Our Technology Platform is a place of dialectic cooperation among stakeholders of various nature and dimension. It aims to be an incubator of ideas, projects and partnerships at national and european level. It is therefore a structure opened to all dealers sharing these practices.

Charter members of RELOADER are 28. Board of director

It is their belief that, now more than ever, it is necessary to equip itself of the common instruments (Research and Innovation), able to individualise, plan and estimate echo-compatible solutions applicable to several economic activities, always more complex and dangerous for the environment. And it is their belief that the better chance to find sustainable development routes is to adopt a policy of “collaborative” advantage that, respecting the particular interests, studies and analyses the requirements of the whole system, stimulating its creativeness and its innovation capacity.

Further RELOADER’s objectives are the spread and the exchange of the knowledge and the “best practice” in this matter, the development of a greater sensibility among the entrepreneurs, the economic organisations and the public bodies. Finally, the growth of a recycling culture respectful of the environment.

The seat of RELOADER is in Rome. The platform can rely on the contribution of a national Technical Scientific Commitee (CTS) and on the meaningful competences of its Members, including production, transport and service companies, universities, research centres, regional and national institutions.

Why a Technology Platform?

“When a refrigerator is not a refrigerator?
When it lies in Pittsburgh, while who needs it stays in Houston”
James L. Heskett

As in Europe the transport is quickly changing to a high technology industry, the research and the innovation skills will have an essential role for the following developments.

We have to develop “sophisticated logistics chains” – based on interconnected networks – and to implement services as “intelligent logistics integrators”. We are watching so far a spontaneous development of logistics, managed for the most part from the great companies of production and transport. But the people and goods mobility demand will have a rate of increase of the 5-6% annual in the next ten years. It means that, in eight or ten years, the traffic volume will be the 60-70% more than the current one, running on effectively same road, railway and maritime infrastructures.

The italian logistic invoice is worth 22% of the industrial production, like 15% of the GNP (over 180 billions of Euro per year): we have to close a gap of 4% in comparison with the European average.

Why a Technology Platform for the Reverse Logistics?

“The cities, the industrial districts and, unfortunately some areas in the country or near the sea, are opencast mine secondary matter”. Stelio W. Venceslai

Owing to the increasing demand of echo-compatible business – as key to solve more and more pressing problems of the environmental safeguard – the European Community promulgated the measures on the collection, treatment, recycling and disposal of Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) – Directives 2002/95/EC ROHS and 2002/96/EC. In Italy, to align oneself with Europe, similar rules will become effective from the next June. Since this date it will be up to the producers/distributors responsibilities and costs of these operations called, in a broad use of a term, Reverse Logistics.

The Reverse Logistics is a still young field, whose problems are facing up to now from the viewpoint of an emergency and not in a right perspective of logistic system, but the environmental and economic impact are very strong:

    • in the course of 2001 6.500.000 large household-electrical equipments have been discharged in Italy;
    • The amount of RAEE collected and treated in 2013 will have been approximately 650.000 tons and in 2018 beyond 800.000 (source ANIE, National Federation Electrotechnical and Electronic Enterprises);
    • In Italy there are today about 5.000 unchecked collecting centres, whit not homogenous operational standards.

But the Reverse is something more than to rationalise the existing conditions: it’s also logistics planned and applied already in phase of production (DfE – Design for Environment, new materials, new packaging, etc), to simplify the procedures of treatment and reutilization, of the reconditioned equipment and its single components.

The current cost of a washing machine treatment and recycling amount approximately to 15% of the industrial value of the product: through a managed network of Reverse Logistics it’s possible to reach an earning of 20%.