Eco-Innovative Scenarios for Smart Materials. The PVCupcycling Project – Circular Economy and Zero Waste

The need to consider domestic and industrial waste as innovative resources for new applications, which aim to reduce the impact on the environment and there-fore society, is now an acquired fact that gives even-greater strength to the con-cept of circular economy. The PVCupcycling project changes the applied managerial philosophy within the production chain of the proposing company, thus initiating "the transition from linear management to a circular economy". This project focuses primarily on PVC from electric cables which were previously destined for waste, and for this reason were strongly impacting the environment. However by implementing upcycling the project can create environmentally sustainable products using new production chains. A circular economy system will allow company to directly operate an effective re-cycling policy. Establishing a new “zero waste” impact scheme, in order to recov-er by-products from the production process, thus leading to an increased market price in comparison to their economic value, and by doing so with full respect of the blue and circular economy standards applied to the product. The project won the regional competition of Calabria (EU funds-POR Calabria 14-20 axis I-action 1.2.2) and has received European funding for the “Promotion of Research and Innovation” thanks to the proposal of the following team: R.ED.EL., a media manufacturing company, in collaboration with ENEA, an Ital-ian energy specialist research organization, UNICAL, a chemistry specialist organ-isation based at the University of Calabria, PMopenlab, an innovative eco-design and additive manufacturing start-up. C. Nava is the technical-scientific team man-ager, a sustainability and design innovation research specialist, and the author of this article.