CARRARA
Epochal turning point for the Municipality of Carrara. The city council approved the regulation to track the movements of the blocks extracted from the marble quarries. This is one of the criteria required by the new regulation of marble farms, i.e. the quarries where white gold is extracted, which involves following the movement of the stone material from the mountain to the factory downstream. The revolution was introduced in 2022 by the 5 Star mayor Francesco De Pasquale, then resumed by the current administration of mayor Serena Arrighi, supported by the democratic party.
At the basis of the entire renewal of the concessions to extract the precious Carrara marble, which with article 21 of the new regulation established that to continue working the quarries, the industrialists had to commit to creating public utility projects and working the marble at least 50 percent on site. But since there is no useful tool for understanding how much will actually be worked in Carrara, it was decided to put together a mechanism that follows the blocks from the moment they are cut to their processing in the factory. The traceability of the material precisely.
In essence, thanks to a unique code that dealers will be able to use to communicate with the IT system of the civic building, it will be possible to trace the history of the stone materials from the mountain to the weighbridge (mandatory step against the ‘illegal’ transport of the materials), and from the weighbridge to the factory chosen for processing.
However, the software used by individual entrepreneurs must be compatible with that used by the Municipality of Carrara. The stage from the scale to the factory will be fundamental to establish the margin of at least 50 percent of the on-site processing, a fundamental requirement that the industrialists will have to respect since it has allowed them to obtain the renewals of the much sought-after concessions, which they carry in their pockets of Carrara entrepreneurship millions of euros in turnover.
“This is a fundamental document for the application of regional law 35 – said Mayor Arrighi during the last city council meeting – and is the result of long and collective work based on safety, the environment and a more equitable redistribution of wealth”. In fact, with the on-site processing of at least 50 percent of the material, we hope to have an impact on employment on the floor, i.e. in the sawmills where the marble will be transformed before being shipped all over the world.
A long path that of traceability, which according to some marble industrialists is however not 100% viable, in particular for small companies and for the so-called ‘formless’, i.e. those blocks of marble that are not perfectly cut. Only in the next few weeks will we see whether the historic step taken by the Carrara administration will bear the fruits that everyone expects.
Alessandra Poggi
