Enable environmental policies for eco-industrial growth: A voluntary government tool for local productive areas in Tuscany (Italy)

Abstract

The Regional Government of Tuscany in Italy, approved a regional regulation to establish a new voluntary approach at the regional level for the development of "industrial parks." For the first time in European environmental and industrial policies, the "industrial ecology" principles are applied with an approach that allows an area to achieve an official environmental certification. In the literature, we find mainly experiences that rely on command and control policies to implement industrial symbiosis concepts. As opposed to those practices, this chapter presents and analyzes a new method to stimulate the creation and dissemination of eco-industrial parks based on a voluntary approach. The "ecologically equipped productive area" has been introduced in the Italian Legislative Order by the D.Lgs. n. 112/1998, Bassanini law, which expects that "Italian Regions discipline, with their own laws, industrial areas and ecologically equipped areas, provided with infrastructures and systems necessary to ensure the protection of the health, safety and environment". Ecologically equipped productive areas have to be planned, realized, and managed on the basis of "ecoefficiency" criteria, in order to ensure an integrated system of management of environmental aspects, reduction and prevention of air, water, and soil pollution, the protection of the health and safety as well as a widespread environmental improvement of territory. The question is to organize the productive site so as to favor the individual settled firms on realizing their own environmental objectives, both economically and technically. In the case under discussion, the certification scheme is fully voluntary and the certification process is coordinated by a Regional Authority; Regional law of Tuscany (L.R. Toscana n. 61 22/12/2003) establishes priority objective to develop a new concept of industrial areas, characterized by quality management systems and infrastructures for protection of health, safety, and environment, obtained by local authorities assessment methods that integrate economical, social, and environmental issues. This chapter describes the criteria and requirements that an area must meet in order to obtain the qualification, and the roles and responsibilities of all involved actors. The criteria, inspired by industrial symbiosis concepts, are related to planning, infrastructure, and management-related issues.