Source: press office Venice Rovigo Chamber of Commerce
Venice, 4 February – Fattoria Triboli Società Semplice Agricola (FI), Irsap S.p.a. (RO), Clean Air Europe S.r.l. (LC), Novamont S.p.a. (NO) and Esi S.p.a.
(NO). (NO) and Esi S.p.a. (RM) are the five Italian companies that have won the 9th edition of the Impresa Ambiente Award, the highest national award for private and public companies
that have distinguished themselves in terms of Sustainable Development, Environmental Respect and Social Responsibility.
They were joined by entrepreneur Sara Cecchetto of Azienda Agricola Cecchetto Giorgio (TV), who won the Special Young Entrepreneur Award, and start-up company Itamia
Engineering S.r.l. (VE), winner of the new category of the Impresa Ambiente Award. (VE) winner in the new innovative start-up category. Special mention for the Best Product
category awarded by the jury to Conceria Pasubio S.p.a. of Arzignano (VI).
The Award ceremony, promoted in Italy by the Venice Rovigo Chamber of Commerce, with the collaboration of Unioncamere and the patronage of the Ministry of Ecological
Transition, was held today in Venice in the Sale Apollinee of the Teatro La Fenice with some of the companies present and others connected from home.
The event was opened by Massimo Zanon, President of the Venice Rovigo Chamber of Commerce, Andrea Prete, President of Unioncamere, and speeches by Paola Migliorini, Deputy Head
of the Sustainable Production, Products and Consumption Unit, European Commission Directorate-General for the Environment, and Marco Frey, President of the Impresa Ambiente Award Jury and lecturer
at the Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna in Pisa.
Also congratulating the winning companies was the President of the Veneto Region, Luca Zaia, who sent the companies a message of greeting, applauding their commitment, efforts and
determination.
Half of the companies that received an award are based in Veneto, a region that according to the “Green Italy 2021” Report by Symbola Foundation – Unioncamere, ranks third in Italy
for the absolute number of companies that have invested or will invest this year in green technologies and products, namely 41,529 companies.
It is an honour for the Chamber of Commerce to have been able to carry out and manage this prestigious national award at such a delicate and difficult time for the business system, and
especially to do so this time in the presence of a city like Venice, a candidate to become the world capital of sustainability, – says Massimo Zanon, President of the Venice Rovigo
Chamber of Commerce. – These projects tell of a different Italy, one that is sustainable, environmentally friendly and socially responsible. We are proud that for the first time since the
previous editions of the Award there are so many companies from our region. Four out of the eight winners are from the Veneto region, and two of them are in the young entrepreneur and innovative
start-up category. The jury selected the winners from 74 applications received from 13 regions of Italy and awarded the prizes in four categories: 1) Best Management, 2) Best Product,
3) Best Process/Technology, 4) Best International Cooperation, plus the special “Young Entrepreneur” prizes, reserved for business owners or managers under 40 (already competing in one of the four
categories) and the “Innovative Start-up” for highly innovative projects and research dedicated to eco-sustainable development.
Fattoria Triboli Società Semplice Agricola of Impruneta (FI) was awarded the prize for the “Best Management” category (micro and small enterprises) thanks to a 7-action plan launched
in 2019 that aims to make the company fully sustainable on an environmental, social and economic level, embracing the “producer to consumer” strategy for a fair, healthy and environmentally
friendly food system. From the production of extra virgin olive oil, eggs and Bee-Friendly honey to vegan cheeses and natural soap, everything on the farm is organic. Eco Friendly is also the
packging and the use of compostable, eco-friendly material for all the products it produces. At Triboli, sustainability is applied and taught through educational programmes such as the Educational
Farm and the Social Farm. A further initiative is the formation of the Unione degli Olivicoltori di Impruneta, a union of olive growers who will produce oil in a totally sustainable way, from
planting, to treatment, to harvesting and finally to bottling and storage. Zero waste is another of the actions applied by the company through the almost total reduction (zero) of waste and refuse
(waste).
In the “Best Management” category, the award went to IRSAP S.p.a., a company from Arquà Polesine (RO), leader in the production of radiators for domestic heating, air
exchange systems and home automation applied to heating. Thanks to the iGreen project, a group of 15 people from within the company have voluntarily decided to take the lead in making a
concrete contribution to environmental protection. Each month, the participants meet and each is free to present one or more ideas and projects that could have a positive impact on the
environment. Each proposal is discussed and voted on to determine which one should be implemented. Thanks to this project Irsap has drawn up its first Sustainability Report.
For the “Best Product” category, the winner is Clean Air Europe S.r.l., a company based in Bulciago (LC) that has been active for decades in the industrial fume filtration
and abatement sector. Thanks to the Eco Atex project, it has introduced an important innovation in the production of filtering sleeve baskets, which equip the fume treatment plants of most
industrial sectors. Thanks to innovative design and treatment, the baskets acquire better safety conditions (e.g. an anti-static feature), a longer service life, as well as requiring fewer
resources during production and thus reducing waste production.
Also in the “Best Product” category, the Jury deemed Tannery Pasubio S.p.a. of Arzignano (VI) worthy of a mention. The product that Pasubio is developing is called
VITANOVA, a name that sums up the idea of giving new life to the shavings and trimmings generated in its plants (in Italy and Serbia) in order to reuse 100% of the waste and thus achieve
the Zero Waste objective. The shaving waste and trimmings are collected and sent to a plant that mechanically turns the leather into fibres. The fibres are then mixed with water and, using a
chemical process, cross-linked and made into sheets in a process similar to paper. The sheets obtained, being composed of leather fibres, can be processed in the same plants of the tannery as if
they were normal leather.
Novamont S.p.a., a Novara-based company, won the award in the “Best Process – Technology” category with its Mater Biotech project, the world’s first dedicated industrial plant for
the production of butanediol through a fermentation process of renewable raw materials and no longer from an oil-based process. This process takes place in the municipality of Bottrighe, in the
province of Rovigo, in a plant undergoing industrial reconversion and regeneration, the recovery of which has led to significant savings in land consumption as well as the reuse of around 60% of
the existing plant, thus transforming the old plant into a state-of-the-art facility, a champion of energy efficiency. The Novamont group is a world leader in the production of bioplastics and
the development of biochemicals and bioproducts through the integration of chemistry, environment and agriculture. It is present through its distributors in more than 40 countries on all
continents. In 2020 Novamont became a Benefit Corporation, changing its articles of association. It has also obtained B Corporation certification, thus becoming part of the global B Corp
movement.
In the “Best International Cooperation” category, the prize went to ESI S.P.A. of Rome for its project to install a solar mini-grid storage system to electrify the market in Gitaza,
Burundi, one of the poorest countries in the world. Thanks to the availability of electricity, 122 commercial activities in the African country can stay open during the night and some of them
have been able to buy refrigerators to improve the preservation of the most perishable foodstuffs, and fishermen can recharge the batteries of their boats. The technical side of the project is
remarkable, based on high-quality components and sodium-nickel batteries with a 12-year life cycle and very low impact. Alongside the technology transfer, there was also a transfer of knowledge,
both to the technicians who maintain the system, to some students from the electricians’ school and to the end users belonging to the Market Users Committee.
The “Young Entrepreneur Special Prize” was awarded to Sara Cecchetto, sustainability manager of Azienda Agricola Cecchetto Giorgio di Vazzola (TV), who competed in the Best
Management for Sustainable Development category with the project “Becoming Climate Positive by 2026”, which has helped to structure a very articulate and defined path that will lead the company
to produce wines while preserving and telling the story of the territory, and at the same time making every business choice economically sustainable, ecologically respectful and socially
ethical. After measuring and understanding its own environmental impact, the company began to develop two-yearly improvement plans with the aim of downsizing erroneous behaviour and creating
new, more ethical and sustainable ones to guarantee future generations solutions that respect the environment and its resources. Some of the activities developed are the use of
FSC-certified packaging, reduction in the weight of glass bottles, use of energy from renewable sources (100% clean and certified), reduction in water consumption in the vineyard through
the use of Idroplan technology, and the purchase of beehives to promote biodiversity in our vineyards. At the same time, the company is pursuing a plan to capture residual emissions and certify
its sustainability performance.
The winner of the first edition of the special “Innovative Start-up” award is ITAMIA Engineering, a start-up from Chioggia (VE) that has succeeded in engineering organic cells to
obtain 100% natural, recyclable biopolymers and biocomposites with high mechanical and thermal performance as they are obtained from flax, algae, cellulose and Drag line spider web, all
materials produced with cultures using aquaponics cultivation technologies. The new, patented technology guarantees a 90% reduction in the use of drinking water and 70% reduction in energy
compared to traditional soil-based cultivation, avoiding the use of plant protection products, chemical fertilisers, hormones and pesticides. Each crop lives in antithesis with the other and
makes it possible to obtain extraordinary products, at zero km and in half the time compared to a traditional crop, also exploiting areas that are difficult to cultivate due to their
morphological nature and environmental pollution.
