The book addresses circular economy issues from the perspective of materials, the true “physical protagonists” of industrial production, proposing a comprehensive taxonomy of what are called “circular materials” because they are obtained from renewable or renewed sources, and transformed following resource conservation logics.
With this in mind, three major families of circular materials have been identified: bio-based, neo-classical, and ex-novo.
The first family, bio-based materials, include those materials that are based on the natural cycles of development within the plant and animal kingdoms, as well as the world of microorganisms. These are materials whose use has been renewed through processes and technologies that have extended their applications to new areas, allowing them to be exploited more intelligently and without waste.
“Neo-classical” materials, on the other hand, are those materials that have been recycled and now permanently entered into various production processes. Recycling is a practice with countless benefits: it reduces environmental damage caused by other types of disposal, such as landfilling or incineration, reduces consumption of natural resources, lowers production costs, and lowers CO2 emissions to the atmosphere.
The third category is “ex novo.” This is an extremely heterogeneous family, composed of materials that we might call “final” because they are positioned at the end of the production and disposal chains: waste from processing of bio-based raw materials intended for food and cosmetic use; effluents from industrial processing or sewage treatment plants; materials from demolition, post-incineration dust, and soil collected by sweeping streets. It is a world of materials that are considered to be at the end of the line, but which instead give rise to sometimes very interesting reuse projects in which, alongside technologies and transformation processes, the development of the logistics necessary to build collection and recovery systems becomes relevant.
The second part of the book delves into the characteristics and possible developments of the production chains of some of the most significant materials, perhaps traditional but subject to surprising innovations (steel, aluminum, bioplastics, calcesturface, paper, wood, plastic, tires, and glass).
The volume closes with a series of
case studies, exemplary stories of companies and entrepreneurs in our country inventing, producing and marketing the materials of the new economy.