Category Interviews

A New Alliance between men and plants that allows the union of the two to strengthen and protect both: here is NEW ALLIANCE, a path that connects the precarious condition that unites the plant species at risk and the green and social spaces too. they at risk. To realize it in Italy, from an idea of ​​an American collective, the PAV (Living Art Park) of Turin: Orietta Brombin, responsible for the educational and training activities of the PAV, tells about the workshops and the planting of 100 trees to signal what, in the global precariousness is to be safeguarded.

From Tierra del Fuego to Alaska, in 7 years, crossing all of America: the English explorer George Meegan did it and then told it in the book "The great walk" (Mursia) where he collects stories, sensations, tales and images of a continent and the people who inhabit it. Environmental balance: "if today there are 1000 things to do, we are doing one and a half".

Revolutionize the Food & Beverage world by replacing the current processes of pasteurization and homogenization of food fluids with one based on controlled cavitation. It is the goal of the FCHR project to increase the efficiency and sustainability of many industrial processes by raising energy efficiency and safety standards and increasing the nutritional characteristics of products.

One plant at a time, make the world better, with one app. It is the idea of ​​Stefano and Alessandra who, out of anxieties, disappointments and satisfactions related to the health of their domestic plants, have decided to create a community to which everyone can ask for help in obtaining green leaves and flowers. No more yellowed leaves that cry out for help from the vessels, unheard.

Turbines with final efficiency over 100? Alessandro Leghi has a prototype at home, and argues that "if perfected, engineered and sufficiently widespread, they would considerably reduce all the environmental problems associated with the production of energy from combustion engines". The idea was born in 2003, the prototype was completed in 2012 when Alessandro and his brother demonstrated how it is possible, from a mechanical point of view, to push 1900 W mechanical turbine shaft with a mechanical thrust power equal to 330 W.

Water, running water, mayor's water. For ordinary citizens, a tap opens and everything flows, but for those who manage the service, such as Metropolitana Milanese in Milan, it's not all that simple. Rather. Yet levels of excellence can be achieved. Stefano Cetti, general manager of MM, who is entrusted with the entire service of the great Milan, reveals some mechanisms, and the good quality of the tap water, which is very controlled.

Eco-friendly fabrics, almost a second skin, with which Franco Francesca, the first high fashion eco-designer, has been designing and creating collections since 2006. Clothes that have nothing to envy to the polluting ones, indeed, "they also save energy, they contribute to reduce the greenhouse effect and are transformed at the end of their life cycle into fertile humus ".

A network of shared knowledge in the area of ​​energy sustainability of buildings: this is what Construction21 is creating, born in France in 2009 and now also active in Italy and in 4 other European countries. Carlotta Berta, project manager of the project, tells how even in our country as beyond the Alps, "the first communities begin to function and users, from passive readers, become an active part of online discussions, with comments and strong participation".

For 10 years, the VIVO Committee has been raising awareness of vivisection and cruelty free products, while Italy, especially women and young people, is increasingly vegetarian and attentive to what it buys. It cannot be denied that the crisis also encourages this conversion: Marina Berati, co-founder of the committee, explains in fact that "a 100% vegetable diet is decidedly less expensive than one based on animal foods.

Will it be a cosmetic that is good for the skin and the environment? It is not easy to find your way around the many products sold freely without a prescription. Skineco (International Association of EcoDermatology) while trying to combine environmental sustainability, dermatology and skin needs, is also committed to promoting cosmetics companies with a "green" footprint by "marking" them with an "approved".

Bicycle thieves, tremble: RuBBici is online. The site of advice for the protection of your bike, pre and post theft, and more: the network becomes a space to share reports of those who have seen their bikes stolen but also of those who have seen suspicious ones in some corner of the city and he thought “maybe it was someone who…”.

Narrative cycle tourism: this is how we can define the one proposed with Ciclodramma, a project of the Pergine Spettacolo Aperto Festival that transforms a path for bicycles, such as that of Valsugana, into an experience of culturally augmented reality. Klaus Saccardo, the creator, with an ad hoc application, via smartphone and headset, has decided to allow cyclists from Valsugana to immerse themselves in "tales and stories capable of intertwining with the landscape itself and dynamically changing, interactively accompanying the lived experience" .

Solar panels, eco-save bulbs, information courses on sustainability: the University of Milan-Bicocca leaves for the Maldives, carrying in its suitcase a program to convert an atoll of the archipelago to renewable resources, in one year. With the support of Caritas Italiana, the project takes place in the atoll of Faafu and aims to reduce the carbon dioxide emissions in one of the areas which are the most at risk for the effects of global warming, as Paolo Galli - researcher of the Biotechnologies and Biosciences department of the Athenaeum, and project coordinator - tells us.

Wind power, the mini and micro, is still a market with small numbers in Italy but Assieme is committed to promoting the use of these sources. On the one hand, there is no experience of builders, installers and plant maintainers, on the other hand there are excessive bureaucracy, technical connection problems and high operating costs, especially for microturbines.

The Politecnico di Milano is studying CO2 recycling and reuse processes: "a valid alternative, because instead of hiding CO2 under the carpet, it is reused to create new products". Carlo Giorgio Visconti, a researcher at the Politecnico di Milano, talks about the new project born from the collaboration with Maire Tecnimont, to study ways of recovering carbon dioxide by using it as a raw material for the petrochemical industry.

In the recycling of glass packaging, Italy ranks 4th in Europe after Germany, France and the United Kingdom, for absolute quantity, at 11th for recycling rate. This is said by CoReVe who has been dealing with it for years and explains that it is necessary for our country to soon adopt collection systems based on the most widespread "European" model, "single material" perhaps also dividing by color: green, amber and white.

Zero-emission meals those delivered in schools and hospitals in Naples thanks to a project by EP Spa in collaboration with Renault. Steaming dishes arriving on zero-emission electric vehicles, explains Giuseppe Esposito, commercial director of Ep Spa: "The new vans will make it possible to minimize the environmental impact of meal delivery, reducing carbon dioxide emissions by over 46 quintals in the 'air".

Two-wheeled, electric vehicles and charging stations: Ecomission has made it a mission, looking to Italy but also to Greece, Spain and France with its Ecojumbo that has no equal in all of Europe. For more bureaucratic than technical problems, explains Walter Pilloni, president and managing director of Ecomission, "currently we have not yet installed columns, but we plan to install 10 by the end of 2013 in Genoa".

Eco-design now finds space in glossy magazines and is gaining more and more support. It fishes out and recycles tires, recovers felt from industrial scraps, shoe insoles, re-uses cardboard, glass, bicycle gears and many materials from the construction world. The best produced by young Italians is on display at “IOriciclo TUricicli”, on the occasion of the Milanese Design Week.

Is a radical shift towards maximum energy efficiency in Lombardy possible? The challenge is the one launched by three young engineers with clear ideas and a lot of experience. To win it Isaac Scaramella, Alessandro Fracassi and Alberto Massetti created GreenLab, a team to develop projects in the field of construction and land use planning with a common denominator: attention to energy, which never goes to waste.