by Francesco Paolo Sgarlata |

After so many years of stagnation, Europe is finally sending out a strong signal of its presence, not only to counter the health and financial crisis that is gripping us all due to Covid, but also for the historic Green New Deal that will allow it to become a  true global leader.

Europe is finally conducting itself like Europe, living up to everyone’s expectations in relation to the role that it is supposed to play. Having an ecological approach will no longer be a matter of programmatic choice of a political party and its supporters, but it will be a structural necessity for the entire civil society of our continent.

This will have incredible effects not only from an environmental point of view but also from a financial one, and it will facilitate the development of new professional skills, new products and services. This new approach, necessarily shared by every nation, will affect all aspects of the production cycle, energy consumption and waste disposal. Packaging in particular will be a topic of primary importance.

The issue around plastic  is under the eyes of us all. It is everywhere.

It is no longer tolerable to use plastic to package products that are consumed within hours or even minutes and then take hundreds of years to decompose. Even before dissolving completely, they still turn into micro-plastics that spread in the water and enter the food chain of all living beings, humans included. It is not just insane, it is unsustainable.

Think about the incredible amount of plastic packaging materials that each one of us throws in the garbage every day: it has increased tenfold in just a few years. And what about the packaging made of both plastic and cardboard parts – such as toy boxes or those of many food products – making their recycling impossible?

It is fundamental for this to be changed through strict legislation, above all through the prohibition of imports from non-European countries of any product that does not have an eco-friendly packaging. This way, Europe will not only be environmentally virtuous, but will compel other states to be virtuous as well.

The same principle will naturally also apply to goods that will be produced outside Europe using processes or raw materials that are harmful to the environment. Once the Covid impasse has been overcome, years of great achievements and environmental, economic and social changes await us. Europe and its member states will represent a global point of reference. And then, perhaps, we will also have a European Federation.

Francesco Paolo Sgarlata – Editorial Director