Cristiano Musillo is quick to point out that while Italy is best known for food, furniture, fashion and fast cars, the country’s most impactful products are its factory equipment, the machines that make other countries productive. The birthplace of the Renaissance has long been known as a place that blends the aesthetic with the efficient and beauty with pragmatism.  

Now, as the world’s eighth largest economy uses a raft of EU funds build back from a pandemic that ravaged it first in the West, Italy hopes to bring that same sense of balance to the world’s pressing environmental issues, the consul general in Miami said during an interview with Global Atlanta.