Undesiderable Recycling
Quite rightly so The Times devoted its Person of the Year cover to Trump: “The President of the Divided States of America.” The grounds for this decision read, “With this real esta...
Growth, Sustainability and the Bioeconomy. An Uneasy Triangle?
When decision-makers in politics, economics and in our daily life, when concerned citizens or also consumers discuss about Growth and/or Sustainability their arguments normally follow well defined...
Trump Warms up the Climate
In an interview with The New York Times on 22nd November, Donald Trump declared, “Climate is a topic that I keep an eye on. I am open to any possibility. I imagine there is a link be...
It Takes an Integrated and Connected Knowledge
The onslaught of bad news about the environment, poverty, unemployment, human rights abuses and the inability of policy makers to face up to global crises combined with the business-as-usual appro...
The Metamorphosis of Matter
Ai Weiwei,Forever, 2014, Palazzo Cavalli-Franchetti, VeniceCourtesy of Berengo Studio and Lisson Gallery Already the Dada avant guarde – in particolar Ducha...
Stages of Change
While fossil fuels for energy production have been used for the past 250 years, their utilization to generate new materials and a plethora of plastics dates back to no more than a century ago. Ho...
When Plundering the Environment Becomes Big Business
Green corruption is the circular economy’s sworn enemy: its very anthitesis, its tombstone. A liquid enemy that feeds and grows on red tape inefficiencies and awful governance in the managemen...
Energies Sustainability and Renewable Materials
Renewable energies are to be considered neither plentiful nor inexhaustible nor cheap. Indeed, using renewable energy sources requires – for the production of electricity, usable thermal ene...
Success Driven by Innovation
Perhaps the mere name of Novozymes is enough to adequately describe the Danish bioeconomy. The Bagsværd-based giant, 12 kilometres north-east of Copenhagen, holds 48% of the world market of in...
Changing the Relationship between the Economy, Territories and People
The challenge that we are facing – how to get the economy running again – is an industrial revolution which radically changes the relationship with our territory, currently characteriz...
The Liquid Continent
A liquid continent. This is how Fernand Braudel, a famous French historian of the Annales School, defined the Mediterranean. A continent made of water surrounded by three different continents, ...
Bioeconomy's Triple Advantage
The Bioeconomy aims to promote the most efficient and sustainable production and exploitation of biological resources to tackle global interconnected challenges. The concept of the bioeconomy int...
Southern Italy Restarts from Green Chemistry
Non-repayable funds that often enriched Southern politicians’ entourage and led to white elephant projects, plants with no connection with their areas and in many cases with no consideration f...
Fighting Waste to Produce New Wealth
Innovating involves approaching problems from a different perspective. In other words, one needs to move from a quantitative to a qualitative analysis, thus feeling an integral part of a living sy...
5 Drivers for a Changing Economy
This implies analysing what its economic relevance is, assuming that there is a very close connection between economic development and the rational and sustainable use of matter flows. In order to a...
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 ...