The European INTERREG EUROPE CESME project presented at the First Italian National Forum on the Circular Economy inside G7 Environment.
On Wednesday, June 7th, First Italian National Forum on the Circular Economy was held at Palazzo Malvezzi, headquarters of the Metropolitan City of Bologna. The event was organized inside the agenda of the G7 Environment 2017 and hosted prominent protagonists as representatives of local institutions, entrepreneurs, associations, researchers and experts on environmental issues. The CESME project, which aims at spreading good circular economy practices in small and medium-sized enterprises, was presented at the event. Among the most significant speeches, Kate Raworth, a professor at Oxford University and one of the most influential economists in the world on environmental issues, explained the Doughnut Model, a compass for the 21st century progress, that today millions of people do not have the necessity to live, the challenge is to get these people out of the doughnut centre without stressing the world from the environmental point of view and its scarce resources. Many companies are doing well according to the logic of the circular economy, but only if these activities make it economically viable. Instead, businesses should be generous and designing a "open source" circular economy and shared among companies so that the entire system can improve. Italian Minister of Environment Gianluca Galletti emphasized how the environment was always a constraint, now with the circular economy we unite the economy with environmental policies. We need to identify the tools for spreading the circular economy. Businesses need to make money so they need tools to unite economics and the environment. In Emilia-Romagna region, we have the world's largest environmental database. Having the database is strategic for the future of sustainable business. Luca Mercalli, famous Italian weatherman has highlighted how the current politics are trying to change something but without changing anything. The data tells us that the planet is going to collapse, it should return into the parameters through the circular economy which is one of the strongest proposals to do this. The global warming of the planet is increasing dramatically. For instance, if China emits more CO2 than USA, a US citizen emits three times the CO2 of a Chinese citizen.
