Rifiuti e materiali secondari nel paradigma industriale dell’economia circolare

The essay addresses some key issues of the Circular Economy (CE) in between EU waste policies and innovation for industrial materials. Given the high global reserves and the low real prices of energy and industrial commodities, the major force behind the development of the CE in Europe is the wide flow of EU waste policies up to the Circular Economy Action Plan adopted in 2020 within the European Green Deal. Although effective in many cases, the dominant role of waste policies in pushing the CE also highlighted failures of the same policies when they failed to\r\ntake an integrated value chain approach, in particular for secondary raw materials. Examples of such failures and shortcomings are plastic waste, the weakness of some secondary materials markets, and the overuse of biomaterials for energy production. The scenario for the CE in Europa is now influenced by the EU’s ‘Open strategic autonomy’ that, in response to international crises and risks, pushes the EU to pursue autonomy for the domestic capacity in the\r\nNet Zero industries and the procurement of critical raw materials. This policy direction further pushes for recycling and innovations in industrial materials. Italy has a very good circularity performance and innovation capacity for the CE, but the full deployment of CE as an industrial\r\nparadigm still faces various barriers.