The challenge of the future is sustainability, understood not only as attention to the environment and green investments, but as respect for people and communities in everyday life and as a commitment of institutions to be inclusive and to transform diversity into added value. There is a red thread that binds the interventions of all the speakers who met, starting from very different sectors and interests, on the occasion of the event organized by Sole-24 Ore with the patronage of the Pontifical Academy for Life (established in 1994 by John Paul II to defend the life and dignity of the people) and the Embajada de Honduras before the Holy See. A red thread that Covid has thickened, making it visible to everyone that there are no alternatives to a development that shifts its center of gravity from profit to environmental, social and governance sustainability, “with the awareness that being sustainable for a company also means being more productive and therefore profitable », remembers the director of Il Sole 24 Ore Fabio Tamburini speaking before the round table with companies dedicated to“ Innovation, sustainability and green economy: development, growth and competitiveness factor of Italian companies ”. The examples that come from the tobacco industry with JTI, from IT with Cisco, via utilities such as Acea and technology manufacturers such as Ima, are a benchmark that must infect production chains and downstream customers.
Le best practice
If the Umbrian tobacco district has become a world excellence for development capacity and social inclusion, it is also thanks to the Japanese tobacco multinational JTI (its brands Winston, Camel, LD) which has invested over 600 million euros in the last 20 years in sustainable projects in the area, recalls Gian Luigi Cervesato, president and CEO of JTI Italia, now engaged in the “sustainable cities” project in 14 cities of the beautiful country, starting from Bergamo and Genoa to redevelop the most disadvantaged neighborhoods, as well as supporting agro- social networks together with Confagricoltura. Covid has accelerated a green path that the multiutility Acea has undertaken since 1998, the year of the first sustainability report: “But it was with the 2020 strategic plan that we raised the bar – says Giuseppe Gola, CEO of the company – starting to measure our sustainable projects and the improvement of indicators, setting challenging objectives such as the 11% reduction of water losses by 2024, the construction of 750 MW of photovoltaics to cut 140 thousand tons of CO2, the doubling (from 1.4 to 3 million tons per year) of the capacity to treat waste, the installation of 20 thousand electric charging stations ».
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Finance
And the financial market echoes by amplifying the sustainable effect: the 800 million euro greenbond issued in January by Acea was rewarded by the market with a cost of 15 basis points lower than the same traditional bond. “Finance is sustainable when it supports, as the word itself says, even the most needy companies, the SMEs that make up the backbone of the country, in the path of growth and reaction to difficulties, because this means supporting the growth of the country and of the company: it is precisely the mission of a trust consortium like ours », remembers Giuseppe Andrea Tateo, CEO of Commerfin. And Giuliano D’Acunti country head of Invesco echoes him: «The goal is zero emissions in all our portfolios by 2050. We know that companies cannot become ESGs overnight, it is a very important change that takes time “
It e networking
A giant of the size of Cisco, world leader in supplying networking and IT systems to companies (almost 50 billion dollars in turnover), has the firepower to anticipate changes and become a model of circular economy to inspire and an engine of green innovation, through digitalization, in client companies. “Two weeks ago we announced the commitment to become Net Zero by 2040, that is to say zero emissions ten years before the EU goal, anticipating the 2025 goal of eliminating greenhouse gases for internal activities”, explains Gianmatteo Manghi, CEO of Cisco Italia, which already uses 100% renewable sources and has 250,000 square meters of Leed-certified buildings in the country. “Our products that contain plastic are made 100% with recyclable polymers, we have been collecting our our old technologies by customers and 99.8% are recycled. And with the latest innovation “Silicon One”, in which we invested 1 billion euros – concludes Manghi – we have created a microchip that has 36% more performance than the previous generation and consumes 96% less ».
In a niche such as packaging machines, sustainability means first of all investing in new technologies and materials to manage plastic in an innovative way: this is what the Bolognese group Ima has been doing since well before the pandemic – says the president and To Alberto Vacchi – with the Nop (No plastic) project. A project that the Covid chapter has only accelerated by highlighting how digital solutions can translate into energy savings, raw materials and polluting emissions, “even if only by stopping to travel by plane: tests and maintenance that we previously did while flying (we export 90% of our machines all over the world) are now connected remotely with 4.0 technologies. We were ready because we had been training for years – concludes Vacchi – but we would not have expected it to become reality so quickly, a reality destined to last ».