From More to Less: Carbon Neutral Enabling Technologies

Every need can be satisfied by reducing consumption and CO₂ emissions, ethically redefining priorities, changing the approach to conceiving and producing goods. “Industry 5.0” recognizes industry's role as a “resilient provider of prosperity and solutions,” putting the well-being of the environment and the worker at the centre of the production process, not only an accelerator of well-being but more importantly an enabler of change and innovation. Supply chain management (the cradle of the process) evolves the concept of “smart manufacturing for the future,” characteristic of Industry 4.0, towards the use of human creativity (critical and cognitive thinking) of experts (scientists, scholars, researchers) working together with efficient, intelligent and precise machines to produce resilient innovation. In these two terms, Innovation and Resilience, the ‘Ousia’ of the human-nature relationship is preserved. The strength of this nascent business reality lies in the concept: we are not only talking about innovative materials, but a production methodology that optimizes time, quantity and quality of input resources (among all, matter, but also energy and scientific know-how), processes and results, creating value chains of the Circular Bioeconomy, based on waste/scrap valorization. The innovative concept lies in defining the material ‘on demand,’ based on the physical and technical characteristics needed, both on the theoretical and application levels by promoting, as Faivre asserts, “a more resource-efficient, inclusive and sustainable growth model”.