Our Projects

What is a regenerative project?

A project is regenerative when it pursues the co-benefit of health & happiness for planet and people, in terms of restoration and/or conservation of Natural Capital and social impact.

With the term “restoration” we mean, among others, soil enrichment, forestation, and ecosystem remediation.

Conservation entails emissions reduction, recycling, regenerative energy, resources efficiency, meat protein reduction, agrochemicals substitution, and organic raw materials.

Evaluation and
scale-up

We support finding and mobilizing resources to scale up the founders’ projects, while developing original pilot projects with a high innovative potential. To do so, the foundation coordinates and supports public and private fundraising, while activating its network of partners and supporters for the projects’ implementation and potential scale-up.

Project portfolio

Regenerative Agriculture
Sustainable Ecosystems of Connected, Prosperous Communities
Regenerative Society Foundation

Through a market driven regenerative agriculture and agroecology, the programme aims at shifting African agriculture from an extractive to a regenerative model, promoting decarbonization alongside social and human well-being, while impacting on climate change mitigation and consumption habits. It starts with the beans production in Kenya, but can extend to coffee, cereals, and animal farming.

Virtuous Agriculture
Fondazione Ernesto Illy & illycaffè

In a remote and severely poor area of Ethiopia, 470 hectares of degraded land have been reforested with coffee plants using the regenerative practice of agroforestry. In addition, coffee production has been integrated with animal husbandry in the so-called “holistic agriculture” approach. Training and ongoing research also supports the work of more than 2,000 local coffee growers. Funds have also been allocated to building a school for the farmers’ children.

European Regenerative Organic Center
Davines Group & Rodale Institute

The Davines Group-Rodale Institute partnership aims to promote the implementation of regenerative organic practices across farms of all scales to produce food and active ingredients for the beauty industry. The other goals are to deliver ground-breaking research, education, and dissemination activities to demonstrate the multiple beneficial effects of regenerative organic agriculture for a variety of industries.

Regenerative agricultural practices
Aboca

Aboca applies regenerative agricultural practices to produce plants and herbs for their products. All crops are farmed according to organic farming principles. The company is also part of the Biodiversity Alliance and measures and protects biodiversity in its fields. In the next 3 years, they are planning to make an investment to define an international standard for sustainability assessment of agricultural models in collaboration with universities and research centers and to engage community through cultural activities. They are currently evaluating the potential of using carbon sequestration practices within their agricultural lands.

Urban regeneration
Kilometro Verde
Chiesi Group, Davines Group & Mutti

The project’s aim is to plant perennial forests throughout the Parma area and its province. Urban and sub-urban forests offer several ecosystem services to the neighboring communities, in terms of climate adaptation, landscape restoration and improvement of air quality. The project also includes an educational program for school children about the importance of urban forests for nature and people’s well-being.

Mille Querce
Mutti

The project supports biodiversity and fights climate change by reforesting the plains areas capable of increasing the trapping of carbon dioxide. It started with the planting of 1,100 trees in four different areas of our territory, near the Montechiarugolo (PR) headquarters. The project has also been launched in other areas, with “Tracce di bosco”, and urban areas in Milan.

Restore to Impact
Chiesi

"Restore to Impact” an International Call for Ideas aimed at identifying innovative, evolutionary, transversal concepts that will be the basis for the guidelines of the future regeneration project of the Chiesi pharmaceutical group’s industrial site at Via Palermo, Parma. The objective is twofold: to create an innovative business playground: and to provide its commercial branch with a workspace aligned to current notions of inclusion and corporate guidelines.

Education
#UnlockEducation
Nativa

#UnlockEducation is the training campaign to educate the new generations on sustainability. Creating a more sustainable and resilient society is a globally recognized imperative, an imperative that is unachievable if money is not allocated towards younger people. Involving the institutions and the main players in the Italian educational ecosystem, #UnlockEducation will provide the new generations with skills and tools that will allow them to build and live in a more inclusive, sustainable and regenerative economy and future.

Reforestation
CO2 compensation & reforestation in Guatemala
Flowe & Banca Mediolanum

For every debit card issued, a tree is planted in Guatemala. Each tree is geolocated and associated with a QR code, allowing clients to track growth over time. Thanks to an algorithm developed by a partner, CO2 emission for the good or service purchased are estimated to later give the user the opportunity to offset them by planting trees. Finally, each event (digital or physical) organized by Flowe is neutralized through the planting of trees with our partner. To date, more than 45,000 trees have been planted in Guatemala within a reforestation project with high social impact.

Bosco Mutti
Mutti SpA

Mutti is developing a multi-year program for the restoration and redevelopment of ecosystems, encouraging the implementation of activities aimed at the recovery of habitats and the preservation of biodiversity. The process will consist of three different types of action: (a) implementation of ecological redevelopment projects within the territories owned by Mutti; (b) implementation of ecological redevelopment projects in public areas, located within areas significantly affected by company production; (c) support for the implementation by public and private entities of localized ecological requalification activities.

Circularity
Centro Italia Sisma
Garc S.p.A.

The project aims to address the challenge of earthquake waste disposal in a sustainable manner by reusing and recovering the waste materials. The goal is to reduce the environmental impact of construction sites and to add value to waste resources. Garc was able to recycle 99% of the rubbles and reuse them to rebuild collapsed buildings. They have also employed local people to support the economy after the earthquake.

Reboot
Garc S.p.A.

The project aims to create “industrial symbiosis”, a long-lasting partnership between different companies to transform waste into a resource. The project is specifically focused on the ceramic industry in Emilia-Romagna and the creation of a “recovery factory” to create standards and a certification of a correct usage of waste material in building. The idea is to combine the raw materials necessary for ceramic production with the end of waste and sub-products to create a mixture that could be usable by the ceramic producers themselves. Garc is also involved in the production of pallets and distancers using waste woods and in a plant for treating plastics. To improve the state of the art on these topics Garc aims at creating a research center on circular economy.

Sustainable Value Chains
Amando
Sammontana

Sammontana has produced the vegetable ice-cream line Amando, made of almond milk. Only Sicilian almonds are used, since they require much less water than the Californian ones, reducing the product’s water footprint. Another goal reached was the reduction of CO2 emissions, compared to traditional ice-creams, as no animal milk is used. Sammontana is working with its fruit suppliers (mainly almonds and apples) to reduce its ecological footprint along the entire supply chain.

Finance
Circular Economy Fund
Lombard Odier Investment Manager

Lombard Odier Investment Managers launched the LO Funds-Circular Economy Investment Strategy in November 2020 to offer Italian Investors the innovative opportunity to invest in natural resources worldwide through companies that can leverage the regenerative power of nature. Utilizing bio-materials, limiting waste, and focusing on bioenergy and regenerative practices, a Circular Economy Investment Strategy prizes nature as the main asset of our economy, promoting a regenerative economic model instead of a linear one.

Biodiversity
Beenergy
3Bee

3Bee applied a combination of satellite maps (Flora, developed along with ESA) and bioacoustic sensors to monitor wild pollinators (Spectrum) to monitor the impact on biodiversity of the regeneration of an area of 60 ha inside an area cultivated with monocultures realized by the company Genagricola 1851. Furthermore, in collaboration with this partner company, 3Bee aims to regenerate an additional area of 25 he and protects about 10 millions pollinators in an area used to generate photovoltaic energy. The project plans to constantly monitor the impact of these beehives through the technology Hive-Tech, generating and constantly updating a report to show the effect of this interventions on the well-being of the bees and the biodiversity of the environment.