Project partners

COORDINATOR
 

Selene S.p.A. is a commercial company founded in 1959 in Lucca (Italy), leader in the production on flexible packaging for industrial consumption. Selene converts plastic materials through the phases of exstrusion, printing, sealing. The company main know-how is the development of plastic compounds by using specific combinations of additives to give the required performance (mechanical strength, elasticity, etc.).
Since its foundation Selene has gained a leading position on the Italian and international markets.
The constant investments over the years have permitted to pass from the traditional PE packaging to the latest PE products now available on the market.
Selene has two main production plants, in Lucca and in Marghera (VE), with a total of 12 production lines, 100 employees and a turnover of almost 60 million euros. In the last two years Selene has invested around 4.3 million euros in new production equipment.
Selene is strongly committed in reusing recovered plastics in its productive process and has recently started a production line that reuses Selene’s production scrap.
Selene has commercial strategy aiming at combining its main market product, the “stretch hood” with a dedicated plastic pallet, to create an integrated packaging for the pulp and paper production and converting sectors.

BENEFICIARIES
 

LUCENSE SCaRL is a non-profit limited liability consortium-like company, founded in Lucca in 1984, encompassing public authorities, institutions, bank foundations and trade associations as shareholders.
LUCENSE provides advanced and qualified Services for Innovation, fostering development within enterprises. Furthermore, supporting the growth of the local economy is the main aim of LUCENSE, whose reference market has gradually expanded, assuming a national and in some activities an international dimension.
Since 2010, LUCENSE is a Research Organization according to the European Commission Communication (OJ 2006/C 323/01) conducting industrial research, experimental development, technology transfer and dissemination. LUCENSE, consistent with this role, promotes and participates in numerous projects of innovation, applied research and experimental development, actively supporting the technological transfer and dissemination to the enterprises, focusing its activities on paper industry, environmental sustainability and ICT.
LUCENSE is the appointed operational entity endorsed by the Lucca Paper District Committee to foster the implementation of innovation strategies in the following key areas: environment, infrastructure, energy efficiency, quality, etc. with the scope of increasing the competitiveness, on a global scale, of pulp and paper industries.
In addition, LUCENSE is the legal entity managing INNOPAPER, the Innovation Cluster for the papermaking industry established by Regione Toscana to foster the competitiveness of local enterprises.
Within LUCENSE operates CQC – Centro Qualità Carta, an independent and accredited test laboratory,
reference point in Italy for the analysis and tests on packaging and paper products.
A main focus of LUCENSE is the testing and validation of green innovative technologies for the recycling of
pulper waste and industrial sludge and their reuse in by-products.
 

SERV.ECO is a Consortium of paper mills located in the Province of Lucca. It was founded in 1986, involving 14 paper industries, representing some 30 productive units, with different productive capacities and paper grades produced, which stands for the largest paper production of the Lucca paper district.
The purpose of the Consortium is to deal with the environmental issues concerning the paper sector, aiming at the promotion of research activities, at the production and supply of services, at the design and realization of works and plants, even of demonstrative nature. The resources of the consortium, in terms of personnel, equipment and knowhow, are those of its shareholders which are among the biggest paper industry companies in the European market.
One of the most critical problems, encountered since the creation of the Consortium is the management and disposal of pulper waste, the industrial waste pulper of paper mills that use recovered paper in their production process. Given the presence of several corrugating paper mills producing about 950,000 Tons/Year of Fluting and Liner Board utilising 100% of recycled papers, the Lucca paper district produces around 100,000 ton/y of pulper waste. All nine paper mills associated to SERV.ECO that produce pulper waste participate to this project.
The technical staff of the Consortium is mainly composed of research and technology personnel from the associated paper mills, some of whom have wide international experience both in papermaking (mainly using recycled fibres) and in process utilities.
 

Zero Waste Europe Stichting

Zero Waste Europe supports local groups with independent knowledge and tools to drive change more efficiently, structuring the movement internationally to better represent the interests of communities at the EU level and engaging policy makers and stakeholders.
In these regards, ZWE operates both as a knowledge network and as an advocacy group, representing active communities in EU countries.
ZWE is engaged to raise awareness to re-design the society in a way that all superfluous waste is eliminated and everything produced can be re-used, repaired, composted or recycled back into the system as a resource, creating a circular economy.
From 2011 to November 2013 ZWE operated informally collaborating on a voluntary basis. With European members of GAIA, a network of organisations on a national, regional and local level, annual meetings are periodically taking place. For instance, the first meeting was held in Brussels in 2011, then in Gipuzkoa in 2012 and at the European Parliament in 2013.
In 2013 the president of Zero Waste Europe Foundation, Mr. Rossano Ercolini has been awarded with the prestigious 2013 Goldman Prize Award, considered to be the “Green Nobel Prize” that honours those “who have distinguished themselves for their environmental battles and inspired the common people to act in an extraordinary manner to protect the world”. ZWE brings together and represents the European municipalities that have openly committed to reach the goal of continuous waste reduction and hence redesigning the relationship between people and waste. Mr. Ercolini had recently published a book titled “Don’t burn the future”, based on the experience in Capannori (province of Lucca), that led to develop an alternative plan for the management of waste. As a result, the town of Capannori has become the first municipality in Italy and in Europe to declare the Zero Waste goal for 2020.