Quanto è morbido un lombrico quando lo si tocca? Che rumore fa la coccinella quando mangia gli afidi? E’ davvero brutto il bruco della farfalla Vanessa? A cosa servono gli insetti? 1 – 3 OTTOBRE dalle 11 alle 19  all’Eco Bookshop Valcucine tre giorni di workshop* e conferenze dedicati agli abitanti meno conosciuti del pianeta biodiversità: gli insetti. Fonte futura di cibo, grandi alleati dell’agricoltura e vittime indiscriminate delle coltivazioni chimiche, gli insetti saranno presentati da due entomologi di fama internazionale, Gianumberto Accinelli e Padre Giovanni Onore, a bambini, educatori, giardinieri e semplici curiosi. 4 teche progettate ad hoc dai designer Stefano Citi e Simone Simonelli con la supervisione del Presidente di Valcucine, Gabriele Centazzo, in perfetta filosofia Valcucine, consentiranno di toccare gli insetti e osservarli da vicino. Se non ci credete, venite in Corso Garibaldi 99 e toccate per credere! SCARICA IL PROGRAMMA Con il Patrocinio del comune di Milano settore cultura. Con la gentile partecipazione di: LIPU Milano, Natura E…, Eugea edizioni, Bioforest SABATO 8 OTTOBRE dalle h.16 tenetevi pronti per la LIBERAZIONE DEGLI INSETTI L’educatrice Geraldina Strino guiderà i bambini nell’apertura delle teche a Villa Mylius, a Sesto San Giovanni, in occasione della presentazione del progetto didattico IL GIARDINO PREZIOSO che vedrà la partecipazione di Libereso Guglielmi, il giardiniere di Italo Calvino.  * I workshop per bambini sono su prenotazione telefonica [02 629 121 63] a partire da martedì 27 settembre. I bambini dovranno essere accompagnati dai genitori

The importance assumed by the environmental issues has increased over the years with the level of economic development gained by the rich western countries. The fact the natural landscapes are diminishing cannot be hidden or ignored. More and more people are getting aware of the negative effects of human activities, with no exclusion. “Environmental consciousness” is getting part of the daily life and is slowly making people more responsible or, at least “conscious”, of the risks the environment is facing. Some people really believe this is a serious problem and are actively involved in improving the situation because they understand what is going on; others just try to change their behaviour because imposed by the government and some people simply ignore the evidence and continue their life normally, feeling they cannot do anything about it. In other words, people have different ways of thinking, and display sometimes contrasting behaviours, deriving in most cases from a lack of understanding Scientists are already doing a good job by alarming the planet with the latest news and discoveries about the exact quantity of rubbish a person produces everyday. Wake up people’s mind and make them think about this problem is really the first step for the improvement of the environmental conditions. Living in an economically wealthy society makes more difficult for people to perform an environmentally sustainable behaviour. In fact, surrounded by amounts of new products everyday, huge quantities of food at disposal at each corner, shops offering the latest commodities and the overall possibility to get everything you want, even more than you could imagine, life is too easy and comfortable to make a change, going against what the society offers you. Why should people decide to limit the consumption in their lifestyles? Unfortunately, people’s good sense is not enough to make them understand the importance of safeguarding the planet. However, moved by their ethical sense and consciousness as well as by external inputs (commercial and non-), consumers have started to ask companies for products with a lower impact on the environment. In answer to the challenge of the environmental issues, also companies have displayed different behaviours from one another, as consumers did. Some have decided to ignore the situation and postpone the problem, going on with the same way of doing business, while others have adapted their products development and management activities to the safeguard of the natural resources. Proactive companies [...]

In Ecuador, the ten-year old “Otonga” project, whose name derives from a gigantic worm that lives in this area, aims to purchasing strips of the primary forest on the western sides of the Andes, in order to preserve the exceptional biodiversity features of the area. More than 1,500 hectares have been purchased to this purpose. WHAT IS THE PRIMARY FOREST? The primary forest could be defined as a comprehensive diary about the evolution of life over the last million years on Earth: it really hosts a high variety of animal and vegetal species, that is an inestimable biological heritage. Currently, about 2 million species have been catalogued, although some experts estimate their total number on Earth is around 10 millions, half of which just in the area of the tropical rainforests. Every year naturalists identify about 15,000 new species of organisms, mostly insects. The term ‘primary forest’ – or virgin – means the set of forest ecosystems spontaneously developed over the millenniums. This kind of forest, which human activities such as industries never contaminated, is characterised by the growth of ancient trees which provide life to hundreds of species. The most important primary forests are currently seven: the basin of Congo’s African rainforest; the Amazon tropical forest; the Southeast Asian jungles; the North-American virgin forests; the South-American temperate rainforest; the snowy forests of the Siberian taiga; the last large European forests in Russia. They play a significant role for the climate trends: in fact, they contrast since the release of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, which is caused by the countless fires and the human industrialisation and contributes to the greenhouse effect and to the global warming. Today, these ‘green lungs’ are seriously at risk of destruction by deforestation for the cellulose and paper production or by the supply of wood to big European and American furniture factories – and Italy has the supremacy! The primary forest, however, is threatened by breeding and agriculture on a deforested land that is inevitably going to become desert. WHAT DOES BIOFOREST DO AND HOW DOES IT OPERATE FOR THE ‘OTONGA’ PROJECT? For over 20 years, a fee, like a ‘constant drop’ for a ‘project that lasts over time’. Such amount varies according to the donations gathered by Bioforest from its members to acquire primary forest’s strips of land. However, the strips of land’s acquisition is not enough, as such strips has to be [...]

BIOFOREST is a no profit, non-party, non-sectarian Association founded in 1998 by a group of businessmen and small entrepreneurs who were interested in a new model of development based on compatibility between industry and environmental safeguard, that was also supported and encouraged by naturalists and ecologists working in the scientific field. The objective of the commitment was the reduction of energy consumption and raw materials in production cycles, the removal of toxic materials and an adequate development of research and technological innovation respecting the natural environment. In this context, relations between developed and developing Countries have been fundamental in sharing and making a compatible use of the Planet’s natural resources, allowing to safeguard the natural capital and pass on to future generations the resources we have inherited. BIOFOREST is mainly (but not only) committed to promoting a new culture in the industrial world, which assumes its own responsibilities and is ready to act to restore and safeguard natural world resources. It is a “new alliance” between Industry and Environment, which intends to give an important signal: a serious and long-lasting commitment.

All factories producing consumer goods have some impact on the environment because they use natural resources and energy, releasing enormous quantities of carbon dioxide into the air that is the main culprit of the greenhouse effect. There is only one type of industry in the world that produces without polluting: the tree. The tree is a factory that produces wood and works by exploiting solar energy and nothing else. Its raw material is carbon dioxide and it eliminates oxygen, indispensable for our life, as waste. Conscious of the enormous value of trees and of nature, Valcucine has implemented reforestation projects so that the trees planted can transform the carbon dioxide created by industrial production into oxygen and so that the quantity of wood used to make furniture can be replaced, thus reducing the enormous debt with the environment that Man has accumulated to the detriment of our planet. Valcucine promotes and finances BIOFOREST, the association for the regeneration of natural environments. It has implemented two large projects for the reforestation and protection of the biodiversity in Ecuador and in Italy called “Otonga” project and “Vinchiaruzzo” project. It has also started the “Occhione” project, an environmental education idea for middle school youths in the province of Pordenone that includes the construction of a naturalistic laboratory and of a nursery of native species that are subsequently planted in flat lands that are made available by Bioforest.