The Evaluation of Corporate Sustainability Strategies in Italy: Challenges and Opportunity of Recycled Packaging

Abstract

The scientific literature and practice have demonstrated that the old linear economic model “extract—produce—use and throw away” is no longer sustainable due to the enormous accumulation of waste and the related production of CO₂. Consequently, there is a need to adopt more sustainable development systems that include recycling resources and producing goods derived from recycled material. The examined literature highlights that SMEs are the least likely to make technological or paradigm changes in favor of sustainable choices due to a lack of resources and managerial competencies. This study presents a mixed-method approach based on qualitative and quantitative analyses. The qualitative analysis aims to identify, in the Italian context, measures that encourage companies to reduce the use of plastics in favor of sustainable alternatives. The quantitative analysis, based on secondary data, aims to identify the characteristics of the firms that benefited from the aid identified in the previous analysis. Thus, this study may support corporate environmental sustainability strategies in Italy by identifying specific characteristics and profiles of those companies willing to obtain public incentives for the use of recycled materials in their business and production processes. The results show that small and micro-sized companies obtained most of the analyzed incentives (almost 76% in terms of number of applications), and the most affected areas by these measures are the agriculture and food industries. Therefore, economic incentives can improve sustainable performance for small and micro-sized enterprises in the wide agri-food sector, while the legislator must adopt different tools, such as bans, Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR), and sustainability reports for medium-large sized companies of other crucial industrial sectors such as construction and automotives.

1. Introduction

In recent decades, there has been an increasing focus on “sustainable development” aimed at environmentally friendly economic growth. In this regard, 193 UN countries signed the “2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development Goals” (SDG) program in 2016, which includes 17 goals to be achieved over a 15-year period. Of these goals, this paper takes into account goal 12: “Responsible production and consumption”, for which the “Countries commit to making fundamental changes in the way that our societies produce and consume goods and services. Governments, international organizations, the business sector and other non-state actors and individuals must contribute to changing unsustainable consumption and production patterns” (paragraph 28 of Agenda 2030). As a matter of fact, the awareness of the impact that some production and consumption processes have on the environment has also led European Institutions towards the development of a circular economy model that aims to increase the amount of material recovered and reintroduced into the economy, thereby reducing waste generation and limiting the extraction of virgin raw materials. Moreover, the EU, as part of the “Circular Economy Action Plan”, adopted a “European strategy for plastics” in 2018 to reduce plastic waste. Plastic production has increased significantly over the past 70 years as it is used in several sectors, including construction, household appliances, medical instruments, and food packaging [1]. It has increased from 1.7 million tons (Mt) in 1950 to 413.8 Mt in 2023 [2,3,4,5].

In 2020, plastic consumption in Italy was around 2.207 kt, of which 1.5 kt were recycled. The amount of Italian recycled plastics increased, reaching 1.7 kt in 2022 [6].

Plastic can affect the environment when it is not recycled, incinerated, or kept in modern landfills. As a matter of fact, plastic waste entering the oceans each year is estimated at more than eight Mt, accumulating in marine environments and posing a serious threat to our ecosystems [7]. Most of the European demand for plastics comes from the packaging, automotive, and construction sectors, accounting, respectively, for 39.1 percent, 8.6 percent, and 21.3 percent of total demand [5,8]. As Foschi and Bonoli claimed [3] (p. 1), “there is no alignment between the increasing of the production rate and an adequate result in waste management”, which is still widely underperforming. An example of this mismatch is represented by the big islands of plastic waste, namely “the Great Pacific Garbage Patch”, floating in the north-central Pacific Ocean. The main effects of marine pollution can be summarized in the entanglement of fish, plastic ingestion by marine species, and the disruption of food chains [3,9]. Therefore, it is important to address plastic pollution and marine litter as this will conserve biodiversity, prevent the proliferation of microplastics through the food chain, and protect human health. In addition to the problems associated with plastic waste disposal, plastic production contributes to global pollution through greenhouse gas emissions (1.8 Gt GHG in 2019 [10]). Therefore, more and more attention is being paid to the production of secondary plastics. Nowadays, such production presents many obstacles, namely the collection of waste materials free of chemical additives and suitable for use as secondary plastics, the need for large-scale production to make the activity profitable, and the improvement of the performance of the product obtained from secondary plastics [11]. Additionally, as per Eurostat data, approximately 50% of the raw materials consumed by the EU are imported. By recycling raw materials, the EU can reduce risks related to supply, including price fluctuations, limited availability, and dependence on imports.

In addition to plastics, there are other materials to take into consideration; in particular, paper and board were the most recycled packaging materials in Europe in 2020. In 2023, European paper consumption was around 74 Mt, of which 54 Mt were recycled [12]. Meanwhile, in Italy paper consumption is at around 20 Mt, of which 3.73 Mt were recycled in 2023 (31% of recycled paper comes from packaging) [6]. The European objective of 85% recycled paper by 2030 can be considered almost achieved considering that the 2022 recycled paper percentage for the EU+ 27 (including Norway, Switzerland, and the UK) was equal to 70.2% [12]. Possibly, only China’s ban on importing secondary raw materials could discourage this production and therefore undermine the achievement of the objective.

The literature provides numerous insights of how companies can achieve sustainable development: through a limit on sulphur dioxide and chemical oxygen demand [13,14,15], through innovative solutions [16,17], or through industrial symbiosis (IS) [18] in the case of resource scarcity. On the one hand, stringent environmental regulations tend to redirect enterprises’ R&D efforts toward green innovation and sustainable product design, resulting in an increased number of firms engaging in green innovation activities. On the other hand, such regulations appear to have no significant impact on firms already involved in green innovation initiatives [17]. Furthermore, the study by Domenech et al. [18] presents several cases of industrial symbiosis, primarily driven by resource scarcity or environmental objectives, both of which contribute to improved sustainability performance. Given the rising volume of waste, there is a pressing need to incentivize the use of recycled materials and to discourage the reliance on virgin raw materials. In this context, the EU Regulation 2025/40 underscores that packaging accounts for 36% of municipal solid waste and consumes considerable amounts of virgin resources—namely, 40% of plastic and 50% of paper—and thereby setts targets to enhance packaging reusability by 2030 and to reduce both its weight and volume. As previously discussed, the existing literature has identified various strategies aimed at encouraging firms to adopt sustainable practices. Nevertheless, a consistent finding across studies is that small and micro enterprises often encounter substantial barriers—primarily financial constraints and limited managerial capacity—that hinder their adoption of such solutions [19,20,21].

Overall, previous studies [21,22,23,24] have focused only on the output effects of incentives aimed at reducing the CO₂ emissions of industrial activities, concerning investments both over time and compared to other countries which did not introduce such measures. To the best of our knowledge, there are no studies in this specific field that examine the characteristics of firms that have applied for and obtained such incentives for their operations. Given this context, this study aims to deepen corporate environmental sustainability strategies in Italy by carefully identifying the characteristics and profiles of those companies that obtain public incentives based on the use of recycled materials in their business and production processes. The innovative contribution of this study lies in its focus on acquiring and analyzing data derived from actual incentive applications submitted by firms seeking economic support to implement sustainable practices. The selected dataset enabled us to investigate this phenomenon from a novel perspective, distinct from the prevailing literature on public incentives, which has largely concentrated on their long-term effectiveness.

Our findings may provide valuable insights for policymakers aiming to design more effective sustainability incentive schemes in the future, considering enterprises’ localization, dimension, and sector of activity.

Therefore, the emerging research questions are as follows:

• RQ1—What is the impact of public incentives on Italian enterprises using recycled materials?
• RQ2—What are the characteristics of the firms involved in the paradigm shift towards sustainable packaging allowing them to benefit from the public incentives?

This paper has the following structure: Section 2 identifies the literature on the topic, Section 3 explains the research methodology and more specifically data collection. Section 4 provides an overview of the data used. Section 5 shows and discusses the findings. Section 6 outlines the conclusions and provides some advice for further research.

2. Literature Review

To frame the current study within the existing body of knowledge, a careful literature search was conducted using the Scopus database. The initial query combined the keywords “circular economy” and “SME,” returning 171 articles published between 2017 and 2024. This set was further refined by limiting the subject areas to “Environmental Science”, “Business, Management”, and “Economics, Econometrics and Finance,” resulting in 152 publications consistent with the topic of interest. After removing duplicates, a qualitative content analysis was performed, with particular attention given to studies exploring the factors influencing firms’ adoption of circular economy strategies. Several studies (e.g., [15,16]) and regulations have focused on adopting a more sustainable development system aimed at recycling, reuse, and a better utilization of resources. This orientation is due to the fact that climate change has an increasing effect on people’s health. Therefore, Luo et al. [13] point out, in line with COP28 targets, that to avoid the rise of temperatures further than 1.5 degrees companies have to reduce waste and to optimize resource use by developing durable products, repairable and recyclable. It is appropriate for policymakers to take measures (e.g., tax reductions, subsidized financing, grant contributions) to incentivize virtuous behavior for companies, for states to cooperate on the implementation of common regulations, and for more developed states to help developing ones. The reduction of lightweight plastic carrier bags imposed by the European Commission (EC)—Directive (2015)/720/EU—had considerable resonance and was transposed by member states in different ways; for example, Poland introduced a tax based on the weight of plastic bags, while England and Ireland introduced a tax on plastic bags contributing to a 90 percent reduction in their use [3,4]. Finally, Italy and France have banned the use of plastic bags by encouraging the use of biodegradable bags. Another study on biodegradable plastic bags [25] shows that the main effect of purchase incentives is to increase purchasing in general, while more conscious behavior is achieved through non-monetary means.

The circular economy promotes a model of production and consumption that involves sharing, lending, reusing, repairing, and reconditioning, in contrast to the economic model, based instead, on the traditional linear “extract, produce, use, and throw away” pattern. Therefore, to pursue circularity, it is necessary to take into consideration the so-called 3Rs, i.e., the notions of reducing, reusing, and recycling [26,27], with the final object being to extend the life cycle of products, helping to minimize waste and maximizing resource efficiency by reusing the materials from which products are made. Therefore, as Agovino et al., (p. 2) [26,28], claim, “waste should be considered as a valuable resource rather than an undesirable by-product of economic activity”. The reuse and recycling of products would slow down the use of natural resources and help limit the loss of biodiversity. Furthermore, according to the European Environment Agency, industrial processes and product use are responsible for 9.10 percent of greenhouse gas emissions in the EU, while waste management accounts for 3.32 percent. The circular economy would result in the reduction of total annual greenhouse gas emissions.

2.1. Recycled Materials

By considering a company point of view, some authors claim that [15,29,30,31] SMEs do not consider the minor price of recycled material sufficient to cover the higher cost of quality control. Moreover, the SWOT analysis developed for the Brazilian case of lumber plastic production highlights the pros and cons of these new productions such as, on one hand, the use of material residues, the production of recycled products, and the direct and indirect creation of new jobs. On the other one, there are the cons of unstable raw material supply, the lack of consumer awareness, and the need to develop a more performant product obtained by re-used materials and waste. Nevertheless, the increase in European and Asian demand for recycled material and the large amount of plastic residues suggest that plastic lumber could have potentially optimal growth, but it is hard to implement.

2.2. Industrial Symbiosis

Meanwhile, ad hoc policies were implemented to promote the use of recycled materials. Industrial symbiosis (IS), considered a key strategy in CE implementation, could be another pushing factor towards sustainable development because it entails organizations from diverse industries engaging in mutually advantageous transactions to repurpose waste and by-products, discovering innovative methods to acquire production resources, and harnessing the residues from their operations [18,32,33].

As one of the most famous examples of IS, we can cite the case of the National Industrial Symbiosis Programme (NISP), developed in the UK in 2005 to exchange industrial wastes among companies in the area. Other factors that promote the development of IS are represented by the introduction of stringent regulations regarding water, waste, and energy as, for example, in the metal/cement industrial cluster in Sagunto (Spain). Despite all these advantages, some barriers limit the proliferation of this model that can be summarized in uncertainty, the difficulty of finding a partner with complementary needs, transport and logistics costs that disincentivize the use of this model, or insufficient resources to even devote to these projects. Therefore, it would be useful to envisage policies to disincentivize the use of landfills and the production of CO₂ (also by providing ad hoc taxation). The sectors most positively affected by IS models are paper, power production, mining, and construction, while the most exchanged materials/energies are heat, steam, metals, biomass, wood, and inert material [18].

2.3. Innovative Solutions

Continuing to explore the topic of sustainability from a business perspective, the review by Santos and Sant’Anna [16] highlights that SME sustainable performance (in the social, environmental, and economic meaning) relates to the availability of low-cost technology compatible with existing systems to lower investment insecurity and take short-term advantages. Thus, from an enterprise perspective, technology could represent a driver for a sustainable performance, such as the data collected every second by the sensors potentially permitting a reduction in energy and water consumption and the controlling of waste generation. Moreover, from an economic point of view, the Internet of Things technology permits the best organization of production and the warehouse by controlling and monitoring the production cycles through cloud-based systems, facilitating a lowering of redundant storage or potential shortages [16,34,35]. Furthermore, from a social point of view, technology improves productivity, workers’ skills, and minimizes stress, fatigue, and monotony. A great deal of studies [36,37] using data from the Eurobarometer survey highlight that SMEs investing in digitalization have positive implications in terms of the circular economy, while there are no reverse examples. Besides, there are many obstacles to the green transition of SMEs [19,20]: lack of environmental culture, lack of technical skills and technological know-how, and, above all, lack of financial resources. In this regard, in particular Demirel and Danisman [20] highlight that, despite the use of external resources such as venture capital and business angels, SMEs do not find it convenient to invest in green solutions as the economic return comes with investments equal to 10% of company revenues; therefore, it would be interesting to lower this threshold to incentivize SMEs.

Overall, sustainability could be reached in several ways thanks to the introduction of legal restrictions and incentives, or by pursuing cooperation models among entities as in IS and by the correct use of technology. The literature analyzed so far has highlighted a growing interest in sustainability and in the policies to achieve it. In addition, another line of scholars has highlighted the efforts made to produce more sustainable packaging and reduce waste [9,16,32]. For example, Foschi et al. [9] investigated the case study of “Cartotecnica Reggiani”, a small Italian company, active in the design of innovative food packaging, that implemented a cardboard-based box for frozen food instead of the traditional plastic packaging. Another study focused attention on the importance of the chemical safety of recycled packaging by limiting potential exposure to contaminants and substituting hazardous substances in all materials that enter the recycling cycle. An interesting aspect to explore and which is missing in the literature analyzed so far is the analysis of the type of companies that make more sustainable purchases using public incentives. This aspect can be useful both to evaluate the effectiveness of implemented policies and to better guide future policies. Therefore, this study investigates the characteristics of Italian companies that have benefited from public incentives to implement a paradigm shift towards sustainable packaging.

3. Materials and Methods

This study deploys a mixed-method approach based on qualitative and quantitative analyses. The first step consists of identifying at the national level those facilitative measures that encourage the use of recycled materials such as plastic and paper and support producers of single-use plastic products in modifying their production cycles.

It is important to identify the major European directives that may affect the Italian legislation. In fact, the governments of the member states adopt facilitative measures aimed at achieving the objectives indicated in the directives.

Particularly, as summarized in

Table A1. Summary of environmental EU legislation (our elaboration of Agovino et al., 2024).

Topic	Normative	Explanation	Applicable Legislation
Plastic	Directive 1994/62/EC		not available
	(2015)/720/EU	Has the purpose to decrease the usage of lightweight plastic carrier bags.	Art. 9 bis of the Law 3 August 2017, n. 123
	(2018)/852/EU	Establishes long-term targets: 65% of total packaging waste to be recycled by 2025 and 70% by 2030.	Legislative Decree 3 September 2020, n. 116
	2019/904/EU	Forbids the single-use plastic products in the presence of alternatives and introduces the polluter-pays principle.	Legislative Decree 8 November 2021, n. 196
	2025/40/EU	Aims to make all packaging recyclable or reusable by 2030.	Not yet implemented
The Missing Link an EU Action Plan for the Circular Economy (CE)	COM (2015) 614 final	Promotes the reuse and the extension of products’ life, the reduction of wastes, and the increase of resource efficiency.	National Strategy for the Circular Economy
Waste Framework Directive (WFD)	Directive 2008/98/EC 2018/851/EU 2018/852/EU	This new framework establishes a waste management order (prevention, preparation for reuse, recycling, energy recovery, landfill), defines waste as a resource, and establishes binding targets for municipal waste (re-use and recycling to at least 55% of total weight by 2025, 60% by 2030, and 65% by 2035).	Legislative Decree. 3 December 2010, n. 205 Legislative Decree 3 September 2020, n. 116

(in the Appendix A), the main topics are plastic and waste as regulated in the referenced directives. In relation to plastic, recently the EC has established long-term circular economy targets (65% of total packaging waste to be recycled by 2025 and 70% by 2030) and the ban of single-use plastic (SUP). Consequently, Italy introduced measures both to promote the use of recycled materials and to avoid SUP products. On the other hand, Directives concerning waste, as well the COM (2015) 614 final, “The Missing Link—An EU Action Plan for the Circular Economy (CE)” promote the reuse and the extension of products’ lifecycle, the reduction of waste production, and the increase of resource efficiency, besides introducing waste targets so that municipal waste preparation for re-use and recycling were at least 55% of total weight by 2025, 60% by 2030, and 65% by 2035. Therefore, particular attention has been paid to re-use and waste recycling by the Italian legislator.

Considering the above-mentioned directives, the comparative analysis among Italian facilitative measures was led, as shown in Figure 1, by using the following keywords: “plastic, recycled materials, re-use, single-use plastic”.

Given the situation described in Figure 1, it was necessary to add another criterion of selection. In fact, the available facilitative measures considered consist in grant or tax credit for enterprises, but some refer to the regional level, while others to the national level. Due to the lack of specific measures regarding plastic, recycled materials, and other factors for each Italian region, this research only focused on national facility measures to ensure consistency and uniformity of data.

Secondly, the subsequent quantitative analysis was carried out using secondary data retrieved from the National State Aid Register (NSAR) database, where the public administrations must register every granted aid. The data collected in this way regard the amount of granted aids, beneficiaries’ name, localization, and sector. Besides, to obtain the beneficiaries dimensions another database was used, namely Telemaco. Through this database, it was possible to download enterprises’ balanced scorecard and other documents including useful data as the number of workers for enterprise, turnover, etc. In order to categorize beneficiaries based on the firm size, it is necessary to consider, as evidenced by Santos & Sant’Anna [16], that a global standard definition for SME is missing; for instance, in Brazil and US an SME is considered a company with up to 500 employees, while in Chile this is up to 200 employees. Since the investigation was carried out in an EU member state (Italy), the SME definition is based on the Recommendation n. 2003/361, as follows:

• A medium-sized company has up to 250 employees, a turnover of up to 50 million euros, and a balance sheet total of up to 43 million euros;
• A small business has up to 50 employees and a turnover or balance sheet total of up to 10 million euros;
• A micro business has up to ten employees and a turnover or balance sheet total of up to 2 million euros.

Based on these assumptions, the following section describes the results of our sequential method analysis.

4. Results

The qualitative analysis was implemented by using the following criteria: keywords such as “plastic”, “recycled materials”, “re-use”, and “single-use plastic”; searched among the national measures, and published after 2018, which allowed the authors to identify and analyze five measures.

i.

A tax credit whose maximum value is 10,000 euros, equal to 25% of eligible purchases in 2020 regarding: semi-finished and finished products made by recycling of waste or compost arising from the treatment of organic fraction of waste.

ii.

A tax credit whose maximum value is 40,000 euros (20,000 euros per year), equal to 36% of purchases in 2019 and 2020 regarding products made by recycled plastics, packaging containing recycled paper, plastic, or aluminium materials, as well as biodegradable packaging.

iii.

A tax credit, whose maximum value is 10,000 euros, equal to 20% of purchases in 2022, 2023 and 2024 regarding products different from single-use plastic products- e.g., cotton bud sticks, cutlery, plates, straws, stirrers, balloons, sticks for balloons, food containers, cups for beverages, beverage containers—either reusable alternatives or those made from biodegradable or compostable materials.

iv.

The second tax credit was additionally refinanced to cover purchases made in 2023 and 2024.

v.

Grants for companies reconverting their single-use plastic production, whose maximum value can be 300,000 euros per enterprise and is equal to 40% of consultancy expenditures to modify the productive cycle, and 80% of purchases of machinery, equipment, and licenses.

The first four measures are tax credits, while the last one is a grant. All the examined facilitative measures presented in

Table A2. List of Italian facilitative measures related to recycled materials.

	1st Tax Credit	2nd Tax Credit	3rd Tax Credit	4th Tax Credit	Grants for Companies Modifying their Single-Use Plastic Production
Normative Reference	Article 26-ter, paragraph 1 decree law n. 34/2019	Article 1, paragraphs 73–77, law 145/2018	Article 4, paragraph 7, legislative decree 196/2021	Article 1, paragraph 686–690, law n. 197/2022	Article 4, paragraph 1 and 8, legislative decree 196/2021
Financial Resources (€)	10,000,000	12,000,000	9,000,000	10,000,000	30,000,000
Eligible Facilitation	Tax credit equal to 25% of eligible expenditures. The maximum amount is 10,000 euros	Tax credit equal to 36% of eligible expenditures. The maximum amount is 20,000 euros for year.	Tax credit equal to 20% of eligible expenditures. The maximum amount is 10,000 euros for year.	Tax credit equal to 36% of eligible expenditures. The maximum amount is 20,000 euros for year	The grant can be equal to: 40% of expenses for design services for cycle modification; 80% of expenses for the purchase of machinery, plant, equipment and components, of computer programs and licenses. The maximum amount is 300,000 euros.
Expenditure to be reported	Purchases in 2020 regarding:	Purchases in 2019 and 2020 regarding:	Purchases in 2022, 2023 and 2024 regarding:	Purchases in 2023 and 2024 regarding:	All expenses to support companies producing single-use plastic products to modify their production cycles
	Semi-finished and finished products of which at least 75% of their composition derives from the recycling of waste or scrap; compost arising from the treatment of organic fraction of waste.	Packaging produced with at least 30% of recycled plastic; biodegradable and compostable packaging (made up of plastic, paper, wood); packaging produced with at least 70% of recycled paper; packaging made up with at least 50% recycled aluminum.	Different products than single use plastic products (e. g. cotton bud sticks, cutlery, plates, straws and stirrers, balloons and sticks for balloons, food containers, cups for beverages, beverage containers)	Packaging produced with at least 30% of recycled plastic, biodegradable and compostable packaging (made up of plastic, paper, wood) packaging produced with at least 70% of recycled paper; packaging made up with at least 60% recycled aluminum; packaging made up with at least 100% recycled glass.
Number of subsidies granted	1,084,602.69	8,508,249.84	not available	not available	not available
Number of financed projects	144	484	not available	not available	not available
Average facilitation granted	7532	17,579	not available	not available	not available
Used financial resources	11%	71%	not available	not available	not available

(in the Appendix A) concern recycled materials; in particular, the tax credits correspond respectively to a percentage of purchases in recycled material packaging. By considering only national-wide measures, the Italian government provides mainly fiscal incentives with a limited value (between 10,000 and 20,000 euros per year) to support as many enterprises as possible. The only direct grant is for the producers of single-use plastic products that due to the EC ban on SUP must modify their production cycle. Due to data availability, it was possible to analyze only the first two incentives.

As shown in Table A2, the first tax credit provides an incentive lower than the second one. Therefore, at national level the first tax credit requests were lower than those for the second one. In particular, the first tax credit, whose maximum value is 10,000 euros, is equal to 25% of eligible expenditures. On the other hand, the second tax credit, whose maximum value is 20,000 euros/year, is equal to 36% of eligible expenditures. Therefore, the second tax credit requests were higher both in number and in amount (the average of the second tax credit granted is 17,579 euros, while the average of the first tax credit granted is 7531.96 euros). Thus, due to the greater availability of data for the second measure, the quantitative analysis focuses on it. Overall, the granted aids for the second tax credit amounted to 8.5 million euros for 484 beneficiaries in the period 2019–2020. At first sight, Figure 2 shows that most of the aid granted (in terms of the number of applications) went to small and micro enterprises (almost 76% in terms of number of applications), while medium-sized enterprises received a higher amount of aid than big enterprises. The highest average amount granted is less interesting since the number of requests for big enterprises was lower than the other groups, so the data would be less significant.

Classifying the second tax credit beneficiaries by location, Figure 3 shows that most aid, both in terms of number and amount, was granted to firms located in the north and south of Italy. This seems to be in line with the composition of the country’s industries in general, except for the fact that there are almost as many industries in the centre of Italy as in the south [38]. Thus, the greater participation in the credit tax of industries located in the south of Italy could be explained by their sector of activity.

Therefore, by applying the two previous criteria (companies’ dimension and location), it emerges that the typical enterprise making sustainable purchases, incentivized by the tax credit, is micro or small-sized and located in Northern Italy; or small-sized located in the South of Italy (

Table A3. Second tax credit distribution by considering enterprises’ dimension and their localization in Italy.

Enterprise Localization and Dimension	Number of Granted Requests	Granted Amount (€)	Average Granted Amount (€)
North	270	4,619,074	17,108
Big	16	462,181	28,886
Medium	46	1,046,191	22,743
Small	100	1,816,112	18,161
Micro	108	1,294,590	11,987
Centre	66	1,389,021	21,046
Big	7	221,403	31,629
Medium	14	400,103	28,579
Small	26	644,496	24,788
Micro	19	123,019	6475
South	126	2,105,618	16,711
Big	1	15,718	15,718
Medium	25	488,597	19,544
Small	61	1,177,616	19,305
Micro	39	423,685	10,864
Islands	22	394,537	17,934
Big	1	40,000	40,000
Medium	4	116,197	29,049
Small	5	107,497	21,499
Micro	12	130,843	10,904
Total	484	8,508,250	17,579

and Figure 4).

The analysis of the beneficiary companies by sector of activity shows a wide range of sectors. However, to better understand the characteristics of the companies involved in the paradigm shift towards sustainable packaging, all sectors with a frequency lower than 5 were excluded. This made it possible to identify the sectors more involved in the paradigm shift towards sustainable packaging, which are agriculture, wholesale trade and the food industry (

Table A4. Second tax credit grants organized by enterprise sector with number of requests at least equal to 5.

Sectors	Beneficiaries	Tot. Granted Aids (€)	% Beneficiaries for Sector
Agriculture	208	3,356,926	0.02%
Wholesale Trade	85	1,748,730	0.02%
Food Industries	31	715,317	0.06%
Food Service Activities	30	580,363	0.01%
Plastic Manufacturing	21	475,687	0.22%
Retail Trade	17	101,739	0.00%
Mineral Products Manuf,	15	402,325	0.09%
Metal Products Manuf.	11	174,994	0.02%
Chemicals Manufacturing	9	117,910	0.21%
Paper Manufacturing	7	215,936	0.21%
Waste Collection	6	138,035	0.08%
Furniture Manufacturing	5	174,176	0.03%
Household Equipment	5	116,073	0.06%
Total	450	8,318,211	0.02%

). However, the participation of Italian companies is still limited if we compare the number of active companies in Italy for the described sectors with the actual beneficiaries, which are almost 0.02% for each sector, except for the food industry, where the number of tax credit beneficiaries is almost 0.06% (Table A4).

Thus, the analysis reveals that the second tax credit—offering a higher incentive rate (36% of eligible expenditures, up to €20,000/year)—generated significantly more applications and greater financial support than the first, with most beneficiaries being micro and small enterprises, particularly in Northern and Southern Italy. Sector-wise, the tax credit primarily engaged firms in agriculture, wholesale trade, and the food industry, although participation remains limited relative to the total number of active firms in these sectors.

5. Discussion

The proposed analysis does not claim to be able to describe the business world in its entirety, but to provide cross-sectional evidence of the behavior of certain companies based on the facilities granted. The objective of this study is to enhance the understanding of corporate environmental sustainability strategies in Italy by examining the characteristics of companies that received incentives for having purchased packaging made up of recycled materials. According to a McKinsey study on the European packaging market, packaging composition is primarily made up of plastics (62%), paper and board (14%), glass (12%), metals (11%), and a minimum part of flexible foils (0.002%). As described in the introduction, plastic is used mainly in the packaging, building and construction, and automotive sectors. By the analysis of the second tax credit beneficiaries, it appears that the main industries where plastic packaging are used are agriculture, whole trade, and food. The importance of packaging waste in agriculture also emerges from the survey conducted by Muesi [39], in which farmers, despite not being sufficiently concerned about the effects of their plastic waste, would be willing to contribute financially for its recycling. Meanwhile, with regards to the food industry, in which, as we have also seen from the results obtained from this study, packaging plays an important role, many authors [9,40] focus on product innovations and aspects aimed at ensuring the safety of recycled food packaging. Regarding the adoption of sustainable development models at the European level, the extant literature [16,34,35,41] highlights that SMEs, due to the lack of resources and managerial capabilities, are the least likely to make technological or paradigm changes in favor of sustainable choices [19]. Moreover, many green investments are dictated by the prospect of future economic returns, but currently those required to be profitable are too high (around 10% of turnover); therefore, the policymaker must consider also this aspect in the incentives’ projection. Thus, the present study shows that the companies most involved in the paradigm shift phenomenon towards sustainable packaging through an incentive are small and micro-sized companies as shown in Figure 2 (incentives for recycled materials packaging are obtained by 192 small-sized enterprises and 178 micro-sized enterprises). Furthermore, it is possible to notice that, although micro-sized companies received more economic aid than medium-sized ones, the latter received a total amount of aid (2,051,088 euros) greater than the total aid received by the first group (1,972,137 euros). This phenomenon can be attributed to the financial capacity of medium-sized companies, which enables them to bear higher expenses. The incentive encourages small and micro-businesses to make sustainable purchases they might not otherwise consider. However, it is important to note that the aid provided is limited to a maximum of 20,000 euros per year, ensuring that businesses with greater financial capacity do not benefit disproportionately from the program. As shown in Figure 4, by further analyzing the characteristics of the companies that benefited from the second tax credit, we can outline the characteristics of the company involved in the paradigm shift through the incentives: they are small and micro businesses located in the North and South of Italy (Figure 4).

However, from a more in-depth analysis it emerges there is ample margin for improvement as the small and micro businesses that have obtained the incentive for the purchase of sustainable packaging are 0.02% of small and micro-sized companies active in Italy (Table A4).

In addition, the academic literature has investigated (Figure 5) several tools aiming to promote companies’ adoption of sustainable development models, such as Extended Producer Responsibility [30,31], Sustainability Reports introduced by EC Directives [9,33,34], industrial symbiosis [18,35,36], and sustainable technology [16,37,38]. Therefore, while large and medium-sized companies adopted sustainable solutions encouraged by reputational motivation through the voluntary disclosure of information about their commitment towards the environment, micro and small-sized companies need to be further encouraged by economic incentives.

Thus, although the data examined concern a limited number of companies, they still offer an interesting insight that would not have been obtained with the secondary data normally available. In fact, secondary data usually concern listed companies that are obliged to share information. Thus, the use of the NSAR, a tool recognized as best practice at the European level, allowed us to exploit an important source of data concerning micro and small companies as well. Therefore, the companies more deeply involved in the paradigm shift towards sustainable packaging, according to the analyzed data, are micro and small enterprises located in Northern and Southern Italy and operating in the agriculture, wholesale, and food industry sectors.

Policy and Managerial Implications

The present study provides a broad view of the critical environmental issues both at a global level—concerning the issues of waste disposal and accumulation (e.g., the floating plastic islands in the Pacific) and at a national-industrial level—by highlighting the obstacles that prevent companies from adopting more sustainable attitudes.

Recently, some authors [17,21] have pointed out that there are still many aspects of the circular economy that need to be implemented. In this respect, policy makers should support reuse, repair, and remanufacturing and reduce the dependence on virgin materials. Furthermore, they should stimulate the setting of clear and stringent recycling targets and the adoption of Life Cycle Thinking methodologies (e.g., Life Cycle Assessment—LCA) [9,21] that enable the implementation of circular economy practices by analyzing the environmental impact of a product throughout its life cycle. Other authors [16,22] point out to what extent sustainability performance can be seriously affected by economic policy uncertainty. Moreover, a significant body of the literature [48,49] highlights the critical importance of promoting investments in green technologies, which yield positive economic impacts over the long period. In contrast, incentives focused solely on product purchase are primarily aimed at stimulating short-term consumption [25]. In the case examined, the incentive serves a dual purpose: to encourage the purchase of products made from recycled materials, in alignment with European directives, and to stimulate their production.

The literature reviewed so far highlights various instruments that have led to more efficient production such as, for example, industrial symbiosis phenomena, the introduction of technological innovations, and the use of secondary raw materials. In this context, our evidence indicates that the companies least inclined to adopt innovative and technological solutions are SMEs, due to reduced financial resources, fewer technical skills, and a lack of a pro-environmental culture. In order to remedy at least one of the previously mentioned criticalities, the Italian government could set up measures to incentivize the use of recycled packaging, and findings show that the companies benefiting the most from this aid are small and micro enterprises (by the number of participants) and small and medium-sized enterprises (by the number of aids received). Thus, this incentive has encouraged companies with fewer financial resources to make more sustainable purchases. Given the urgency of the environmental situation, the policy maker, in addition to the incentive described above, must adopt further actions aimed at reducing the use of packaging by promoting the reuse mentality (reusable containers that guarantee consumer health and safety and hygiene even in the take-away or large-scale retail sectors). In addition, this objective can be achieved by promoting product innovations that involve the use of less material (both in terms of volume and weight) while guaranteeing food preservation.

6. Conclusions

This study focuses on the evolution of packaging, analyzing possible solutions from the perspective of reducing its environmental impact. In recent years, the packaging sector has grown significantly both in terms of value and quantity produced, driven by the increase in consumption of take-away meals and e-commerce after the COVID-19 period. Particularly, the Italian government has implemented several incentives designed to promote the use of recycled packaging. Small and micro-sized businesses were those that participated most in the analyzed incentive measure. However, in relative terms, their participation was relatively low compared to the total number of small and micro-sized businesses operating in Italy at the time the incentive was introduced. Therefore, the action of the incentive must be combined with the use of other tools aimed at involving a greater number of companies of different sizes. Consequently, future research should deal with the study of different tools as well as the longitudinal analysis of the national measures’ effects. As previously mentioned, the present study is based on publicly available data related to incentive applications. A limitation of this approach is that many support measures have not yet been implemented. Consequently, future research could build upon the measures listed in Table A2 once the corresponding data become available, or explore comparative analyses across different countries. Therefore, it would be interesting to combine this study with future research concerning the temporal evolution of the facilitative measures analyzed and their results, but also to deepen the topic by triangulating data from different tools, such as the sustainability report, and the EPR, that could have more impact on the strategic choice of big and medium-sized companies. Besides, the available data are limited to the enterprises requesting incentives. Accordingly, the findings of this study pertain to a specific segment of the business landscape—small and micro enterprises—for which secondary data are typically unavailable or difficult to retrieve. To develop a more comprehensive understanding, future research should examine sustainable policies adopted by medium-sized and large enterprises, who might be able to improve their sustainable strategies on their own, either through the analysis of sustainability reports or by collecting primary data via ad hoc surveys.