ITALY - UK PARTNERSHIP

BUSINESS | 19 www.italchamind.eu research professor in New Jersey, and who had the intuition that pollution could be destroyed by feeding it to bacteria. Twenty years later, I decided to take over his research and prototypes to develop a scalable and industrialised system that could become a plug-and-play technology to overcome any kind of air pollution issue, such as those deriving from environmental disasters, or to improve the air quality in corporate buildings, hospitals or schools areas. ICC: What are the aspects and strengths that differentiate your company from the competition? BM: U-earth is performing on a larger range of contaminants compared to other technologies, as it can work outdoor destroying the contaminants, which are captured by an electrical charge attraction, as opposed to being trapped on a filter using ventilation. We do it using a proprietary blend of non-pathogenic and non-genetically modified bacteria, which are completely safe and which digest the contaminants in mineral waste, which can later be used as compost. ICC: What is your business philosophy? What does “sustainability” mean for U-earth? BM: U-earth’s mission is to become a sustainability tool for companies in the world aiming to follow the 2030 United Nations’ agenda for a sustainable development and to make the world a cleaner place. For this reason, we created a “Pure Air Index” that keeps track in real time of the pollutants that are destroyed globally. We are also about to create a Foundation in order to donate the technology to the segments most in need that cannot afford to purchase our technology, so that clean air can be available to the largest number of people worldwide. ICC: In relation to both Italy and the UK, how many companies have adopted your technology so far? Could you provide us with an overview of your market? BM: We have a couple of hundred professional users and the numbers are growing very fast. Working on Pure Air is a huge benefit and the experience is eye-opening and life-changing. We believe the corporate market will expand very quickly because of the ease of use, the affordable price and the great benefits that a Pure Air Zone can provide in terms of HR, talent retention, CSR, cost benefit coming from energy savings using less ventilation, brand awareness and green marketing, just to name a few. ICC: What is the qualitative and quantitative impact of this new technology, taking into consideration the “Pure Air Index”? Could you provide a case study? BM: A beautiful case study is Luxury Living Group, an international firm in the luxury furniture segment that owns the license to produce and commercialise Fendi Casa, Bentley Home, Bugatti Home, Baccarat home, Ritz Home and Trussardi Casa. The group runs 10 flagships in the world and is headquartered in Forlì (Italy) with their factories, their immense showrooms and even a palace in the heart of the town. The Vignatelli Family, owner of the Group, decided at the beginning of 2019 to cover their whole structure - manufacturing, showrooms and flagships worldwide - with our technology, becoming the largest Pure Air Zone company in the furniture segment. Luxury Living Group planted the equivalent of 40,000 plants in terms of pollution removal efficiency, and is contributing to the Pure Air Zone global project with a daily contaminant destruction rate of 525Kg per day, with an impact in the next 5 years of 958 tonnes! ICC: What about the future? Challenges, ambitions and expectations? BM: U-earth aims to create a new breathing standard. Just like it happened with Wi-Fi, more and more places are going to become a Pure Air Zone. They will be found on a map giving people a choice to decide about the quality of the air they breathe, just like they already do with food and drinks. In the near future, we are going to set up an outdoor Urban Brain Spa for people to enjoy Pure Air while going through a binaural deep breathing meditation. · Sounds interesting? Please visit www.pureairzone.app and www.u-earth.eu Hotel Eden in Andalo, Italy