This was the message that emerged from the Green Loop Festival in Morro d’Alba (AN), particularly from last Sunday’s closing event, which was attended by, among others, Undersecretary to MiTe Ilaria Fontana
The message from the closing event of the Green Loop Festival in Morro d’Alba, the small municipality in the province of Ancona known for its “lacrima” wine, was clear: if we don’t want the circular economy and ecological transition to be a waste of effort, we must all be involved and committed, each with our own role, from individual citizens to politicians, from entrepreneurs to local administrations to international diplomacy. This was the common thread running through the speeches of participants at the “Circular Economy and Recovery Plan: Future Prospects” event on Sunday, June 20, in Piazza Barcaroli. Speakers included Ilaria Fontana, Undersecretary at the Ministry of Ecological Transition, Massimo Fileni, President of Cluster Agrifood Marche, Francesco Bicciato, Secretary of the Forum for Sustainable Finance, Francesco Regoli, Director of the Department of Life and Environmental Sciences at the Polytechnic University of Marche, and Nicolas Meletiou, Managing Director of ESO, moderated by our editorial director Raffaele Lupoli. They issued a call to open the processes of ecological transition to all of society, which unfortunately has not yet found space in the NRRP.
Cultural and Ethical Transition
Undersecretary to MiTe Ilaria Fontana explains it well: “Transition, a now overused term, is an ecological, energy, environmental, and bureaucratic transition, but it must necessarily also be a cultural and ethical transition. Otherwise, we have already failed.” Environmental sustainability “must be scientific, political, corporate, and individual. With an active role for local communities. There are enormous resources for recovery, but if each of us doesn’t do our part, we have failed,” Fontana reiterates.
The Role of Businesses
In their own way, each starting from their own perspective, the business leaders present at the roundtable also agree. An entrepreneur can “pursue their own interest in the interest of the community,” emphasizes Massimo Fileni, head of the eponymous poultry group and President of Cluster Agrifood Marche. “They can do this for three reasons,” he clarifies. “First, because there are increasingly more regulations to comply with regarding sustainability, and the more effectively and quickly they can meet these regulations, the more competitive they are. Second, thinking about those rules that don’t exist yet but will soon, such as those on the climate impacts of supply chains or those on circularity: if the company prepares in advance, it does so in its own interest and in the interest of the community. Third: for consumers who are increasingly attentive to what they buy, even beyond regulatory requirements, and when they choose, they want to know what impact they’re having on the environment, the territory, the community, and the future.”
From different experiences, Nicolas Meletiou, Managing Director of ESO, a company primarily involved in the recovery and recycling of office waste, reaches the same conclusion: “I came into the waste world by chance. It was an opportunity to translate the international know-how that life had offered me to do something for others. In 2001, we were saying that the circular economy would be the future, when it was almost taboo to talk about it.” Also by chance, ESO enters the sports sector and the recycling of athletic shoes and then bike tires and tennis balls, from which playground flooring and athletic tracks are created. This is how the Betty’s Gardens project was born, dedicated to Meletiou’s prematurely deceased wife, for the creation or renovation of playgrounds (now 22 throughout Italy) with shock-absorbing flooring obtained from the recycling process of sports shoes, tennis balls, tires, and bicycle inner tubes. A circularity that is also solidarity and social cohesion and that is constantly evolving. Meletiou in fact spoke of a new machine, nearing completion, that can transform shoes, tennis balls, and other objects directly into secondary raw materials ready for a new life.
And That of Social Justice
Speaking at the closing debate of the Green Loop Festival, Francesco Bicciato, Secretary of the Forum for Sustainable Finance and recently appointed consultant on these issues for the Ministry of Sustainable Infrastructure and Transport, was quick to clarify that “there is no circular economy that can be called sustainable if we don’t take social inclusion into account.”
Today, Bicciato explains, we are witnessing “the realization that the development model we had before no longer worked.” The financial system has also taken note of this and now largely “integrates environmental and social concepts into traditional economic-financial analysis.” In sustainable finance, he specifies, “environment and social are not complementary to maximizing investment returns but are integral parts of equal value, like a three-legged stool: if environmental sustainability, social sustainability, or economic sustainability is missing, the stool doesn’t stand.”
We’re not talking about marginal resources, he adds, but “30 trillion at the global level, 14 at the European level, 1,700 in Italy alone. This is not a niche but growing volumes moving toward an economy that respects environmental and social criteria.”
A Way of Life
“During the four days of the festival, we used the languages of art and creativity to talk about the circular economy,” said the scientific and artistic director of the Green Loop Festival, Marco Cardinaletti, announcing the 2022 edition together with the mayor of Morro D’Alba, Enrico Ciarimboli. “We stepped outside scientific boundaries to reach people, because the circular economy and ecological transition don’t just concern experts, but concern all of us, our daily behaviors, our lifestyles. Today we conclude this Festival, which won’t be a one-time event, but we want it to become a regular appointment to reflect on circular economy issues and make it a way of life.”