Considering European standards and those of the most developed countries in the world, Italy has often shown to be particularly sensitive to the issue of renewables, especially in recent years. It is estimated that in 2019 our country was able to recycle 1,300,000 tons of plastic alone, an increase of 13% compared to 2018, but this is clearly not enough to drastically reduce the impact that man continues to have on the environment.

From this awareness comes the project of five brave Italians, Stefania Iacono Pezzillo, Tiziano Vicentini, Antonio Laterza, Daniele Pes, and Edoardo Carlucci, who chose a goal intrinsic to their being Italian: to find a feasible and realistic solution to a common challenge in which the others saw only a problem. And so in 2017 Grycle comes to life, a startup that through a particular machine aims to recycle and reuse 100% of what we commonly define as waste.

Through a meticulous process that we here brutally summarize, Grycle is able to grind and compress the materials that it treats thanks to an automated system, which separates each material in different spaces, to obtain pure substances ready to be reused. As a practical example, a plastic bottle is not made of homogeneous plastic, but of three different materials: the body of the bottle, the cap and the label. Each of these three substances must be treated differently in order to be reused and Grycle allows this process to be implemented.

Why can Grycle make it?

Grycle 's patent will be usable on the market from 2021 as can be seen from their website. Through a crowdfunding the company had an important capitalization, which has rewarded not only the solidity of the organization, but above all the innovativeness of a project that has two almost unique characteristics: the possibility of use at home and the autonomy of the product.

In fact, the prototypes already patented often make up a phase of a much wider process, carrying out an action that must be accompanied by other supports. In general, the machinery on the market is not able to carry out an independent process, if not on a large scale, which therefore goes beyond the possibility of use in the domestic or semi-industrial environment, as can be the case for small or medium-sized activities that form the backbone of production in our country. Through Grycle, instead, not only the large factory, but also the small family-run tailoring business will be able to recycle and gain an unexpected income from the sale of recycled materials obtained from waste.

"Don't throw anything away"

How many times have our Italian grandmothers repeated this phrase to us like a mantra? The world then went on and this forma mentis stopped, but the green orientation of this startup will let to reduce everyone’s impact on the environment, giving a boost to the already started process of recycling and second life, as opposed to that of passive accumulation in landfills.

It is undoubtedly one of the difficult challenges of our time, which presents increasingly complex problems, as society is more diverse. One can either surrender to the resigned deterministic decline of our civilization, or put oneself on the line like these kids to build a better future. These five Italians, who have managed to combine Leonardo's genius with research and innovation, give hope for the future and make us proud to be Italian. So We the Italians thanks them, for what they are doing.