Italian producer of fibres and polyamides, RadiciGroup presented at the recently held ‘General Assembly of the Green Economy’, a conference attended by about 2,000 delegates.
The conference was held during ECOMONDO, the 18th International Trade Fair of Material and Energy Recovery and Sustainable Development in Italy.
The speakers represented a broad spectrum of society; institutions, businesses and research organizations focusing on policies needed to support Italian companies in their green economy development efforts.
The RadiciGroup presentation on carbon and environmental footprints, illustrated the Group’s experience using the Product Environmental Footprint (PEF) method.
The PEF method is set forth in the 2013 European Commission Recommendations on the use of common methods to measure and communicate the life cycle environmental performance of products and organizations.
In July 2013, Radici Chimica SpA, a RadiciGroup company producing polyamide 6.6, signed a voluntary agreement to promote emissions reduction and the wider adoption of sustainable models for production and consumption.
The objective was to use the PEF method to assess, measure and quantify the reduction in the environmental impact of polyamide 6.6 and its intermediates, which was achieved through an emission abatement plant built at its Novara production site.
“In our presentation, we reported our results on emissions reduction using the impact categories of the PEF methodology,” Stefano Alini, corporate quality manager at RadiciGroup said.
“We focused our attention on the practical aspects of this method to assess its application in the field and on the difficulties that must still be overcome in order to make the method more user-friendly,” he added.
He continued, “And most importantly, on the results achieved in improving the effectiveness of our communications on the sustainability policy we have been following for years now.”
The changes that were made to the Radici Chimica plant for the production of nitric acid and adipic acid led to a significant drop in greenhouse-gas (GHG) emissions.
A comparison of 2011 values with the values measured in 2014 shows a 63 per cent reduction in GHG emissions for nitric acid and a 33 per cent reduction for adipic acid.
The PEF methodology has brought to light significant improvement in other indicators as well, such as acidification, terrestrial eutrophication and photochemical ozone formation, and has shown that there were no negative environmental impacts on other environmental matrices. (AR)
