Rare Earth Elements: The Vitamins of Modern Industry
Demand is increasing. Production is almost completely dominated by China. Recycling margins are inadequate. This is the current context of the market of Rare Earth Elements (REE) or “technolog...
Bioeconomy: a European Gamble
The Bioeconomy. In Europe this sector is currently worth € 2 trillion with 22 million jobs and yet this word is still relegated to technical language, as if it were an academic oddity, a margin...
Not Renewable, but Everlasting
Virtually, the aluminium of the beer can you had last night is everlasting, even if its use is a very recent application. Aluminium is not found in nature, for centuries its value rivalled that of g...
Revision of the Waste Directive and Prospects for a European Circular Economy
The proposal for a waste directive presented at the commission on 2nd July 2014,(1) in the framework of a packet of measures aimed at promoting circular economy, is the first important regulato...
The Secret of Steel
When Jared Diamond wrote his essay Guns, Germs and Steel. A Brief History of Everybody for the Last 13,000 Years purported to show a picture of the history of mankind from an ecological rather than ...
Employment, Research and Innovation for Sustainable Growth
Europe: innovation for sustainable and inclusive growth In times of financial straits, substantial demographic changes and increasing global competition, innovation is Europe’s best tool to s...
5,000 Years of Transparency
We could define glass as a noble material. Made with naturally-derived raw materials, has been used for as many as 5,000 years and today it can be separated and recycled – with economic and en...
A Ban Spurs the Launch of the Bioeconomy in Italy: the Case of Shopping Bags
For once, the revolution involving landfills and waste management saw Italy as the leader in Europe. Funny, since Italy is known for having the highest number of law infringements, some of them very...
Circular Economy Showing off
In order not to risk sending a weak signal, it chose the most prominent position: the fair’s entrance hall, impossible to go unnoticed. So the “ExNovo Materials in the Circular Economy&...
It Takes a Flower
In Hannover, Germany, the natural rubber used for treads has been replaced by a new product, an extract of dandelion (to be precise of the Russian dandelion, Taraxacum kok-saghyz), then renamed &ldq...
Filling up at the Treatment Plant!
A treatment plant in Milan’s metropolitan area turned into a biorefinery. A treatment plant for the sewage of part of Lombardy regional capital turning into a filling up station. Local and wit...
The European Path to Bioeconomy Runs through Clusters
Long gone are the days when the big enterprises of the early capitalism used to rule from within the innovation processes, from basic research to the marketing of new products. Nowadays such innovat...
That Treasure Inside a Little Grain
Meeting with Nicoletta Ravasio, professor of general and inorganic chemistry at the Department of Chemistry within the faculty of Agrarian and Food sciences at the University of Milan, at the end of...
CO2: From Climate Killer to Resource
It started operating in 2002, when Alex Krajete left for California with a degree in chemistry under his belt obtained from the University of Innsbruck. After a PhD at Berkeley University, at the Ca...
Used Oil: 30 Years of Green Economy
According to COOU (the Italian Compulsory Consortium of Used Oils), the evaluation of its 30 years of activity is a chance to think over the potential offered by a recycling model of a substance whi...
Made and ReMade in Italy
If “made in Italy” production represents an added value linked to mainly local manufacturing (and often to prestigious design), the fact that a saucepan is made from recycled materials i...
PLASTiCE Project: Promoting Sustainable Plastics in Central Europe
Development in the region, comprising eastern parts of Western Europe (Austria, Germany and Italy) and ex-socialist countries in the strip from Poland in the north to Croatia in the south, followed ...
The Virtuous Circle of Regeneration
The first is a company with structured and complex know-how, of the same technological level needed to turn crude oil into petrol or into a widely-used product. The second is a widespread and effici...
A New Frontier for Start-Ups
“Giaura stems from the ancient Greek words for earth and air” says Max Beaumont, the 30-year-old founder of the company, “because it turns the Earth’s biggest waste stream, n...
From Recycling to High-End Products
Plastics with or without Market Value Plastics can be conveniently classified into two large groups: those with market value, such as Pet or Pe bottles, that are recycled through well-established c...