Every year LifeGate presents research on sustainability trends in Italy — the Osservatorio sullo stile di vita sostenibile — together with Eumetra Monterosa by Renato Mannheimer. Many of the figures are particularly interesting, including when comparing changes from one year to the next: one in particular I consider interesting and very positive.
In 2015, the year of Expo in Milan, LifeGate launched the Osservatorio nazionale sullo stile di vita sostenibile to understand and track how Italians' interest in the issues that have always been at the heart of our work — and our passion — was changing. The findings were surprising.
In the early months of 2015, on the eve of the world exposition that opened in May and ran for six months, those passionate about sustainability topics accounted for 18 per cent of the population. Just one year later that figure had risen by 11 points to 29 per cent. Even more remarkable, however, is that in 2017 this figure did not fall — it held steady. If, in addition to those who are passionate about the subject, one also considers those who say they are interested in sustainability in Italy, the total reaches 59 per cent of the population, or roughly 30 million Italians. This shows that the trend has stabilised. 30 million Italians have a strong interest in sustainability and in the behaviour of businesses in social and environmental spheres.
The figure is very positive because, after strong growth of more than ten percentage points during the year of Expo Milano 2015 — growth that could easily be attributed to the billions invested in promoting the event, whose central theme was sustainable food (aimed, therefore, at communicating values of responsibility and sustainability) — the figure had not dropped a year later. This is very reassuring. And it tells us very clearly that sustainability is not a fashionable trend, but an ongoing trend, concrete and grounded in values. Normally, when a communications campaign is run around a service or a product, once the communications activity ends, interest tends to wane. In this case, that did not happen.
There are other noteworthy findings from the Osservatorio. In the picture offered by the third Osservatorio nazionale sullo stile di vita sostenibile, produced by LifeGate in collaboration with the research institute Eumetra Monterosa, four aspects of citizens' relationship with sustainability are examined: level of awareness, attitudes, consumption behaviour and purchasing behaviour. Renewable energy is perceived as an opportunity by 90 per cent of Italians, while their greatest concerns include air pollution, at 79 per cent, and the effects of climate change, at 72 per cent.
What has our commitment to spreading these issues been, and what will it be in the future? Up to 2016, LifeGate was committed to assessing and improving the environmental performance and social impact of businesses through strategic communications services and energy services. We have now decided to embark on a path closer to people in the energy and finance sectors. This is because we are convinced that more conscious consumption in these areas is fundamental to the sustainable growth of the entire planet.
We are now helping people to use renewable energy — Italian energy — for their homes, and on the other side we have launched a sustainable investment fund, the first listed in Italy, which puts impact finance into practice. It is encouraging to note that the efforts made to promote sustainability issues have led to a consolidation of the inclination towards a more conscious way of life. Clear signals are also emerging of everyone's desire to build a better, fairer future that assigns the right value to available resources, as demonstrated by the attention paid to renewable energy.