(Finance) – Innovation has “an important role” for the economy and Italy “does not start from scratch” but can be considered a “superpower of the circular economy”. It is what was stated by Ermete Realacci, President of the Symbola Foundation on the sidelines of the “Innovation for circularity” event promoted by COTEC in collaboration with Enel at the Ara Pacisa Museum in Rome. During the event, the role of innovation for the circular economy was discussed, as a lever for redesigning the economic model and its benefits in the transformation of a country.
“Us, mostly in waste recovery that come from the productive activity, we are by far the first in Europe: we recover about 80% of this waste, the European average is under 50%, Germany is 10 points below us”, explains the expert, adding “all this because Italy has an ancient history in which we we responded to the shortage of raw materials that Italy has with the use of that great source of renewable and non-polluting energy that it is human intelligence“.
“We already have a lot of supply chains in place efficient from this point of view, from the scraps of Brescia to the rags of Prato, to the Lucchesia paper mills, which are ahead and, this Material recovery saves us money every year something like 23 million tons of oil equivalents And 63 million tons of CO2 emissions”.
According to Realacci, however, “more can be donethere are new frontiers starting, for example, come on minerals that we have learned to know how to look more carefully, that they are strategic – rare earths, nickel, cadmium – and the Italian culture of minimizing the use of materials and recovering as much as possible he can also be on the pitch in this challenge”.