The REDUCES project partners and stakeholders were brought together by the first interregional learning event and project kick-off in November in Turku, Finland.
The beautiful maritime museum Forum Marinum served as the venue for the interregional meeting on Tuesday November 19th. The day started with keynote speeches by Karoliina Isoaho from the Finnish Innovation Fund Sitra, whose definitions of circular economy business models are as a basis for the work in the project, and Katerina Medkova from Lahti University of Applied Sciences, representing Bioregio, another Interreg Europe funded project. After the inspirational keynotes and an insight on the background and objectives of the REDUCES project by the content manager Jenni Suominen from TUAS, each participating region presented the status quo of circular economy in the region. The conclusion after the presentations was that each region has an own starting point for the work. It’s obvious that learning from each other is going to be in core and won’t be a struggle. But in addition, it was helpful to notice that almost all regions face same quite of questions and challenges when starting the project. The status quo presentation slides can be downloaded in the library or directly in the links below.
- Circular economy in Southwest Finland / Riikka Leskinen, Valonia - Service Centre for Sustainable Development and Energy of Southwest Finland
- Circular economy in Bulgaria / Vihra Andonova, Euro Perspective Foundation
- Circular economy in Utrecht / Ruben Vrijhoef, HU University of Applied Sciences Utrecht
- Circular economy in Maramures / Mihaela Lite, Maramures County Council
- Circular economy in Valencia / Vera Valero, Valencia Institute of Building & Nuria Matarredona Desantes, Ecological Innovation in Construction from Valencia Region Government
- Circular economy in Greater Manchester / Sarah Mellor, Greater Manchester Combined Authority
The study visits in the afternoon took place in the Topinpuisto circular economy hub, where the group heard from Tuomas Alijoki from Lounais-Suomen Jätehuolto, the regional waste management company in Southwest Finland, how a municipal waste management company can work as a platform for circular economy as well as about the upcoming textile refinement plant. From Topinpuisto, a former landfill, the group moved to the city centre to familiarize themselves with Vaatepuu, a company offering clothes as a service, represented by Kati Lyytinen. The interesting and informative visits raised a lot of discussion among the participants.
The day was wrapped with a tasty vegetarian dinner in restaurant Hügge.
Wednesday November 20th , day 2 of the event, provided besides the project kick-off meeting, even a little sunlight for the dark Finnish November. The day in TUAS was fully packed with workshops and discussion on the actual execution of the project starting from forming mutual definitions for both circular economy and business models and covering topics from good practices and evaluation to communication and administrative issues.
Even though the hours of the two days were not nearly enough to go through everything, the project got kicked off nicely, and now the actual work may start. And most importantly, everyone learnt to know each other and the names and voices from the e-mails and online meetings now have faces.
