The master BioCirce received yesterday at the Parliament, from the President of the Italian Republic, the Italiadecide (Italy decides) prize for teaching innovation. BioCirce is the first European Master in Bioeconomy in the Circular economy. To organise it are four Italian universities from North to South (University of Turin, University of Milan Bicocca, University of Bologna and University of Naples Federico II), with the support of three of the main Italian bioeconomy players (Novamont, GFBiochemicals and Science Park of Lodi) and the Italian leading banking Group Intesa Sanpaolo, which is the only financial global partner of the Ellen McArthur Foudation.
Masdar, Abu Dhabi’s renewable energy company, signed a strategic partnership agreement with Bee’ah to develop the UAE’s waste-to-energy (WtE) sector. This partnership will help contribute to the UAE Government’s Vision 2021 which targets, among other goals, diverting waste from landfills by 75 per cent by 2021. Waste-to-energy is the process of generating energy in the form of electricity or heat from the primary treatment of waste.
New York City announced first-in-the-nation goal to divest from fossil fuels. Mayor Bill de Blasio, Comptroller Scott M. Stringer and other trustees of the City’s $189 Billion pension funds announced a goal to divest City funds from fossil fuel reserve owners within five years, which would make New York City the first major US pension plan to do so. In a first-in-the-nation step towards the goal of divestment, the Mayor and Comptroller will submit a joint resolution to pension fund trustees to begin analyzing ways to divest from fossil fuel owners in a responsible way that is fully consistent with fiduciary obligations. In total, the City’s five pension funds hold roughly $5 billion in the securities of over 190 fossil fuel companies. The City’s move is among the most significant divestment efforts in the world to date.
In this early 2018 it seems the main problem for Italians is the price of biodegradable bags for fruit and vegetables. Many Italians complain about the cents to buy the biodegradable bags but say nothing about toxic clouds that devastate the territory from North to South. What are we talking about for the benefit of our non-Italian readers?
Our readers have voted: the most innovative bioeconomy CEO 2017 is Tony Duncan, CEO of Circa Group, the Australian company headquartered in Melbourne that is converting waste biomass into advanced biochemical materials. For the second consecutive year is the CEO of an Australian company to win the award (in 2016 was Ken Richards, CEO of Leaf Resources).
