The 2025 Integrated Report measures the value created by INWIT in the territories and communities where it operates. This series of stories builds on those results, taking them to the places where this value is created.
The steel in the mast, the metal in the shelters, the critical materials contained in electronic equipment, and the copper in cables and electrical panels: when an INWIT tower stops transmitting, it becomes a mine of materials to be recovered, processed and returned to the production cycle. This is why INWIT has developed a logistics system centred on its hub in Maddaloni, in the province of Caserta.
Here, together with its partner ATS, INWIT operates a logistics centre that performs two functions at once. On the one hand, it serves as a warehouse for the materials and equipment used to build new infrastructure and carry out maintenance. On the other, it is the point where decommissioned materials are assessed and, where appropriate, sent to authorised recovery facilities, with the ultimate goal of returning the recovered materials to the market. Supporting the Maddaloni hub are three additional depots located across Italy, ensuring operational flexibility and proximity to sites nationwide.
In 2025 alone, INWIT recovered 140 tonnes of air conditioning units, 206 tonnes of batteries, 20 tonnes of shelters, 145 tonnes of electrical equipment, 7 tonnes of iron and steel, 44 tonnes of mixed construction and demolition waste, and 8 tonnes of fire extinguishers.
Repair, recover, reuse
When a component arrives at the Maddaloni hub, it is not immediately classified as waste. It first passes through a repair laboratory, where its potential for reuse is assessed.
Components that cannot be given a second life internally are classified as waste and sent to authorised external recovery facilities, where the individual materials are separated, processed and reintroduced into the market.
In 2025, this process enabled INWIT to recover 98% of the 581 tonnes of decommissioned materials it managed, exceeding its 95% target and confirming an increasingly efficient approach to resource management.
All types of material managed during the year were fully sent for recovery, with the sole exception of severely damaged batteries: of the 217 tonnes of batteries managed, 11 tonnes could not be recovered at high rates because once a battery’s structure is compromised, the acids it contains make this technically difficult.
A comprehensive approach to circularity
Circularity touches on several aspects of INWIT’s business, extending well beyond reusing the materials of a tower that has reached the end of its life.
The company has developed lightweight, modular antenna support structures known as Fast Sites, designed from the outset to be easily dismantled, reconfigured and reused—tangible examples of how circular economy principles can be applied throughout the entire infrastructure lifecycle.
The company has also drawn up, and made available to its suppliers, a set of design guidelines for non-standard antenna support structures, promoting solutions that are durable, repairable and easy to dismantle at the end of their life.
It should also not be overlooked that a new tower is built, in part, from recycled materials recovered from other structures: in 2025, 63% of the steel INWIT purchased to build new sites was recycled steel.
INWIT’s most significant contribution to the circular economy, however, stems from its Neutral Host business model. By offering multiple integrated services on a single shared infrastructure, this model aligns with one of the main circular economy business models—Product-as-a-Service.
INWIT shares its infrastructure with multiple customers, ensuring its maintenance and technology upgrades, so that each operator need not build its own. The environmental benefits extend across the entire lifecycle of the assets: from reduced extraction and use of materials during construction, to lower energy consumption in operation, through to responsible end-of-life management. Circularity, after all, was already built into the model.
