It’s summer: waste no more!
Interview to Simone Molteni, Scientific Director at @lifegate
“We don’t need just a zero-waste summer, but a zero-waste life…although every journey begins in small steps” – says Simone, Scientific Director of LifeGate, referring to the digital event “Zero Waste Summer” starting today on TA-DAAN.
This thematic week is a good chance to talk about sustainability and understand why we need to live in a more mindful way. LifeGate, a B corp committed to sustainability, is proud partner and sponsor of the initiative.
Read below our interview to Simone Molteni👇🏼
Hello Simone, thank you for getting involved with the “Zero Waste Summer”! What can you tell us on the topic and why do we need to go “zero waste”?
So I’m often asked about the state of the planet and of course, the news are not good. The state of the planet is very strange at the moment because we are experiencing an era of big change for human life and we know it; we know that we have a climate crisis, we know about the environmental crisis and we that have to tackle them immediately if we don’t want our lives to change too much from what we are used to. However, we also have a lot of solutions and the real point today is to try to apply these solutions quickly and not just wait for tomorrow, as we have done in the last years
Why is it so important to choose a Zero Waste Summer?
I like Zero Waste Summer initiative for many reasons:
First of all, waste is a human “invention”, in nature nothing is useless, because everything is circular. We decided to live in a linear economy where we transform raw materials into something that is totally useless, waste. This brought to many problems today, we have scarcity in raw materials like sand and we used to consider never-ending and of low value.
Secondly, we definitely need to live in a more mindful way, live every minute of the day thinking that we have to reduce our waste. Obviously, we don’t need just a zero-waste summer but we need a zero-waste life…although every journey begins in small steps.
So, let’s use this summer as a lab for solutions or ideas that we can bring back in autumn to our life.
So you think summer is a good moment to start. What are the good practices that each of us can adopt?
When we need to change our mentality and find new solutions, you generally need creativity and time, you can’t really find good solutions when you have a full day working or solving problems, so I think summer can be the right moment to start because we have more time and also because you feel a bit lighter. I invite you to try and even make some mistakes and laugh about them. Let’s use this summer to change the way we live and the way we look at things.
“Let’s use this summer to change the way we live and the way we look at things.”
Simone Molteni – Lifegate Scientific Director
You talked about trying and making mistakes. We like this suggestion as we always encourage a hands-on approach. What do you think about sustainability, creativity and craftsmanship?
I’m very positive about craftsmanship, because I think it is one of the solutions that we have to look at the moment.
The real enemy is overproduction and overconsumption, and craftsmanship has more creativity and brain.
Making helps giving more value to things, as you see the “behind the scenes” of every product.
Every time we go to an artisan, we try to understand how things are made… at the same moment we are giving more value to these things and we’re more ready to extend their lifespan and maybe to use them more and in a more mindful way.
Summer recalls outdoor adventures and vacations, of course! How can we travel with a zero waste mindset?
When traveling you need to be light, you don’t want to move your house every time.
I think it could be very instructive to go hiking in the mountains or to do backpacking because it helps you think and tell what is really necessary and what is not. Maybe you can find something that is reusable and that can be used for different purposes.
In one word: reduce!
It’s a mindset that we can bring back in September.
ABOUT LIFEGATE
Simone Molteni
Hello everybody, I’m Simone Molteni and I’m the scientific director of LifeGate
LifeGate is a Benefit Company trying to help people and businesses to become more and more sustainable.
We do that with 3 main actions:
1. We try to speak to people, we have a media network, you can find us on social media where we suggest good practices.
2. We make consultancy to big companies who want to become more sustainable, we help them in this path
3. We are creating environmental projects to help people and companies understand the big issues and challenges we are facing in this world at this moment and how to react and what they can do for this.
To name a few: the “Impatto zero” project launched 20 years ago and was the first environmental project to tackle climate change, so we were the first one to help companies calculate, reduce and offset their CO2 emissions.
We have another project for biodiversity and helping bees coming back into their ecosystem and do this pollinating service. Then we have another project for plastic removal from water and for plastic litter, it’s called “PlasticLess”.
Giulia Tamburini 
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