Emstar Italy and ARTI-Italia’s Giovanni Ravelli
Emstar Italy’s Giovanni Ravelli discussed how Embatex and ARTI-Italia worked on the new Italian public procurement law.
Ravelli, who is Sales Manager at Emstar Italy and President of Italian trade association ARTI-Italia, commented on the detailing of the new Italian public procurement laws, which The Recycler reported on earlier this month, and which aimed to help change the way public procurement works for cartridges in the country, as well as help improve green public procurement (GPP).
Ravelli also spoke at this year’s Focus on Europe conference in Barcelona about ARTI-Italia’s work, and you can read about this in our report in issue 260, with ARTI-Italia’s involvement revealed in March earlier this year.
He stated that since 2013 Emstar Italy “has been working alongside other recyclers to put in writing the CAM (minimum environmental criteria) of printing consumables for public tenders that are going to be obligatory in compliance with the GPP. I am proud Embatex AG is one of the first European companies to follow these best practices.
“In fact it is the only one of the remanufacturers to be EMAS-certified after an external audit and independent verification that the company is committed to improving its efficiency and environmental issues in a report showing the results achieved every three years. This year Embatex was one of the first top five European companies to have 400 toner cartridges certified by the Nordic Swan Ecolabel.
“The company has three collection systems for empty cartridges as well as external collectors from which it buys in Italy, and gave the “clown doctors” charity Rote NOSEN – participating in the collection – a cheque for more than €300,000 ($369,750). The products are sold in Italy where Embatex is increasingly appreciated, and distributed to private label customers as well under the Emstar brand, both in respect of patents and not using empty clones that infringe patents.
“Therefore it is not possible to have the availability of new products after a few months after the first OEM availability of collected empties. Each month over 20 recyclers in Europe go out of business, someone starts selling clones or mixing them with remanufactured cartridges. This is an illegal practice and dishonest against competitors, while it guarantees good earnings, due to an increase of empty non-reusable, environmentally-damaging and expensive cartridges for disposal.
“We hope that, thanks to the actions of the CAM and OEMs with lawsuits enforcing their intellectual property, there will be selection by public administrations. Investments in quality and respect for the environment, such as EMAS, will allow Embatex to be recognised and appreciated among the best state-of-the-art companies”.