery, while 25% to uncontrolled circuits in order to drop out of the grid.

Eco-Industrial Parks (EIPs): a promising solution... but it needs good chemistry** At face value, the idea of an Eco-Industrial Park (EIPs) is straightforward, as it involves firms in a region cooperating to produce synergies among their operations and match inputs and outputs in order to reduce costs, resource use, waste and emission impacts. This form of “industrial symbiosis” is often compared to an ecosystem in which different species of enterprise share nutrients or pass them down along the food chain.

While this is a compelling image, a different analogy is perhaps needed to capture the complexity of this industrial organization. When two or more firms interact, they behave in a manner resembling a chemical reaction: they combine reagents to give a product (e.g. releasing energy or, in the case of companies, generating revenue) and some residue in the form of waste and emissions.

A reaction requires some amount of activation energy and, to be considered worth is while, should be exergonic, that is it should release more energy that it took to kick-start it. The reasoning behind EIPs is to find reagents that are highly reactive to one another, that is to locate firms with compatible inputs, outputs and procedures that would allow them to operate jointly in order to generate more products (chiefly revenue, but potentially also knowledge, job positions and other socio-economic goods) than they would if they were to act separately, as well as reduce negative externalities (read: adverse impacts) on the local environment and communities. We’d like to explore the main features of Industrial Symbiosis, and EIPs in particular, outlining the benefits promised by their formations as well as their range of application.

2014, pp. 6325-6331.

•• Lowe E., Creating by-product resource exchanges: Strategies for eco-industrial parks, Journal of Cleaner Production, (1), 1997, pp.

57-65.

•• Mirata M., “Experiences from early stages of a national industrial symbiosis programme in the UK: determinants and coordination challenges,” Journal of Cleaner Production, (12), 2004, pp.

967-983.

•• Perman R., et al., Natural Resource and Environmental Economics, 3rd ed., 2003,

Pearson Education Limited, Edinburgh Gate, Harlow.

•• Roberts B.H., “The application of industrial ecology principles and planning guidelines for the development of eco-industrial parks: an Australian case study,” Journal of Cleaner Production, (12), 2004, pp.

997-1010.

•• Veiga L., Magrini A., “Eco-industrial park development in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil: a tool for sustainable development,” Journal of Cleaner Production, 2008, pp. 653-661.

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Columns Circular by Law

Brussels’ Battle for Efficiency Francesco Petrucci,* environmental legal expert and a member of Edizioni Ambiente’s legal editorial staff.

*In collaboration with “Rifiuti – Bollettino di informazione normativa” magazine and Osservatorio di normativa ambientale, www.reteambiente.it

This summer’s hurricanes, which battered the Caribbean and the Southern United States, once again drew media attention to climate change, the main topic of this coming autumn United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC): The 23rd session of the Conference of the Parties (COP23) presided over by the Government of Fiji will take place in Bonn between 6th and 17th November 2017. COP23 will resume COP21 (2015 Paris Agreement) technical implementation work according to the commitment undertaken by the parties during COP22 in Marrakesh the following year. To date, 160 of the 197 participating Countries have ratified the Paris Agreement.

The European Parliament is doing its best to have an active role during the coordination meetings. It has managed to send out an important signal inviting other members to take concrete actions against climate change. On 7th September, the Environmental Commission introduced tougher commitments on energy efficiency provided for by the proposed directive on this subject that will modify the current one (2012/27/EU); the European Commission had proposed 30% by 2030, but members of Parliament want to achieve a binding 40%.

The text will have to get to the General Assembly and most probably a new tête-à-tête with the European Council will ensue. On 26th June 2017, the European Council approved a “shy” non-binding 30%.

On 13th September, the European Parliament gave the all-clear to proposed regulations that will require Member States to compensate by 2030 CO2 emissions deriving from deforestation activities with forests’ absorption capacity.

Negotiations with the European Council are now underway to reach shared wording of a law.

In the meantime, on 17th July 2017, the EU ratified the amendment of the 1999 Gothenburg Protocol on air pollutants. Tougher commitments to reduce emissions of sulphur, nitric oxide and volatile organic compounds (VOCs) other than methane and ammonia. As from 2020, new emission limitations will be applied, set for each country and pollutant.

The European Council (Decision (EU) 2017/1541 of 17th July 2017) also adopted the Kigali amendment to the 1987 Montreal Protocol that will phase out hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), powerful greenhouse gases used, for example, in refrigerators, air conditioners and aerosol sprays. Since 2014, the EU has pushed for HFCs reduction (EU 517/2014).

To this end, the Commission revised (Decision (EU) 2017/1471 of 10th August 2017) the annual greenhouse gas emission quotas for all Member States for the 2017-2020 period. This revision will affect Member States’ curbing measures and policies.

There is a new important development concerning large combustion plants exceeding 50 MW of total rated thermal input. With the Decision (EU) 2017/1442 of 31st July 2017, the European Commission adopted best available techniques (BAT) conclusions, a benchmark for prescriptions in plants’ environmental authorizations.

As from 2nd August 2017, Commission Regulation (EU) 2017/1262 allows the use of manure of any farmed animals (before only chicken manure could be used) as a fuel in combustion plants up to 50 MW. There is a continuous updating of the ecological criteria that businesses must observe if they want to apply for the use of the European Ecolabel. The EU Commission has updated the Ecolabel criteria for textile products (they will be in force until 2024) and has extended to 31st December 2020 existing ecological criteria for processed paper goods (envelopes, bags, stationery goods). With six different decisions, it also updated the Ecolabel criteria for cleansing agents and detergents (they will be in force until 2023).

Two novelties for businesses subscribing to the Eco-Management and Audit Scheme (EMAS). The first is the alignment of EMAS Regulation n. 1221/2009 with the international standard ISO 14001:2015 since it still referred to the previous ISO 14001 of 2004.

The implementation occurred with the Regulation (EU) 2017/1505. The second was the approval of good environmental practices to be adopted within the EMAS framework in the food and beverage sectors (Regulation (EU) 2017/1508 of 28th August 2017).

Lastly, a piece of news regarding all those dealing with chemicals. The EU Commission has modified the Regulation (EC) 1907/2006 on authorization and restriction of chemicals (REACH) adopting the latest modifications of the Regulation (EC) 1272/2008 on classification, labelling and packaging (CLP) of substances and mixtures which introduced new chemicals classified as carcinogenic, mutagen and reprotoxic (CMR).

The modifications will come into force on 1st March 2018.

Columns

The Media Circle

Micro and Macro Roberto Giovannini, a journalist, writes about economy, society, energy, the environment, green economy and technology.

It is common knowledge that cinema is tackling environmental issues more and more often because they are the focus of news and current affairs reports and because they conjure up mainly dark and alarming future scenarios.

But the truth is – hoping that even the few who have not realized it come to see it – the 21st is literally the century of the environment. On the basis of this, culture and art, which by definition “see before” others society and thought trends, read and interpret the reality we live in.

This preamble to talk about two films recently presented at the Venice Film Festival that, directly or indirectly, tackle environmental and sustainability issues.

Let us start with Mother!, the new film from visionary director Darren Aronofsky (Black Swan, Noah) with Jennifer Lawrence, Javier Bardem, Michelle Pfeiffer and Ed Harris. Undoubtedly, an imperfect movie, provoking unease and strong reactions in the viewer, that people can love or hate. It tells the story of a family: Javier Bardem, a writer looking for inspiration, and his wife Jennifer Lawrence. They live in an isolated house and slowly slowly, but more and more often, unknown visitors start arriving to their house.

While Javier tolerates them, his wife sees them as invaders, aggressive and full of shortcomings.

Lawrence, the “mother,” is the generative principle, identifying with the very house (rotting away while she suffers), ready to welcome life but also the ultimate victim of suffering caused by others. In a sense, our Earth is the mother and the house, the point of view we identify with, with its evolution and destruction caused by human.

Aronofsky – deeply committed to defending the environment – talking about Mother! said, “we all know that what happens in Asia influences the USA or Europe. Ecological disasters are often caused by humans. It all comes down to a house, this is our home.

When you throw away something, even a small thing, you don’t know where it will end up.

This is also a film on the environment surrounding us, on what we do and how we treat it and about our relationship with it.”

Another important film was presented in Venice dealing with – in a lighter note but still slightly distressing – the issue of sustainability.

We are referring to Downsizing, the latest work by director Alexander Payne (Sideways, Nebraska) with Matt Damon, Kristen Wiig

and Christoph Waltz. The idea at the core of the story – definitely odd but brilliant – is that in a near future the invention of a revolutionary technology – created to tackle what is perceived as an unsustainable growth of the human population and excessive exploitation of non-renewable resources – will enable us to reduce the size of living cells (people, plants and animals) to tiny little particles. A discovery that will pave the way to our ability to “become small,” 13 cm in height, thus giving us the choice to live in a special and protected miniature universe.

For many reasons: some driven by a “noble” ecological reason, that is drastically reducing their impact on the environment. Others by economic and existential reasons: by miniaturizing, the assets accumulated in the “big” world will multiply exponentially enabling them to live in the lap of luxury.

This – a clear metaphor of the gradual impoverishment and languishing of the then flourishing American middle class – is the reason why the two main characters decide to downsize. By deciding to go to live in the “microcommunity” of Leisure Land, their savings, $150,000 accumulated during a life of sacrifices, become $12 million.

Obviously, without wanting to spoil the film, this wonderful opulent “minuscule” life will reveal a series of dark sides that will put the two unaware protagonists through the wringer.

In their utopic village – strikingly alike The Truman Show’s distressing suburbs – they soon discover – albeit to different levels – that problems and human nature never change that much. An entertaining film talking to our innermost feelings and showing us a glimpse through which we can understand the difficult world we live in. A world where everybody knows that “we cannot carry on with business as usual,” where everyone understands that the welfare – be it real or fictitious – we are used to sooner or later (probably sooner than later) will end up in a general disaster.

So, since we live in world where miniaturization is not possible, we’d better deal with this reality before much more serious consequences than those we can already observe will occur.

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