Rubber Conversion in top 3 most successful Italian startups and the winner of the prestigious Keynes Sraffa Award
Virtuous Business Cases and the most innovative entrepreneurs working in the environmental sustainability and representing an excellent example of Green Business were presented at the Ceremony of the Keynes Sraffa Awards, promoted by the Italian Chamber of Commerce in UK and in collaboration with Intesa Sanpaolo Innovation Center. The celebration of Italian entrepreneurial talent took place at Church House Conference Center in Westminster (London, UK) on the 28th of November 2019.
Head of Promotion and Development of Innovation at Intesa Sanpaolo, Mr. Vicenzo Antonetti, opened the gala night with the new economic paradigm for a positive development – Circular Economy. Rubber Conversion’s Business Developer and Creating Shared Values Brand Manager Cveta Majtanovic, won the most prestigious Keynes Sraffa Award on behalf of this Italian startup who patented rubber devulcanization technology that provides high-quality raw materials from post-consumption and post-production rubber waste. Awarded by Leonardo Simonelli Santi, the President Emeritus of the Italian Chamber of Commerce and Industry for the UK, this startup’s technology was promoted as the most promising method to reuse ELT-derived (End-of-Life Tyre) rubber materials through the innovative process of devulcanization.
A year ago, Rubber Converrsion received the First National Award on Circular Economy Startups in Italy for helping rubber manufacturers to reuse their rubber waste in “the most sustainable and economically viable way”, awarded by the Circular Economy Network in November 2018.
Link: https://www.rubberconversion.com/2018/12/12/rubber-conversion-is-the-national-award-winner-in-circular-economy/
During the award ceremony Ms. Majtanovic underlined the importance of the Raw Materials to Europe’s economy by highlighting the usefulness and the values of Natural Rubber preservation: “The cruciality of raw materials to Europe’s economy presented in European Commission’s Critical Raw Materials List (CRM 2017) speaks quite explicitly about the risk associated with the raw materials supply”, Majtanovic concluded.
This startup addresses the global challenges linked with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), namely, Responsible Consumption and Production, Climate Action and Life on Earth, which comes as no surprise knowing that the young awarded entrepreneur forms also Board of Directors of the United Nations Global Compact – Network Italia, representing there a company Innovando Srl, whose spin off is Rubber Conversion.
About Innovando Srl
Innovando’s waste related experience in waste trading (up to 60.000 tons of waste annually from nearly 3.000 locations) contributed to opening the environmental challenge up in terms of restrictions against landfills disposal but also to difficulties in obtaining suitable products that will be sold as secondary raw materials. Therefore, the necessity of finding economically more viable solutions while targeting the global challenges related to the SDGs became largely significant, which was one of the reasons to expand an enterprise.
Cveta Majtanovic
Apart from technology transfer and business development activities in industry, Cveta Majtanovic is also a double-degree PhD candidate in Computer Science, exploring Artificial Intelligence at University of Trento. Additionally, she is one of the Lecturers in this institution’s School of Innovation, first of this kind in Italy. Simultaneously, Cveta’s engaged as Mentor in C LAB – StartUp Laboratory of the same university.
About the award
Lord Keynes and Professor Sraffa were excellent examples of co-operation in the history of economics and so were, in their respective fields and areas of responsibility, the people who received the award named after two of the greatest economists.
