The WATERMINING project aims to bring solutions to improve the circularity of water treatment and the resulting by-products of these processes. Achieving a deep understanding of the barriers potentially hindering the development of circular water solutions is crucial to design policies that enable the deployment of these techniques. To do this, the WATERMINING project organizes Communities of Practice (CoPs), where stakeholders from the WATERMINING case study projects analysed these market barriers and proposal (policy) measures to clear these.CoPs in the case studies of Lampedusa in Italy and Almería in Spain focused on sea water desalination. The case studies of Faro-Olhão in Portugal, Larnaca in Cyprus and La Llagosta in Spain have been discussed by CoP stakeholders in terms of barriers in circular urban wastewater treatment. The CoP in the Netherlands focused on circular industrial waste water treatment at the Westlake plant at Rotterdam. The barriers defined by the stakeholders in the CoPs were discussed by the WATERMINING partners at the consortium meeting in Palermo (Italy, September 2022), and presented at the WATERMINING Market and Policy workshop in Brussels (Belgium, February 2023).Addressing the three above-mentioned categories of circular water solutions, common barriers identified across all WATERMINING’s case studies are the following. First, stakeholders report a lack of incentives to implement circular solutions, as mainstream linear practices are generally cheaper.This could be addressed by de-encouraging linear techniques by making the disposal of their byproducts (such as brine) more expensive. Another solution could be to provide added value to circular solutions through the monetization of their additional products and services. Subsidies can support in lowering production costs or prices of materials recovered from sea- and wastewater treatment to level the playing field with conventionaly derived material.Another commonly mentioned barrier is the difficulty to introduce products obtained from circular water treatment in the market, both because of a lack of public acceptance and legal constraints stemming from products being regarded as waste. Information campaigns and the revision of current regulatory frameworks to allow these products entering the market would expand the revenue sources from these techniques and improve the circularity of the system. Standardising the circular water treatment technologies in the market could support this, whereby best available techniques reference documents of the EU (BREFs) could be an effective instrument, especially when tapping into an ongoing BREF writing or updating process.Across the case studies and replication studies it has been mentioned that current legislation in case study countries exclude ‘watermined’ products from food and/or other applications. Criteria for endof-waste status of ‘watermined’ products, which would determine whether a product, such as Kaumera which is produced from urban wastewater treatment, is eligible as a fertiliser in agriculture, are usually determined at the level of the EU, but Member States could interpret these more stringently (Member State-level criteria cannot be weaker than the EU-level ones). In this respect it has been recommended to enhance knowledge exchange across Member States, e.g., by creating anEU-based unit (or competencies within an existing unit) to promote cooperation among EU Member States and regional authorities concerning the production, sale and use of products recovered from wastewater treatment.Another common perception stakeholders report is the widespread conservatism in the water sector. Water treatment actors traditionally have a focus on purifying water and supplying this to the market. Generating products from waste streams is often something that market actors are less familiar with. Among other solutions, the ‘Dutch model’ has been recommended as a way to create national centres for the development of knowledge and technology for water management, which would serve as an R&D accelerator.
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This study explores the application of systemic design approaches used in a complex commercial context to create positive and sustainable change. The case study was a business case on sustainable parenthood, in which the company tried to balance its ambitions for environmental sustainability with the need to survive in a highly competitive market. In close collaboration with the internal business company stakeholders, a causal loop diagram was created. The diagram mapped relations between global relevant trends for emerging young adults within the DACH market, sustainability, and parenting as a business. Leverage points for systemic change were identified which were explored through in-depth user interviews (n=10). This process eventually identified ten systemic insights, translated into insight cards to facilitate business actions.Based on these combined approaches, the MINT framework (Mapping Interventions and Narratives for Transformation) was developed, with a strong emphasis on co-creation, iteration, translation, and communication of systemic interventions. However, while the internal business stakeholders and company representatives appreciated the bird’s eye view that systemic design gave them, they were challenged by the methods’ abstract language and translation of systemic insights into concrete action. To address this, the developed framework utilized systemic design artefacts such as a storytelling map and user-centred insight cards to facilitate a more comprehensible systemic design approach.Overall, this study provides a first attempt at creating an actionable systemic design framework that can be used in commercial settings to promote positive systemic change. Future research will require further validation.
The paper deals with the hot issue of entrepreneurship education and describes the rationale behind the gamified and collaborative courses for university students conceived, developed and deployed in the framework of the eSG (stimulating entrepreneurship through Serious Games) project, funded under the EU lifelong learning (LLP) Programme. The project aims to help students becoming familiar, mainly through practice, with basic concepts of entrepreneurship and company management and to stimulate the emergence of their entrepreneurial attitudes. In the framework of the project specific courses mainly grounded on the concepts of gamification and collaboration were designed and carried out in three different partner countries: Italy, Spain and the Netherlands. The main objectives of the courses are presented in this paper and a theoretical model supporting the choice of Serious Games is shown which keeps into account usability, pedagogy and the entrepreneurship skills expressed by state of the art models.
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