Productive Development and sustainability in Tuscany Environmental policy in Industrial areas: the APEA

APEA is an acronym that means “Industrial and environmentally equipped areas”, and it expresses Public Administrations’ purpose to join environmental policy and economical aspects. Tuscany Region, in cooperation with University of Florence and Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna di Pisa, promotes, through Regolamento R.T. 2 dicembre 2009, n. 74, this innovative model in relation to planning, design and promotion of industrial areas equipped with innovative technological infrastructure, which conform to current and future expected environmental standards. The main objectives of Apea project are: a) The planning of new industrial estates, technologically and environmentally equipped in order to represent a strategic asset for local development. b) The transformation and conversion of existing industrial estates, through technological and management’s actions. This will contribute towards ongoing business efforts to increase competitiveness in these areas. The work, lasted three years, aims to define the main features of Apea as follow: − Sustainable urban planning of APEA and design of technological and mobility networks. − Implementation of sinergies between enterprises, through a unit management of centralized technological systems, common spaces, and common services − Closed production cycle that aims at the re-use of waste streams, and industrial symbiosis. − Provision of barriers and other systems for the reduction of any kind of pollution. − Use of renewable or low impact energy sources. − Setting up of ecological platforms for waste collection, for water treatment, etc. The direct beneficiaries of the project activities are: - Local Public Authorities, to innovate and experiment new urban planning rules, and to support competitiveness in the respect of International rules, about environment and resources saving.