CONAI published the Sustainability and Green Economy Report recounting the 2020 events.
The new Report quantifies the environmental and social effects of recycling activity, with a scientific tool – the Life Cycle Costing Tool – in order to calculate the direct and indirect effect of the efforts of the system.
Speaking of 2020, one cannot fail to consider the crisis situation in which we were forced to operate as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic that changed the lives of each of us. It is only thanks to the collaboration and vision of the system that the health crisis was not followed by one of an environmental nature. Thanks to the collaboration of all the players in the chain in which CONAI played a fundamental role, making it possible, thanks to the timely intervention of the Supply Chain Consortia and the active collaboration with central institutions and ANCI, to save natural resources and energy and generate new secondary raw materials, subsequently used for the production of new goods for daily use in place of other virgin raw materials.
The 2020 data even set a record for our country, which brought 73% of the packaging materials put on the market to a second life, far exceeding the minimum recycling targets in force (55%). If we add recovery to recycling, i.e. the exploitation of packaging materials as an energy source, we reach 83.7% of the total amount of packaging waste recovered. Thus also contributing to reduce CO2 emissions into the atmosphere; in 2020 alone, 4.4 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent avoided thanks to the recycling of the consortium system.
Thanks to recycling packaging waste, in 2020 consumption of about 4,6 million tons of raw material was avoided, equal to the weight of 460 Eiffel towers.
Talking about economics, the benefits generated by the CONAI- Supply Chain Consortia reached over one billion euros in 2020 and from 2005 to 2020 totaled 12.8 billion euros. The commitment since 1998 has avoided the filling of 175 new medium-sized landfills.
To learn more, download the “CONAI Green Economy Report – Highlights” at this page: https://www.conai.org/en/about-conai/green-economy/