The sustainability of the Italian mechanical recycling industry of metal, plastic and paper waste in front of new protectionisms and the challenges of international markets

ASSOFERMET, ASSORIMAP and UNIRIMA are the three national Associations of recycling of ferrous and non-ferrous metals, plastic and paper, each one representative of a specific and functional sector of material recovery. Their member companies, keeping increasingly specialized activity, actualize the principles of circular economy, essential for the achievement of the ambitious objectives set at EU level.

Despite the strategic role for the promotion of environmental sustainability, these recovery facilities are now facing more and more complex challenges, set up by an environmental policy based on new generation protectionist measures, which prohibit or make the export of non-hazardous waste, already subjected to treatments within the EU, difficult and articulated.

Only a strategy of self-sustainability, realized in such a way as to fully replace raw materials in industrial processes with materials from recovery, will give full recognition to “urban mining”. This can only be achieved if the European industrial production system shall be technologically modernized in order to use massively materials from recovery instead of raw materials.
Forcing a market, severely limiting its autonomy based on the balance between supply and demand, discouraging exports, will create strong imbalances and a weakening of the recovery sector, in which Italy is a leading country.

The recovery sector, on the other hand, needs tools that allow the recovered material to be fully placed in internal industrial processes: in this way, the market will autonomously redefine the export dynamics

Session Chair

Silvia Serranti, Full Professor at the Department of Chemical Engineering, Materials & Environment, Faculty of Civil and Industrial Engineering, University of Rome “La Sapienza”

Programme

14.00 Introduction by the Chair

Institutional greetings
Senator Silvia Fregolent, Member of the 8th Senate Committe (Environment, Ecological Transition, Energy, Public Works, Communications, Technological Innovation)

Panelists:

UNIRIMA
Brief introduction by Francesco Sicilia (General Manager)
Fabio Primiani, AVR Spa

ASSOFERMET
Brief introduction by Giovanni Tapetto (Environmental jurist)
Vincenzo Formisano, Formisano Ferro srl

ASSORIMAP
Brief introduction by Walter Regis (President)
Paolo Glerean, Aliplast Spa

17.00 Conclusions