In the province of Latina, a family of companies is showing how industrial symbiosis can turn an environmental liability into a strategic resource. The ILSAP Group, comprising Roma Service, ILSAP Latina, ILSAP Lamezia Terme and Power Oil, has built an integrated regional chain that collects, transports, stores and transforms animal by-products and exhausted vegetable oils, converting them into refined oils, animal fat-derived electricity, biodiesel and glycerin.

ILSAP’s story is itself a case of adaptive innovation. Founded in 1986 to process animal by-products for the zootechnical feed market, the company was forced to reinvent its entire business model when the BSE crisis of 2000 closed that market to processed animal proteins. Rather than scaling down, ILSAP became one of Italy’s few authorised plants able to handle high-risk specified material, and redirected its output toward energy recovery turning a public-health constraint into the seed of a new circular economy.

Today the Latina plant processes up to 10 tonnes per hour of animal by-products, and its cogeneration unit converts 2,000 tonnes per year of animal fat into roughly 8,000 MWh of renewable electricity. At the Lamezia Terme site, twin refining and transesterification lines run continuously to produce around 200 tonnes of refined oil, 200 tonnes of biodiesel and 20 tonnes of glycerin every day, entirely from waste feedstocks — used cooking oils, animal fats and non-food vegetable oils, never from food crops.

This matters well beyond the balance sheet. By producing second-generation, EN 14214-compliant biodiesel from residues instead of virgin feedstock, ILSAP delivers a homegrown, renewable alternative to fossil diesel without competing with food production or agricultural land, precisely the kind of local energy resilience that regions seek as they reduce dependence on imported petroleum. Power Oil’s collection network alone serves 8,000 clients across Italy, working with municipal utilities to keep used cooking oil out of the environment and into the supply chain.

With 85 employees across Rome, Latina and Lamezia Terme, and infrastructure recognised as a strategic national asset under Italian law (L. 35/2012), ILSAP is a concrete example of how connecting waste streams across sectors – food processing, catering, and municipal collection- can build regional energy capacity while reducing environmental impact.

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L'articolo INSET and LIAISE: Strengthening Industrial Symbiosis across Europe proviene da INSET: industrial symbiosis for entreprises and training.

The transition towards a more sustainable and circular economy is no longer a long-term ambition—it is an urgent necessity. Across Europe, industries, institutions and communities are searching for practical ways to reduce waste, optimise resources and create more resilient systems. In this evolving landscape, access to clear, structured and actionable knowledge becomes a key driver of change.

It is precisely in this context that the INSET Industrial Symbiosis Observatory has been officially launched, marking a significant milestone in the INSET project and in the broader effort to promote Industrial Symbiosis across Europe.

Developed as an open-access digital platform, the Observatory offers a dedicated space where knowledge, tools and real-world experiences come together to support stakeholders in understanding and implementing Industrial Symbiosis. Its official launch represents not only the completion of a key project result, but also the beginning of a new phase—one focused on accessibility, dissemination and real-world impact.
For those interested in discovering its features and exploring its content firsthand, the platform is now publicly available online and can be accessed through the official website.

Visit the INSET Observatory here: https://observatory.syxis.eu/

At its core, the Observatory addresses one of the most persistent challenges in the field: the fragmentation of information. Industrial Symbiosis, despite its growing relevance, is often perceived as complex and difficult to navigate due to scattered resources and limited integration. By centralising content and presenting it in a structured and intuitive way, the INSET Observatory transforms dispersed knowledge into a coherent and accessible system.
Rather than simply collecting information, the platform turns it into a practical resource. Users can explore circular economy concepts, policy frameworks and training materials, all designed to strengthen both understanding and application. The goal is clear: to move beyond awareness and support stakeholders in taking concrete steps towards sustainable practices.

One of the most engaging features of the Observatory is its ability to make Industrial Symbiosis tangible. Through its interactive Initiatives Map, users can explore real projects implemented across Europe, gaining insight into how circular solutions are applied in practice. This feature not only showcases existing initiatives, but also inspires replication and innovation, helping users envision how similar approaches could be implemented in their own contexts.

Accessibility remains a key pillar of the platform. The INSET Observatory has been designed with a strong user-centred approach, ensuring that it can be easily navigated by a wide range of audiences. Whether the user is an SME looking for practical solutions, a policymaker defining strategies, a researcher exploring new models or a student approaching the topic for the first time, the platform provides content that is clear, relevant and actionable.

Following its official launch, the Observatory positions itself as a strategic resource aligned with major European priorities, including the European Green Deal and the Circular Economy Action Plan. By supporting knowledge sharing and capacity building, it contributes to the development of greener industrial ecosystems and to the strengthening of digital and sustainability-related skills.

Importantly, the INSET Observatory is not a static output. It has been conceived as a living and evolving platform, capable of growing over time through continuous updates and integration of new content. The launch therefore represents a starting point rather than an endpoint, opening the door to future developments, collaborations and expansions.

Ultimately, the true value of the Observatory lies in its ability to connect knowledge with action. It does not simply inform—it enables. By combining structured information, practical tools and real-world examples, it supports users in moving from understanding to implementation.
With its official launch, the INSET Industrial Symbiosis Observatory becomes a concrete step forward in making sustainability accessible, actionable and widely achievable.

Learn more at syxis.eu and inset-symbiosis.eu

Contact us: info@syxis.eu

L'articolo INSET Observatory: The Digital Platform Transforming Industrial Symbiosis into Action proviene da INSET: industrial symbiosis for entreprises and training.

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The first version of the INSET Industrial Symbiosis Observatory is now ready and available online.

Conceived as a hub for Industrial Symbiosis information, the Observatory is a live and dynamic space that will be continuously updated throughout the INSET project. Its content will grow thanks to the project’s results, activities and contributions from relevant stakeholders.

The Observatory brings together key information to increase awareness and knowledge about Industrial Symbiosis as a circular economy tool. The resources available include legislation, training courses, reports, projects, tools and other relevant materials related to Industrial Symbiosis and Circular Economy practices across Europe.

The platform is open access, ensuring that its use, exploitation and impact can go beyond the 36-month duration of the INSET project and reach a wider audience of users, stakeholders, businesses, institutions and circular economy practitioners.

The Observatory currently includes an interactive map, mapped initiatives, regulatory frameworks, capacity-building programmes and resources from different European countries. It aims to support the identification, understanding and promotion of Industrial Symbiosis initiatives in practice.

We are now entering a validation period with stakeholders, and your feedback is essential to help us improve the Observatory.

We invite you to explore the platform and complete a short survey. Your comments and suggestions will be highly valuable for improving the structure, content and usability of the Observatory.

Explore the INSET Industrial Symbiosis Observatory here:

Home

Complete the short validation survey here

Thank you for helping us strengthen this tool and contribute to the development of more circular and resilient industrial ecosystems.

L'articolo The first version of the INSET Industrial Symbiosis Observatory is now available proviene da INSET: industrial symbiosis for entreprises and training.

Nature is no longer “Outside” the Economy. Commissioner Jessika Roswall opened the conference with a keynote that set the tone for the two days: healthy ecosystems are not a luxury to be protected at the margins of economic activity, but foundational infrastructure underpinning food production, water security, climate resilience, public health and long-term competitiveness. Biodiversity loss, soil degradation and water stress, she argued, are not environmental issues alone. They are economic and security risks.
This framing was reinforced throughout the programme. The opening high-level plenary “Investing in Nature, Investing in Resilience” brought together Astrid Schomaker, Executive Secretary of the Convention on Biological Diversity, and Anthony Agotha, Special Envoy for Climate and Environment Diplomacy at the European External Action Service, alongside representatives of the Capitals Coalition and the World Economic Forum. Their shared message was that in a context of geopolitical instability and mounting pressure on food, water and energy systems, nature must be placed at the heart of Europe’s resilience agenda, and not as a “nice to have,” but as a strategic necessity.
The finance dimension was equally prominent. The “Show Me the Money” panel, featuring Eva Mayerhofer from the European Investment Bank and Stine Lehman Shack of Danske Bank, explored how to close the nature-finance gap and make long-term investment in ecosystems bankable. The session on “Nature Credits” added a further dimension, examining whether biodiversity and restoration credits can become credible, scalable instruments for mobilising private capital. Estimates discussed at the conference suggest that every euro invested in nature can generate between eight and thirty-eight euros in economic benefits, figures that reframe conservation as productive investment.
A parallel strand explored soil, urban greening, regenerative farming and rural resilience, consistently returning to the same insight: ecosystems are productive systems. When they function well, they underwrite the economy. When they are degraded, the costs are borne across sectors.
What this means for Industrial Symbiosis? For the Industrial Symbiosis community, EU Green Week 2026 was not a backdrop but a call to reposition.
Industrial Symbiosis has traditionally been understood as the exchange of material, energy and water flows between industrial actors, the waste of one process becoming the input of another. This model has delivered measurable results across Europe. But the Green Week agenda points to something larger: a new logic in which industrial systems are embedded within a broader territorial network that includes secondary raw materials, biomass flows, ecosystem services, carbon sequestration and environmental data infrastructures.
In this expanded frame, Industrial Symbiosis evolves beyond industrial networks into a model of territorial resource governance, one that connects industry, agriculture and ecosystems as functional components of the same system. The resilience of an industrial cluster is inseparable from the resilience of the natural systems surrounding it. And conversely, well-designed symbiotic exchanges of heat, water, organic residues, by-products can actively support ecosystem regeneration rather than simply reduce industrial waste.
INSET’s Policy Brief: Building the Evidence Base for IS in Europe
INSET, which is an European Erasmus + project working to mainstream Industrial Symbiosis as a tool for sustainable territorial development, is working in parallel with this evolving policy landscape. Following an analysis of the state of Industrial Symbiosis in five European countries (France, Spain, Italy, Slovenia and Lithuania), INSET has cross-referenced national findings with the EU regulatory framework and identified persistent barriers to scaling IS practice.
The lack of visibility over resource flows and potential synergies between actors remains one of the most significant obstacles to IS development. Digital tools as waste and by-product tracking systems, AI-assisted matching platforms, product digital passports, life cycle assessment tools, and integrated environmental data infrastructures, have the potential to transform this, enabling the identification and coordination of resource exchanges at territorial scale. Industrial Symbiosis could shift from fragmented local initiatives to coordinated, territorially optimised resource systems.
Equally, governance emerges as a central enabling condition. Effective IS implementation requires coordination across industries, farmers, public authorities, financial institutions, researchers and civil society. This reflects the broader shift toward integrated territorial governance models that the Green Week conference made visible, models in which economic, ecological and social systems are managed together rather than in separate policy silos.
INSET has translated these findings into a Policy Brief that identifies concrete recommendations for enabling IS at national and European level. The document is now entering a public stakeholder consultation phase across the five partner countries. This is a critical moment: the Brief’s recommendations will be stronger, and more likely to influence policy, the more they reflect the experience of those who are actually working at the intersection of industry, resource management and territorial development.
Are You Working on These Issues? We Want to Hear from You!
If you are active in France, Italy, Spain, Lithuania or Slovenia as an industrial practitioner, a local authority, a researcher, a sector association, a financial institution or a civil society organisation, and your work touches on resource flows, circular economy, waste valorisation, territorial development or the future of industrial areas, INSET wants to interview you.
Your experience is exactly what the consultation is designed to gather. The findings will feed directly into a Policy Brief aimed at shaping how Industrial Symbiosis is supported, funded and governed across Europe.
Get in touch with the INSET partner active in your territory, and help turn one of Green Week’s most important messages into policy reality: that nature and economy are not in competition. They are, when managed well, the same system.

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Industrial Symbiosis is often associated with collaboration between companies, where one organisation’s waste becomes another’s resource. However, before these exchanges can take place, a structured process is needed to identify opportunities, assess their feasibility and support implementation.

This is precisely why the INSET project focuses on developing the capabilities required by Industrial Symbiosis professionals.

The journey typically begins with understanding the territory. Resource mapping and data analysis help identify material, water and energy flows, providing a clear picture of the local industrial ecosystem. Combined with stakeholder engagement, this information allows potential synergies and collaboration opportunities to be identified.

Once opportunities have been detected, the next step is to evaluate their potential impacts and feasibility. This includes assessing environmental, economic and social benefits, prioritising the most promising initiatives and defining a roadmap for implementation. Governance, financing mechanisms and business models also play an important role at this stage.

Finally, successful Industrial Symbiosis projects require implementation and coordination. Facilitators and project managers work closely with companies and stakeholders to transform identified opportunities into operational solutions. Monitoring, impact assessment and reporting ensure that results can be measured and continuously improved.
The INSET training programme has been designed to equip current and future Industrial Symbiosis professionals with the knowledge and practical skills needed throughout this process. Through learning pathways for Industrial Symbiosis Planners and Industrial Symbiosis Project Managers, participants gain practical tools to support the transition towards more resource-efficient, circular and collaborative industrial ecosystems.

Industrial Symbiosis does not happen automatically. It requires trained professionals capable of connecting data, stakeholders and opportunities to create tangible environmental, economic and social value.

Interested in developing these competences?

The INSET training programme offers a practical learning pathway for current and future Industrial Symbiosis professionals. Through modules covering Industrial Symbiosis fundamentals, resource mapping, project design, implementation, financing, governance and communication, participants can acquire the knowledge and skills needed to plan and manage Industrial Symbiosis initiatives effectively.

Whether you work in public administration, business support organisations, clusters, consultancies or industry, INSET provides flexible online training tailored to different professional profiles.

Ready to take the next step? Explore the INSET training programme and gain the knowledge and practical skills needed to design, manage and implement Industrial Symbiosis projects. Register now and access the online training platform free of charge.

L'articolo The competences behind successful Industrial Symbiosis projects proviene da INSET: industrial symbiosis for entreprises and training.

Industrial Symbiosis is often associated with collaboration between companies: one company’s waste becomes another company’s resource. But before any exchange can happen, there is a more fundamental challenge to solve.

How do we know which opportunities actually exist?

In many industrial territories, potentially valuable resources remain invisible. Residual heat, organic by-products, secondary raw materials, wastewater streams or underused infrastructure are often dispersed across industrial areas without a clear understanding of their quantity, location or potential compatibility with other actors.

As a result, many opportunities for Industrial Symbiosis are never even identified.

This is one of the less visible barriers to circular economy implementation: the lack of operational knowledge about territorial resource flows.

Most existing data systems were not designed to identify industrial synergies. Waste classifications, aggregated statistics or sectoral databases rarely provide the level of detail needed to understand how resources circulate within a territory. In practice, this makes it difficult for companies, industrial parks or public administrations to detect viable opportunities for collaboration.

Industrial Symbiosis therefore begins much earlier than the collaboration phase itself. It starts with understanding the industrial ecosystem.

This is where territorial analysis and resource mapping become essential.

By combining different sources of information — such as industrial activity data, land use, waste declarations, sectoral patterns or energy consumption estimations — it becomes possible to build a clearer picture of how materials and resources move across a territory. The objective is not necessarily to obtain perfect data, but to generate sufficient intelligence to identify realistic opportunities and support decision-making.

This type of analysis helps answer practical questions:

Which sectors generate potentially valuable residual resources?
Where are compatible resource flows geographically concentrated?
Which industrial areas show potential for heat recovery, biomass valorisation or material exchanges?
Where could collective infrastructure become viable?

In this sense, resource mapping is not simply a technical exercise. It is a strategic planning tool.

Several territorial initiatives across Europe already demonstrate the value of this approach. In rural and industrial regions alike, mapping exercises have helped identify local biomass potential, estimate recoverable organic flows, assess energy self-sufficiency opportunities or detect possible synergies between companies that had never previously interacted.

These analyses often become the starting point for broader Industrial Symbiosis strategies, helping territories prioritise investments, design infrastructure and create the conditions for future collaboration.

This perspective is also increasingly reflected in Industrial Symbiosis training and capacity-building initiatives. Within the INSET approach, competencies related to systemic thinking, data analysis, resource mapping and opportunity identification are considered essential for future Industrial Symbiosis professionals.

Because Industrial Symbiosis is not only about connecting companies.

It is about understanding how industrial ecosystems function before collaboration even starts.

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Earth Day, celebrated on April 22nd, serves as a global reminder of the urgent need to rethink how we produce, consume, and manage resources. In this context, the Circular Economy (CE) has emerged as a key framework to redefine competitiveness while addressing environmental challenges.

Among its most transformative approaches is Industrial Symbiosis (IS), a model based on collaboration between industries, where the by-products of one process become valuable inputs for another. By closing resource loops, IS not only reduces waste and environmental impact but also improves economic efficiency and fosters innovation across sectors.

Despite its potential, the widespread adoption of Industrial Symbiosis still faces several challenges. These include limited awareness and knowledge of IS practices, difficulties in coordinating collaboration between companies, and a lack of skills needed to implement and manage such systems effectively.

Addressing these barriers requires more than technological solutions. It calls for capacity building, cross-sector collaboration, and the development of new professional skills aligned with circular practices.

In this context, initiatives like the INSET project contribute to bridging the gap between sustainability needs and practical implementation. By focusing on training, skills development, and knowledge sharing, INSET supports both private and public stakeholders in better understanding and applying Industrial Symbiosis.

Through actions such as the development of a skills map, digital training tools, and an open-access observatory on regulatory frameworks and existing practices, the project helps create the conditions needed for IS to scale. At the same time, its policy-oriented outputs aim to support decision-makers in removing structural barriers to its adoption.

As environmental challenges intensify, moving from awareness to action becomes essential. Industrial Symbiosis represents a concrete pathway to accelerate the transition towards a more resilient and circular economy, one where collaboration, innovation, and skills play a central role.

L'articolo From Earth Day to Action: Advancing Industrial Symbiosis for a Circular Economy proviene da INSET: industrial symbiosis for entreprises and training.