Some environmental disasters arrive suddenly. Others unfold so slowly that communities only realize the magnitude of the loss when it has already become part of the landscape.
In northeastern Italy, storm Vaia hit the Dolomites in October 2018, felling more than 42 million trees in a matter of hours. In Salento, in southern Puglia, the devastation caused by Xylella followed a different timeline – the bacterium gradually spread across one of Europe’s largest continuous olive-growing landscapes, transforming millions of trees into skeletal silhouettes and permanently changing the region’s identity.
Different events, different geographies, different causes, but both left behind the same question: what happens after a disaster? For GOthe benefits company founded in the wake of the storm that gave the company its name, the answer was never just recovery, but rebirth.
Cover of VAIA © Gianluca Colonnese
Olive © Gianluca Colonnese
Pugliese area ©VAIA, ph. Gianluca Colonnese
Pugliese area © VAIA, ph. Gianluca Colonnese
VAIA Cover in Terra Brown © Gianluca Colonnese
VAIA cover in green © Gianluca Colonnese
VAIA Sand Cover © Gianluca Colonnese
VAIA cover in sea blue © Gianluca Colonnese
Pugliese territory © Gianluca Colonnese
Federico Stefani, founder of VAIA © Gianluca Colonnese
Cover of VAIA © Gianluca Colonnese
After turning timber reclaimed from the Dolomites into a local design supply chain and contributing to the planting of more than 200,000 trees, the company is now bringing its regenerative model to Puglia with its launch Olive oila new bio-based material developed from wood fibers derived from Xylella-infested olive trees. The project marks a new chapter for a company whose origins lie in one of Italy’s most dramatic climate events, although the challenge it faces in Salento is entirely different.
VAIA turns the Xylella crisis into new possibilities:
A challenge becomes an opportunity
Unlike the forests destroyed by Vaia, the olives are part of the family history. “Each family here has thirty or forty olive trees“, he explains Anna Laura Remigithe mayor of Spetses, the municipality participating in the initiative. “The loss of the olive groves was experienced almost like the illness of a loved one.” The comparison is not rhetorical or exaggerated: for generations, olive cultivation has shaped the social, economic and cultural fabric of Salento – trees inherited, cared for and passed down through the centuries – and their disappearance often led to the abandonment of the land.
The outbreak that began in 2013 was the result of an extraordinary convergence of factors. The responsible officer, Wood, close friends fewit had never previously been recognized as particularly aggressive towards olive trees, yet in Salento it encountered ideal conditions: a favorable climate, a vast and uninterrupted area of olive cultivation and abundant populations of meadow butterflies, the insects that act as vectors for the bacterium.
Xylella is a known threat elsewhere in the world – in California it has long affected vast areas of vineyard – but the Salento outbreak emerged as a distinct event, fueled by the specific interaction between pathogen, environment and landscape, and causing one of the largest agricultural and environmental crises in modern Europe.
When Federico Stefanifounder and president of VAIA, first visited the area in 2021, he was faced with an unknown type of disaster. “The challenge seemed impossible,” he recalls. “But looking at these landscapes, I promised myself that we would find a way to do something.”
A biomaterial that transforms everyday gestures into consciousness
Five years later, this promise took material form: developed in collaboration with researchers from the University of Trento, the National Research Council in Bari and the University of Salento, Olive oil turns wood from Xylella-infested olive trees into a fully recyclable biocomposite whose first application is deliberately ordinary – a smartphone case.
Few objects accompany us as constantly as our phones – we carry them everywhere, replace their covers almost regularly – and if the ambition is to bring a piece of hardware and the story embedded in it into everyday life, there are few better vehicles. The goal is not just to provide a bio-based alternative to the plastic that dominates the phone accessory market, but to make sustainable materials desirable in its own right: tactile, durable and accessible, with a retail price under €50.
Regeneration through action
For VAIA, however, the object itself is only part of the story. The company describes its products as “relationship objects” rather than consumption objects, aiming not just to give new life to discarded materials but to create a tangible connection between people and places – turning an everyday purchase into an act of restoration. This principle is integrated into the Puglia project from the beginning, guided by a scientific committee, and each product sold contributes to the regeneration of a square meter of Mediterranean scrubland in Specchia, where GO supports the creation of what he describes as the first Renaissance forest in Apulia.
The initial intervention will focus on the ecological restoration of about two hectares of land through the reintroduction of indigenous Mediterranean species that are missing here and reconnect with the history of this place, providing shade and water and, above all, the aim is not to recreate what was there before. Instead, the project embraces a broader ecological perspective, promoting biodiversity and landscape resilience through the regeneration of Mediterranean maquis ecosystems.
The distinction is important because regeneration is often confused with replacement, yet landscapes, like communities, rarely return to their former state after a profound disturbance. In the Dolomites, fallen trees became the foundation of a new local economy. In Salento, wood from infected olive trees becomes the starting point for a different discussion about materials, biodiversity and territorial identity. The olive groves that defined the area for centuries cannot simply be returned, but a new landscape can begin to emerge from their remains.
