By IPS Correspondents
ROME, Jul 30 2004 (IPS)

A kitchen counter and cabinets made from 70 kilos of newspaper, a plastic overcoat, and a lamp made from paper are some examples of Italian eco-designs, which combine environmental protection and sustainable economics.

”Green design” is an aggregate of ”innovative strategies, methods and instruments for preventing and reducing negative environmental impacts in all phases of making a product,” without ignoring aesthetics, architect Lucia Pietrosi, professor of industrial design at Rome’s La Sapienza University, told Tierramérica.

In 2002, Italy threw out 29.8 million tonnes of plastic, according to the Italian Environmental Protection Agency.

It may be only a drop in the bucket, but 900 tonnes were salvaged to make things like furniture and clothing items: 10 plastic bottles were used to make a chair, 45 plastic cups were used in making a bench, and 31 bottles were turned into a Christmas tree.

Cardboard, aluminium and steel are also being recovered for use in manufacturing a wide range of products.

Eco-innovation exploits renewable resources, separating out the components of a waste item and eliminating dangerous substances, explain the designers.

The main attractions of the exhibit were the Recall chair, made with 70 percent recycled aluminium and cardboard (by Marco Capellini, of the Remade company), the Medusa dress, made of paper (by architect Caterina Crepax), a table-desk made of corrugated cardboard and able to support 80 kilos, and ”Lucky”, the cardboard toy horse for children (by Ilaria Vitanostra).

”In Italy we drink a lot of coffee and the espresso-maker is made with recycled aluminium. However, nobody knows that,” but doing so saves 85 percent of the great quantity of energy needed to produce new aluminium, architect Capellini told Tierramérica.

He founded MATREC, the first Italian database on eco-design and recycling, available free of charge on the Internet.

Just a few years ago, Italians tended to disdain products made from recycled materials, but today 90 percent of consumers polled say they are willing to purchase merchandise from some 3,000 firms that produce recycled goods.

However, some retailers complain that eco-design products are not yet as well received as traditional items.

Nevertheless, there are more and more Italian-made products bearing the ”Ecolabel”, a European certification for environmentally friendly items.

The European Parliament this year adopted regulations that require, at least until 2008, the re-utilisation of 60 percent of paper and glass waste, 50 percent of steel and aluminium, 22.5 percent of plastic and 15 percent of lumber, in order to cut down on the environmental impacts of garbage and packaging.

The notion of eco-friendly design and construction did not catch on in Italy until the 1990s, even though it had been part of the public debate in northern Europe since the 1960s. An August 2003 decree establishes that 30 percent of the goods acquired by Italy’s public administration must come from recycled raw materials.

The current trend for companies like Merloni, a leader in kitchen and laundry appliances in the European Union, is to highlight the functionality of the products, and the fact that their negative environmental and social impacts are reduced.

Merloni, which in 2003 produced some 13 million appliances, recycles the raw materials involved, not to make more appliances, but rather to manufacture such things as bicycles and home furnishings.

”We respect the EU rules and we have an oversight committee that monitors style and construction in terms of energy saving, because we work under the concept of respect for the environment,” Merloni spokeswoman Chiara Pascarella told Tierramérica.

The eco-designers face the challenge of using more imagination perhaps than their colleagues working with non-recycled materials. Some of their products don’t turn out to be very attractive: mixing several types of plastic, for example, does not always produce homogenous results.

”Eco-design is not only working with recycled materials. It also means producing sustainable appliances, ones that don’t hurt the environment, are easy to put together and take apart, and which save energy,” Capellini said.

The Indarte company produces items – at low cost and in small batches – such as watches made from bicycle lights, lamps made from glass jars and even an aluminium broom built to last 20 years.

”We are not in this out of ecological awareness, but rather for the lack of capital for other proposals. True eco-design is valued for the amount of energy saved and materials used, with nothing wasted, creating indestructible objects that do not go out of style,” Indarte owner Marco Gilioli, in the city of Turin, told Tierramérica.

”Consumers make their purchases based on three factors: beauty, quality and price. If we add respect for the environment, it is one more positive point when it comes time to buy,” says Giuseppe Lotty, an architect with the experimental furniture design centre at the University of Florence.

(* Francesca Colombo is a Tierramérica contributor. Originally published Jul. 24 by Latin American newspapers that are part of the Tierramérica network. Tierramérica is a specialised news service produced by IPS with the backing of the United Nations Development Programme and the United Nations Environment Programme.)

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