Recycling? It’s a bargain!

The business volume reached by the Italian recycling industry is equal to that of the cosmetics sector and greater than that of textiles. But, most importantly, it’s growing: Conai explains the how and the why.

The Italian recovery and recycling preparation industry is strong and qualified, and it is looking to the future by investing in ever greater resources with the objective of creating the conditions for a “recycling society”. As much was declared and defended by Conai’s director general, Walter Facciotto, during the Green Economy States-General at the last Ecomondo. By 2020 - Facciotto also noted during the meeting - 50% of paper, wood, plastic and glass waste produced in Italy will have to be recycled. How? By implementing separated collection systems where they are still missing, developing new technologies and solutions to reduce the waste generated by treatment processes, increasing yield of techniques to recover usable material from those collected in the city and developing the market of products made from recycled materials, for example through Green Public Procurement.

Conai acts speaks for 4 of the 8 work groups that make up the Parliament, which are committed to drafting a plan proposal for developing the green economy in the macro-areas of eco-innovation, efficiency and energy conservation, renewable energy sources, waste recycling, sustainable mobility, quality organic agribusiness, environmental services and economic instruments.
Facciotto’s contribution, as the group’s coordinator, which focused on “Developing eco-efficiency, materials renewability and waste recycling”, is based on some important socio-economic premises.

Packaging: a treasure trove. The packaging recycling and recovery industry is a solid and strategic industrial sector, and one that is growing, counter to general economic trends: with +7.1% turnover growth in 2011, it serves as a flagship for the green economy. Its importance grows proportionally to the demand for raw materials and the consequently constantly increasing weight of raw materials recovered from scraps. The Consortium System coordinated by Conai has enabled raising the quality and exponentially increasing the quantity of materials collected: in 15 years, overall recovery of packaging waste has increased by 140%; today, 73.7% of packaging put on the market is recovered, while only 26% is disposed in other ways, including landfills. The market for recycled materials, which now responds to the same logic as the commodities market, is also able to create wealth in terms of collective environmental benefit. Indeed, the use of recycled materials reduces CO2 emissions, raw materials consumption, energy consumption and the use of landfills. From 1999 to 2011, collection, recycling and re-use of packaging materials has led to 11.1 billion euro in net benefits to Italy: a veritable treasure trove, equal to a financial intervention.

Comparisons. As noted above, compared to the previous year, in 2011 the turnover generated by packaging recycling and satellite activities grew by 7.1%, reaching a total value of 9.5 billion euro. This growth is far beyond that of Italy’s GDP, at a meager 0.4% and that of general industrial production, which reached just 0.1%.
The economic importance of packaging recycling is also evidenced when it is compared to other types of Italian industry: wind, for example, compared to which its turnover is nearly double, or photovoltaic panels, which it surpasses by 60%.
In 2011, the recycling sector was second only to that of renewable energies, which it surpassed in 2012. Its size is now higher than that of industries with much deeper roots in Italy’s economy: well beyond that of textiles, which reached a turnover of 8,4 billion (source: Centro Studi Moda Italia) and equal to that of the cosmetics industry.                          

Green economy: state of the art Last December, the report “Green economy to get out of the crisis” was presented, drafted by the Foundation for Sustainable Development and ENEA. The first part of the study provides an analysis of the green economy, on the basis of data from UNEP (United Nations Environment Program), the OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development), the European Union and the Rio+20 Conference, with particular attention to global cultural and environmental heritage. The second part of the report analyzes the strategic sectors for the development of the green economy, partly based on international comparisons, and shows their potentials. Below is an extremely concise account of some of the considerations that concern the packaging industry. • Eco-innovation is considered one of the main drivers of sustainable development. According to the latest survey of the Eco-innovation Scoreboard 2011, however, Italy places sixteenth among 27 EU states, below the European average: our country does not produce eco-innovation, but imports it. Positive, on the other hand, are the number of certifications of Italy’s environmental management systems, energy production, greenhouse gas output, the growth of employment in eco-industries, in which 2.12% of the workforce is employed, against the European average of 1.53%. Also promising is the education balance, in which Italy boasts 193 university programs on the green economy. • In Italy, production of urban waste is growing faster than GDP and consumption; the preferred method of disposal is the landfill, which accounts for approximately 49% of volumes (10 regions, from Liguria to Sicily, send more than 60% of urban waste to the landfill). In the rest of Europe, on the other hand, there are six countries with zero or near-zero landfill disposal, with recycling rates equaling 60%. In Italy, recovery of materials is limited to an average of 33%, thus prefiguring huge potential. The ENEA study clearly indicates that the cost of waste management goes down as the proportion of recycling goes up. Here are some figures: in Lombardy, the rate of RD is 47%, and managing 1 kg of waste costs 24.65 cents euro; in Veneto, with 56.2% RD, it costs 25.88 cents; in Lazio with 17.8%, waste disposal costs 31.84 cents per kilo, and in Sicily, where separated collection reaches just 7.1%, it costs 29.83 cents/kg. Waste management employs approximately 120,000 people in Italy.

The Green Economy General States have been promoted by an organizer committee made up of 39 industry associations representing the Italian green economy, in collaboration with the Ministry of the Environment. Their task is to develop a plan proposal in the eight macro-areas of eco-innovation, energy conservation and efficiency, renewable energy sources, waste recycling, sustainable mobility, quality organic agribusiness, environmental services and economic instruments. The meetings involved experts and representatives of business, government and civil society and were held for the first time on the occasion of the last Ecomondo-Key Energy 2012.