The awards ceremony for the third edition of the Blue Green Economy Award took place on Wednesday, September 16, at the Salone Margherita in Naples. The award is promoted by the Associazione For Human Community as part of the Comunicazione Italiana network and is dedicated to companies that stand out for projects and initiatives in the fields of environmental, social and economic sustainability, and the Blue Economy.

Near spa benefit, among the finalists in the Environmental Sustainability – Medium Enterprises category, took part in the evening by presenting the project “UpTown Park Milano: an integrated strategy of biomonitoring and interventions to increase urban biodiversity,” which drew considerable interest from those present. The project brings together work that began in 2018 across the 30 green hectares of UpTown Milano: nesting boxes for birds, reduced mowing in some meadow areas, beehives and nectar-producing plants along the cycle paths, accompanied by biennial wildlife monitoring carried out by naturalist Francesco Tomasinelli.

Since 2024, the strategy has been enriched by a collaboration with the Politecnico di Milano as part of the Horizon TEF CitCom.AI project: the NESLab of the Department of Electronics, Information and Bioengineering has developed smart, solar-powered IoT sensors that integrate traditional biological monitoring with continuous data on the park’s bioindicators, in particular on birdsong.

The latest survey, conducted in spring-summer 2025 along the park’s transects, recorded 29 bird species, compared to 19 in 2019 (+52%), including new arrivals such as the European greenfinch, common swift and spotted flycatcher, as well as species in decline in the agricultural environments of Lombardy — such as the common house martin, European goldfinch, barn swallow and Spanish sparrow — which find suitable habitat in the park. Butterfly species rose from 12 to 19 (+58%), including the rare Apatura ilia, typical of humid lowland woodlands. Dragonfly species increased to 12 (+20%), confirming the good quality of the park’s waterways. The nesting boxes installed in the park recorded an occupancy rate of 60% in 2025, mostly by great tits.

The evening was attended by numerous institutions and companies of national standing, in a setting that brought together the best of Italian sustainability — an environment in which Near Spa Benefit felt fully at home.

The 2026 edition of the Blue Green Economy Award saw 238 applications admitted for evaluation, up from 198 in 2024 and over 220 in 2025. The jury, chaired by Adriano Solidoro, associate professor of Organization and Management at the University of Milano-Bicocca, selected 42 finalist companies distributed across three categories and three size classes.