“Giffoni is the right place to discuss sustainability and environmental issues, which are the ones we should care about the most because they have to do with us and our life”. This is how Vice President of the Campania Region Fulvio Bonavitacola opened Verde Giffoni - Youth for the Present in the Sala Galileo of the Multimedia Valley. Verde Giffoni is dedicated to the preservation of our planet and addressed to Generation Z, the most sensitive and committed to this issue. From April 27 to 30, 400 boys and girls aged 14 to 25 from all over Italy will have the chance to meet experts on environmental issues, artists committed to the protection of the planet, as well as psychologists, philosophers, scientific researchers and innovators.

The event is organized by the Ente Autonomo Giffoni Experience, co-financed by the Ministry of Culture - General Direction for Cinema and by the Campania Region, with the support of the Municipality of Giffon Valle Piana, Conai (National Packaging Consortium) and the seven Chain Consortiums for the collection, recovery and recycling of packaging in steel (Ricrea), aluminum (CiAl), paper and cardboard (Comieco), wood (Rilegno), plastic (Corepla), biodegradable and compostable plastic (Biorepack) and glass (Coreve).

Gianvincenzo Nastasi, director of Verde Giffoni, introduced the guests at the opening of the event: “Giffoni has been dealing with environmental issues for years. These days will be devoted to reflection. Our goal is to learn how to think in a sustainable way. The first form of ecology is an ecology of thought, which is followed by an eco-friendly attitude. Of course, as it always happens in Giffoni, the protagonists of the event will be the young people. Guests here do not merely speak in front of an audience, they exchange opinions with the giffoners”.

Giffoni General Manager Jacopo Gubitosi described today as a beautiful day of celebration: “We have worked tirelessly over the last few months to carry out a project focused on the principle of sustainability. It was the young people who encouraged us to deal with these issues and that is why we decided to dedicate such an important initiative to them. Their interest led us to embark on this new challenge. Today is a real day of celebration for us, for our region and for Italy.  I hope that the young men and women taking part in this event will actively contribute to make the gentle movement that is starting today in Giffoni even more vibrant”.

President of the Ente Autonomo Giffoni Experience Pietro Rinaldi expressed his best wishes: “We are very excited about Verde Giffoni because it is indeed a great challenge. I would like to thank the Ministry of Culture and the Campania Region that always support us and endorse our ideas”.

Vice President of the Campania Region Fulvio Bonavitacola extended his greetings to Giffoni founder Claudio Gubitosi and to the audience: “I'm always happy to pay homage to Giffoni. We are grateful to Gubitosi because he was a pioneer who started with nothing and created an event that is highly regarded in Italy and all over the world. Today we are celebrating a new birth, that of Verde Giffoni, which was born in a strong and very well established family and will represent the link between a prestigious past and a present that is already looking at the future”.

The world is not ours, we must hand it over to those who will come after us: this is the point that Bonavitacola stressed in his speech. He continued: “The sense of possession is an innate feeling we have. But we must understand that we are just passers-by and we must not get confused between what is ours and what we must respect because it doesn't belong to us. I hope you can bring these values into your daily routine. If you do so, you will be a generation to be looked upon with great respect and admiration, unlike mine”.

What can be said about sustainability in Campania? Bonavitacola has no doubt: we have reached the self-reliance stage. “We inherited a disastrous situation. There was no law on water or a regulatory text on decontamination. Giant strides have been made on these matters. Then, there is the major issue of waste, a problem that everyone considered impossible to solve and that is now definitively on its way to conclusion. Even outside Campania people are realizing this, to the point that Europe has decided to reduce by one third the sanction inflicted for the waste emergency. In the next few years we must work towards total independence in the management of waste. The same applies to water resource management, on which we are currently working. Becoming self-reliant on these issues now means having more freedom”.