In 2018, almost 10.7 million tonnes of packaging waste were sent for recycling and recovery. This is 80.6% of the amount put on the market, well above the legal targets, a trend that is constantly and progressively growing.
This figure is the result of more than twenty years of work by the Consortium System whose mission was, and still is, to evolve the supply chain from a management model based on recourse to landfills to the “recycling society”, based on the circular economy model.
This mission that we can say has been met since from 1998 to 2018, recourse to landfills for packaging waste in Italy has gone from 67% to 19%, above all bridging the gap with other major European countries. Packaging sent for recycling in 2018 in Italy amounted to approximately 9.3 million tonnes, i.e. 69.7% of the quantity put on the market and with quantities tripled compared to those of 1998.
CONAI’s aim was to quantify these flattering results also in terms of the positive effects they have on the environment, the economy and society. And to do this, the Consortium choses a cutting-edge scientific methodology, Life Cycle Costing, which, thanks to precise traceability of the packaging waste flows managed by the Supply Chain Consortia, highlights the contribution that the CONAI-Consortia system has made in terms of positive externalities in a more intelligible manner.
All this with an eye on the new circular economy objectives that consider the role of design as a tool for preventing the environmental impact of packaging to be central. For this reason, the Green Economy Report includes a specific analysis on the positive effects that eco-design interventions, promoted by companies and narrated by CONAI as examples of good practice, have on the environment.
Download the CONAI Green Economy Report: https://www.conai.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/Green_Economy_Report_Conai_EN.pdf