Published by LAB Pro 19.8.2021
Full article here: https://www.labopen.fi/en/lab-pro/citizen-involvement-in-hackathon-co-creating-sharing-economy-practices/
This article highlights general insights on circular economy concepts and implementing successful sharing economy practices in the Päijät Häme region with the help of active citizen participation. The article is written based on reflections from the first part of the two-part Hackathon. Read more news about the first part of the hackathon here.
Read the second part of the Hackathon in the LAB Pro article here: https://www.labopen.fi/lab-pro/developing-sharing-economy-and-service-design-with-citizens/
Citizen involvement in Hackathon – co-creating sharing economy practices
Citizen involvement is crucial to implement working systems and functioning service design paths. A hackathon with an inspirational lecture was organized in order to give the participants some basics of the terminology and background information as well as insight into general problems of current circular economy practices and why there is a need for diverse growth in such services.
The aim of the hackathon was to introduce and educate the participants about the circular economy concept and provide tools in seeing beyond the current take-make-waste extractive industrial model, and instead, lengthen product life cycles and keep products and materials in use (Ellen MacArthur Foundation 2017). The main goal was to engage participants to create ideas for business opportunities of the sharing economy in the Päijät-Häme region and to build new business models within the sharing economy.
The hackathon lecture was organized in April 2021 with key speaker Aleksi Neuvonen, co-founder of the sustainable consultancy company and think thank Demos Helsinki (2021). Neuvonen spoke about the possibilities of sharing economy in the present and in the future and gave insight into the current circular economy situation in Finland, highlighting a few national good practices from the private and public sectors. Furthermore, Neuvonen (2021) dove into sharing economy themes with greater insight and introduced to the participants the following themes: textiles, sustainable housing and services and sustainable mobility and transportation.
The hackathon was organized by CECI lead partner LAB University of Applied Sciences and CECI project partner Regional council of Päijät-Häme. The Hackathon was part of the CECI project as a dissemination event. Interreg Europe funded CECI project is focused on informing good practices of sharing economy solutions, for instance, encouraging citizens to reuse, repair, restore and renew products and services and raising awareness on how residents can participate better in the circular economy in the future (Interreg Europe 2020).
