On March 24th  CONAI (National Packaging Consortium) and EXPO Milano 2015 signed and agreement to support the Circular Economy Programme.  In the EXPO six-months-period the exhibition is probably going to produce around 80 tons of wastes per day, with peaks of about 130 tons during week-ends.  It will therefore be fundamental to recycle garbage alerting visitors and exhibitors.

At least 40% of the wastes will be produced by visitors, whereas 60% will be “released” by the exhibition and restaurant areas.  In order to inform and guide people who work at EXPO and to stimulate tourists, CONAI will make some panels and informative boards to make sure that all the garbage, packaging and non packaging will be correctly recycled.

The aim is to recycle 70% of the global wastes through the different Consortiums and the compost, and the recycling system  of EXPO Milano 2015 will be the same in use in the city itself. Paper, glass, platic and metal packaging, food wastes will be collected separately and inserted again in the production cycles.

CONAI and EXPO 2015 agreement includes the implementation of an environmental counter that will measure the environmental, economical, and social benefits that come from recycling. The counter will measure different things, including CO2 emissions, waste saving and recycling, hydro and energetic saving. The environmental counter has been planned with AMSA – Gruppo A2A cooperation and will monitor garbage collection and recycling.

In addition, CONAI will prepare some short videos, in the Italian and the English language to show how to behave correctly when recycling inside the EXPO Universal Exhibition. For the youngest ones, there will be an interactive game and other material.

Inside the Universal Exhibition spaces there will also be 30 benches made up of recycled packaging materials: a concrete example of a circular economoy model theat works and that it’s sustainable form an environmental and economic point of view.

“EXPO Milano 2015”,  said Piero Galli, General Director of the Sales & Entertainment Department of EXPO 2015 S.p.A., “wants to leave some positive traces supporting sustainability in the organization of this event, coherently with the theme ‘Feed the planet, energy for life’. This means that reaching high objective on the recycling field. We want to give a good example and a benchmark for future exhibitions and big events. For this reason we ask all the operators and participants to cooperate”.

“Sustainability is one of the central issues in EXPO 2015 and CONAI is happy to share its expertise in the recycling sector”, commented Walter Facciotto, CONAI General Director,  This means not only to protect the environment but also to promote economic development. In our 15 years of activity we generated 15,2 billion euros of benefits inside the Italian production system”.

Thanks to CONAI and other consortiums activity in the last 15 years the recycling scenario has changed completely.  In 1998 just 33,2% of the packaging was recuperated, today 77,5% is saved. These results allowed to avoid the building of at least 100 dumps, stopped 125 tons CO2 emissions and saved 350 billion KwH energy.