Nice Love Earth – The sustainable engagement of Nice receives the Buygreen award

In 2019, Earth Overshoot Day, the day on which Man exhausts the renewable resources that the Earth is able to regenerate in a year, arrived on July 29^th, 5 months earlier than December 31^st. This means that the world population is currently consuming the equivalent of 1.6 planets per year.

In the present context, there is a growing awareness that the linear take-make-waste economy model is no longer reasonably applicable. There is therefore a growing tendency to replace the current economic paradigm with a circular one, which brings both a benefit to the planet but also an advantage to businesses, representing a strategic lever for competitiveness and innovation.

Nice contributes to the creation of an increasingly sustainable world through several concrete actions:

• Environmental Product Declaration (EPD® certification) recently obtained, about the life cycle of some of our products;
• Greenery implementation inside the Gate & Door production plant in Nice HQ;
• Equipping company cars with reduced CO² emissions (hybrid or full-electric);
• Replacement of polystyrene in favor of cardboard in finished product packaging.

Moreover, Nice is engaged in a virtuous and effective recycling process for waste generated by industrial production waste and batteries and other accumulators. In fact, Nice is associated with Consortium Remedia, the most important national consortium for the management of WEEE, Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment, i.e. all waste from devices that use electrical energy for their operation, including all components and materials that are an integral part of the product, ensuring proper management of the collection, transport and treatment of technological waste in the waste collection centre, according to an operational model of excellence and in compliance with European regulations.

According to the most recent Eurostat data, Germany confirms itself as the first country by recovering 85.8% of the WEEE collected, followed by Italy at 85.7%. According to the Sustainability Report produced by Remedia, in 2019, Collective Systems in Italy handled 343,069 tonnes of WEEE, 10.4% more than in 2018.

Nice contributed by entrusting Remedia with 369,603 kg of WEEE waste from miscellaneous electronics and 971 kg of Batteries and Accumulators. Once collected from the collection sites, the waste is transferred to the plants where it is processed and sent for recycling and reuse, energy recovery or disposal.Thanks to this process the "Carbon Footprint"¹ for Nice in 2019 was 486 t CO² eq, avoided thanks to the recovery of material and energy; a benefit equal to the stopping of 149 cars that cover 20 thousand km in a year. While the "Material Footprint"² was 656 t of resources saved thanks to the recovery of material and energy, equivalent to the weight of 13 fully loaded locomotives.

Thanks to this commitment and to all the concrete actions implemented, Nice stood out at the recent forum "Compraverde Buygreen" promoted by the Veneto Region, an event designed to spread and enhance the best process and product experiences in a sustainable development perspective. A technical-scientific committee has awarded Nice with the ''Best Product'' award in the category “big companies” thanks to its strong commitment in the development of a sustainable strategy, while paying attention to a responsible management of the environment and investing in the life cycle analysis of product (LCA), a fundamental tool to assess and reduce its environmental impact.

In this context it is clear that within the Nice world efforts support a concrete transition of the economic model, recognizing and adopting strategies of sustainability and circular economy; this is the only way to guarantee the efficient use of resources and the reduction of environmental impacts, supporting a virtuous paradigm to achieve concrete economic, environmental and social benefits for all those involved.

¹ The Carbon Footprint represents the total amount of greenhouse gases emitted directly and indirectly during the life cycle of a product, from the extraction and processing of raw materials to the management of the related waste for recovery or disposal (only the impacts of consumption, such as electricity during use, are excluded). The value that this indicator expresses, according to the approach of the Green Economy Report, is the result of the balance between the emissions that have been generated and those avoided (due to the avoided use of new production from virgin raw materials) thanks to the recovery of material or energy over the life cycle.

² The Material Footprint measures the total flows of mineral and fossil resources extracted for the production of a good or service throughout the life cycle: from extraction of raw materials to transformation into finished products. The value that this indicator expresses, according to the Green Economy Report approach, is the result of the balance between extracted resources and those saved/not extracted (thanks to the avoided recourse to new production from virgin raw materials) as a result of the recovery of material or energy throughout the life cycle.