Europe has stable economies, but faces climate and migration challenges. The region advances UN SDGs through private and cultural sustainability initiatives.

A continent whose countries enjoy relatively stable economies — even as they are challenged by climate change, mass migration, and political shifts — Europe is pushing forward progress toward the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), with private corporations and cultural organizations leading the way on sustainability initiatives and development projects that seek to achieve scale and replicability.

Let’s look at the projects transforming Europe that are helping elevate our world.

Ducati’s Bologna Finishing Facility  For making sustainable manufacturing as sexy as riding a sleek motorcycle  UN SDG: 9, Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure  Italy

More and more companies are making significant environmental impacts by assessing the elements of their supply chain — and other opportunities for environmental impact exist within their physical plants, too.

When motorcycle and e-bike manufacturer Ducati decided to build a new finishing facility at its main campus in Bologna, Italy, it committed to making the plant as green as possible. At the end of 2022, Ducati inaugurated the facility, adding 4,400 square meters to its overall Bologna footprint. The finishing facility is classified as a Nearly Zero Energy Building, thanks to its energy-efficient materials and technical systems, as well as the use of renewable energy. Solar panels on the roof can generate over 200 megawatt hours of clean energy per year.

The facility's interior also received attention to environmental detail. The use of highly efficient air conditioning systems and the optimization of natural lighting help reduce energy consumption — large glass and polycarbonate surfaces serve the same purpose. A green area in the courtyard allows Ducati to monitor native bee species, which are bioindicators for a biome’s health. And the facility also features a rainwater capture system with a capacity of about 150 cubic meters — 90 percent of water that enters that system is used for industrial purposes, which allowed Ducati to reduce water from wells and water network by 30 percent in 2023.

GO plc’s Mase in Space  For launching Malta’s first autism-sensitive educational resource  UN SDG: 4, Quality Education  Malta

Of Malta’s 82,000 children, only 2,000 are diagnosed as being on the autism spectrum. GO plc, Malta’s top communications services provider and the country’s first quadruple play (mobile, landline, internet, and TV) service, is partnering with the team behind Mase in Space to see if more could be done.

Billed as Malta’s first autism-sensitive resource, Mase in Space is a digital interactive book that supports readers in social and communication skills development, paying attention to fonts, colors, positioning of characters, and rhythm and rhyme used in storytelling. GO plc got involved in digitizing the book as part of its corporate social responsibility program and its commitment to digital inclusion and made the book available for low-cost download in May 2023. GO plc also helped to facilitate interactive features that would make the book as accessible to as many readers as possible.

By May 2024, Mase in Space had been downloaded 1,000 times just in Malta; that’s half of Malta’s population of autistic children. A roadshow, with live storytelling events, expands awareness about the book, and brings community members together, and future plans include gamifying the book to reach a larger audience.

VEGEA’s Moleskine Collaboration  For transforming food waste into trendy products  UN SDG: 12, Responsible Consumption and Production  Italy

Milan-based VEGEA has spent the past eight years studying the intersection of agriculture and chemistry to develop eco-friendly products that turn natural waste — especially winemaking waste — into desirable products, reducing dependence on petroleum- and animal-based materials. Their vegetable-based materials have been used in everything from purses and shoes to couches and car interiors, showing manufacturers around the world how luxury goods can be produced with novel products that recover and repurpose agricultural waste. By 2030, they expect to achieve a reduction of 1,200 metric tons per year of fossil-fuel based raw materials, which is the equivalent of producing 4 million pairs of shoes without fossil-fuel based materials.

In October 2023, VEGEA initiated a collaborative project with Moleskine, the luxury notebooks and accessories company. Together, the partners created a line of journals that incorporate vineyard waste into the journals’ covers. Italy alone produces two million tons of grape waste in the winemaking process every year; recovering and repurposing this waste is vital to both reducing landfill space and to preventing excessive carbon emissions.

The collaboration and VEGEA’s mission were featured that same month at the 2023 World Food Forum’s Wearable Food Waste event, sponsored by World Food Forum, FAO’s Office of Climate Change, Biodiversity and Environment (OCB) — Environment Team, and Bites of Transfoodmation (BoT). The event showed attendees the multiple benefits of the circular economy as it applies to food waste, inspiring other companies, including Ananas Anam, Bananatex, and Spora Studio, to consider how to repurpose food waste effectively.