Environmental sustainability according to Rocco: an all-around balance
“Sustainability ties in with all aspects of well-being. It features at all levels. As a company, you have to use your voice to convey positive messages and offer something good, concrete and tangible. It is our duty to take a stand on this”.
Rocco, the Parmacotto Group’s Sustainability Manager, talks about the importance of sustainable choices, how to make them by assessing their all-round impact on everyday life, and how companies should implement concrete, tangible action.
Well-being means maintaining a balance between ourselves and our surroundings at all levels, from the environment to our relationships with the people around us. I am convinced that being well means living with the world around us, achieving the goal of total balance, tranquillity in all respects. In a nutshell: living in harmony.
Environmental well-being according to Rocco
Sustainability, first and foremost, means protecting the environment, enabling industries to produce with the least impact, preserving what surrounds us. It is key to being able to envisage a future. Otherwise, nothing would make sense anymore. This involves everyone and everything, starting with the conscious choices of consumers.
Consider Overshoot Day, an international gauge for indicating when the economic and physical resources available to the population in a calendar year have run out. Ideally, this date would fall on December 31 every year. Over the years it has fallen earlier and earlier. Overshoot Day is now in June. As things currently stand, this means that for the Earth “machine” to continue operating in perfect order, we would need a planet and a half.
Daily Choices that benefit the planet
I think environmental well-being is a serious matter. It is no coincidence that the UN and the European Union have taken certain concrete steps. In terms of sustainable choices, I certainly take a lot of care, starting with sorting my recycling. I shop more often and buy the right amount to avoid wasting food. I do this carefully, reading the labels and paying attention to everything.
Ever since I was small, I have always paid a lot of attention to sustainability. I very much enjoy being in nature because of the connection you create with it.
I think it is possible to reconcile our daily lives and work commitments with a respect for nature, even if we live in the city: you can find the right balance and carve out moments to be immersed in nature, in harmony.
The first thing I did when I moved to Parma, for example, was discover natural pockets of the city that were relatively untouched.
Sustainable companies
Working on emissions, mitigating and offsetting them. This is the task facing companies today. Paying attention to energy waste and waste in general to optimise processes and taking balanced and responsible action in terms of how they use materials.
For example, in the year 2022/2023, the Parmacotto Group will only use certified green energy, which is an important first step that we made a conscious decision to implement. So-called greenwashing must be combated through demonstrable actions. Data must be measurable.
At the Parmacotto Group, this is well understood: choosing such a path only makes sense if you have a strategy in place upstream, be it making adjustments to a plant, creating a new one or launching a social project. If you then embed these actions within a larger strategy, it becomes clear that this is the right direction. In my opinion, a company’s approach to environmental sustainability must include quality of communication, which can only be ensured through an actionable project based on analysed data. Europe is taking action in this regard, and guidelines will be issued on new rules and sector-specific regulations for calculating KPIs.
A better world
Everyone has their own small part to play. Everyone's involvement is critical, in optimising consumption and not wasting water, for example. Countless drops that come together to form oceans. If I go out and drop paper on the floor, if I don’t recycle, if I disrespect those around me, this is not okay. Through our own small actions, each of us can make a difference: it's a daily workout.
The courage to do good
Doing good also means understanding others. It takes courage to do good. It is a constant challenge requiring people to push their own limits and, where necessary, make mistakes and to start again.
I have been here since 2016 and have personally experienced the company's entire process of rebirth, new ownership, colleagues changing roles and even a new role for myself. I've seen the company grow: it’s been able to rise up, fight and make new acquisitions. In general, I like all the choices the company is making.
All the social projects being implemented are certainly very important and close to my heart. Of all the environmental projects, the one on solar power is ambitious and very concrete: it requires careful timing and conscious choices. Likewise the restoration of the Catacombs of San Gennaro: preserving history and helping communities is a truly unique contribution and shows how the Group is taking care to address sustainability at all levels.
