November 23, 2020
Recently, ICESP (Italian Platform of Actors for Circular Economy) promoted by ENEA (National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and Sustainable Economic Development) has recognised the results of the LIFE Forture project as an “Italian best practice for circular economy”, including the project in its database. 

As a result, our project team will join some of the working groups on circularity issues, meeting periodically to develop reviews, technical reports and studies on the topics covered during the LIFE project. 

Link to the Forture page on the ICESP Platform: -->

September 18, 2020
Last week, the project team tried to answer this question through a presentation during the webinar organised by CISE (Centre for Innovation and Economic Development).

The event was an important chance to demonstrate how digitalisation has been successfully expoited in the LIFE Forture project to achieve a dynamic assessment of sustainability.

You can read the slide in the Publications section of this website.

August 1, 2020
How has the social pillar of sustainability evolved over the years?

In order to answer this question, the LIFE Forture project team published a paper entitled “Social Life-Cycle Assessment: A Review by Bibliometric Analysis”. The paper reviews the literature on social life cycle assessment (S-LCA) published over the last 15 years (2003-2018).

The paper shows the great efforts made in the S-LCA literature to standardize the evaluation phases, indicators and database development.

You can read the paper in the Publications section of this website.

July 24, 2020
In the past few days, Marco Vacchi joined the Project Team.

Marco earned the Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering and the Master of Science in Materials Engineering at the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia. His thesis work focused on the synthesis and characterization of particular glass and glass-ceramic systems in collaboration with the physics department of COE College (Cedar Rapids, Iowa, USA). Currently, he continues his research at the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia focusing on issues related to social, environmental, economic and technological sustainability.

March 20, 2020
Rocío González-Sánchez, in collaboration with Davide Settembre Blundo, Anna Maria Ferrari and Fernando E. García-Muiña published a paper entitled “Main Dimensions in the Building of the Circular Supply Chain: A Literature Review”.

The final objective of this work is to achieve a conceptual framework to study circular supply chain, which uses the main theoretical perspectives in strategic management literature.

You can read the paper in the Publications section of this website.

March 18, 2020
The project team has published a paper entitled “Sustainability Transition in Industry 4.0 and Smart Manufacturing with the Triple-Layered Business Model Canvas” on the scientific journal “Sustainability“. The paper is part of a special issue called “A Sustainable Revolution: Lets Go Sustainable to Get our Globe Cleaner”.

The main result of the paper is the transition from a traditional to a sustainable business model, considering all three pillars of sustainability: environment, economy, and society. The business model innovation is investigated in the case of Gruppo Ceramiche Gresmalt.

You can read the paper in the Publications section of this website.

February 21, 2020
Today, at the conference on raw materials organised by Icers at Confindustria Ceramica, Lucrezia Volpi from Università degli Studi di Modena e Reggio Emilia presented a seminar entitled “Lights and shadows in supply chain sustainability management”. The presentation showed the project results, underlined the importance of sustainability along the supply chain and explained next challenges that companies will face on this issue.

Main conclusion of the presentation:

📌 Transparent communication of sustainability along the supply chain is becoming more and more prominent

📌 The impact calculation tools, suitably constructed, allow companies to monitor their impacts and measure them in a predictive way

📌 Sustainability in its three dimensions (environmental, economic and social) can truly represent the added value of a product in today’s marketplace

February 11, 2020
On 10 and 11 February, our project team, Sonia Medina Salgado and Lucrezia Volpi, participated in Qualicer, a world congress on ceramic tile quality and a key international event for the world of ceramics.

The team presented two conferences entitled: “Increased Green Value of Glazed Porcelain Stoneware Tiles through the Eco-Design of Raw Materials”

“The economic dimension of sustainability: new perspectives from a ceramic tile manufacturing context”

The two conferences allowed the team to show the project results in term of economic sustainability and eco-design. 

In order to discover the contents of the presentations, you can access the publications section of the site by clicking here.

January 22, 2020
On January 22nd, our project team welcomed Francesca Ettorre and Lorenzo Mengali, member of the Executive Agency for Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (EASME) and representatives of the LIFE Programme Monitoring Team NEEMO EEIG. The meeting was also an opportunity to gather all partners together and discuss the development of future activities.

The result of the visit was extremely positive and provided us with good ideas for further improvements.

Participants: Francesca Ettorre, Lorenzo Mengali, Davide Settembre Blundo, Fernando E. García-Muiña, Sonia Medina Salgado, Thais Gonzalez Torres, Lydia Murillo, Cristina Siligardi, anna maria ferrari, Eva Magdalena Gualtieri, Lucrezia Volpi, Marco Cucchi, Monica Algeri, Alessandro Salvarani, Filippo Bolzi, Alessio Lelli, Luca Barozzini