After grasping the need to learn how to inhabit change and challenge contradictions - the themes of the last two editions of the 2025 "Salone della CSR e dell'innovazione sociale" - this year's cultural event, held at Bocconi University from 8th to 10th October, sought to explore environmental and regenerative perspectives and future developments, alongside employment, cultural, financial, and technological ones.
As emerged during the panel entitled Commitment to Biodiversity, a Strategic Driver, which featured the participation of Eleonora Pessina, Group Sustainability Officer at Pirelli, preserving natural capital and initiating urban and environmental regeneration plans, starting with targeted actions in specific localised areas, is no longer an optional or postponable task. This is especially true since a commitment to managing ecosystems is a fundamental element in defining innovative strategies and experimenting with new solutions. In recent years, Pirelli has demonstrated deep attention to the issue of biodiversity, promoting initiatives that allow for the assessment of the environmental footprint of its products and processes across the entire value chain. “This has allowed us to act in a specific manner“, explains Eleonora Pessina. “Biodiversity is a highly territorial issue, unlike climate change, which has a global impact. Every site, material, and product in every location has its own impact, dependency, and characteristic. Our plant in Bollate, for instance, has a different impact from our plant in Silao, Mexico, or Campinas, Brazil. Each has specific areas requiring attention characteristic of the area in which it is located”.
To enable a tangible and factual impact on biodiversity protection, Pirelli has decided to adopt the LEAP approach (Locate, Evaluate, Access, Prepare), which consists of: identifying where and how business activities interact with the natural and social environment; analysing the company's dependencies on natural and social resources, as well as the positive and negative impacts that business activities generate on them; assessing the relevant risks and opportunities arising from the identified dependencies and impacts; and developing action plans and strategies to manage risks and seize opportunities, integrating them into corporate policies and processes. “Once you have this control”– Pessina continues –, “the necessary actions are identified. We have worked on site-specific biodiversity plans, assessing risks and opportunities: from reducing absolute water consumption to supporting the reforestation of areas near our plant. Investing in biodiversity is a duty, because about 75% of the ecosystem services that sustain life and human activities globally depend on it”.
In keeping with its sustainability strategy, which entails the active involvement of the entire value chain, Pirelli also works actively with its suppliers, recognising their important role in biodiversity protection: “We require suppliers to apply management models that guarantee the protection of ecosystems and the responsible use of natural resources, with particular attention to non-deforestation within the raw materials chain” states Pessina. In this field, Pirelli was the first in 2021 to introduce FSC™1 - Forest Stewardship Council certified natural rubber into its tyres. This certification attests that forests are managed in a way that preserves biological diversity, benefiting workers and local communities in a way that is cost-effective for them.
To support biodiversity, close collaboration between the public and private sectors is also essential, which we expect to grow increasingly, also in light of the new regulations relating to ecosystem restoration.
1 License number: FSC™ N003618
