Pirelli signs sustainability agreement during international conference

Pirelli hosted an international conference on safety and the environment at its Milan headquarters on 23 January, during which the company’s chairman, Marco Tronchetti Provera signed a voluntary agreement with the Ministry for the Environment and Land and Sea Protection to reduce the climate impact deriving from activities related to the production and use of its tyres. The conference, attended by minister, Corrado Clini, who also signed the agreement, was entitled “Driving Sustainability: a safe road to the future” and marked Pirelli’s own Sustainability Day.

Pirelli says the agreement underscores its commitment to develop production systems and products that reduce environmental impact, while increasing quality and consumer safety. Pirelli says these ideas will also help to increase its efficiency, with significant economic benefits and “an additional competitive lever on international markets, above all in those where these features are called for by law and appreciated by the consumer”.
 
“To speak of sustainability today,” said Provera, “means first of all to speak of technologies which permit the constant improvement of our quality of life. The ‘old’ Europe cannot compete with emerging countries from the point of view of production costs and internal demand, but something which can ensure our future, without doubt, is being more advanced in our search for sustainable models of industrial growth. In this sense, Italy and Europe have developed points of excellence which they export to the rest of the world.”
 
The conference addressed the theme of sustainability; understood, according to Pirelli, as “an indispensable condition for a company’s future, which thanks to avant garde technologies is able to develop more sustainable and efficient models of growth”. The company said the debate also encompassed the theme of the consumer’s role within an economic system, which in recent decades has seen profound changes in the models of development and market dynamics.
 
For the economist Jeremy Rifkin, the “prosumer”, the new producer-consumer, is the figure who will become ever more prevalent thanks to “distributed” capitalism, a complex figure who incarnates different and apparently conflicting interests with which companies must more frequently engage. Reconciling these interests will be a stimulus for companies to identify new models of more sustainable growth.
 
For Pirelli, growth also means responsibility towards the consumer, both through the protection of the environment and the development of ever safer products. Safety was, in fact, one of the conference’s central themes, with contributions from senior institutional, association, academic and corporate officials.

As well as Marco Tronchetti Provera and Minister Corrado Clini, the participants included Antonio Tajani, vice president of the European Commission, responsible for Industry and Entrepreneurship; Peter Bakker, president of the World Business Council for Sustainable Development; Nikhil Chandavarkar, chief of communication and outreach, Division of Sustainable Development, United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs; Carlo Fidanza, member of the Transport and Tourism Committee of the European Parliament; Francesco Gori, COO of Pirelli; Toby Webb, founder and president of the Ethical Corporation; and Jeremy Rifkin, president of the Foundation on Economic Trends. The debate was moderated by Oscar Giannino.

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