On
July 17th 2019, 13 members of the InnoWEEE project team, Including
Climate KIC representatives, assembled at the Pump Room in Bath UK.
The meeting
was hosted by BetterPoints, the UK partner on project. InnoWEEE partners were
joined by local BathNES pilot project stakeholders, Bath and North East
Somerset Council and Valpak, in the afternoon.
The
morning sessions covered a Climate KIC strategic update from Sander Jahilo. Sander
described the social innovation and grassroots movements that they are looking
to catalyze through Climate KIC, working in a consortium with problem owners in
order to find commercial models to make innovative solutions sustainable. Sander
also described the work that is underway in Slovenia where they are aiming to
have a complete circular economy.
This was followed by a presentation and
discussion on the commercial model for the InnoWEEE project led by Dan Gipple,
BetterPoints founder. Dan highlighted the current evidence data gap and positioned
Producer Compliance Scheme Providers (PCS’) as the main target market for
innoweee data models and visualizations. Pointing out the wider ‘ecosystem’ of
PCS’ represent tens of thousands of manufacturers who could also represent a
direct market for InnoWEEE.
A
break for coffee after these ‘Keynote’ presentations led to the main working
part of the day, which was kicked off by project-lead Piergiorgio Cipriano of
Dedagroup. Piergiorgio gave a review of the work packages and general alignment
of the pilot projects. Presentations detailing the status of each of the pilots
were given by partners. As the pilot that has completed its first live
implementation, the Trentino project was covered in greatest detail. Ecodom and
FBK presented logistics of activities carried out in schools. Evaluation activities, sampling results and considerations
for pilot improvement for 2020 were discussed.
After lunch, the teams
welcomed Lisa Gore from Bath & North East Somerset Council and Jon Clement,
Commercial Manager of Valpak. Lisa gave an overview of the BathNES area and the
work that the municipality have done over the past 5 years to encourage the
recycling and reuse of WEEE and EEE, including their partnership with the
Repair Café. Jon then gave a short presentation with a focus on how competitive
the UK market is for PCS’.
Jon went on to field many questions in the data break
out group in the afternoon in relation to the commercial model for InnoWEEE. A second breakout group considered how to
transfer the knowledge and platform from the Trentino schools programme into a
school campaign in the UK to run alongside the BathNES pilot residents
programme. Finally, the teams considered the upcoming Climathon events, the key
questions and challenges that could be tackled that align with the InnoWEEE
objectives. The working day was concluded around 5.30 and the project teams
reconvened later for a well-earned dinner!
