This paper presents challenges in city logistics for circular supply chains of e-e-waste. Efficient e-waste management is one of the strategies to save materials, critical minerals, and precious metals. E-waste collection and recycling have gained attention recently due to lower collection and recycling rates. However, implementing circular urban supply chains is a significant economic transformation that can only work if coordination decisions are solved between the actors involved. On the one hand, this requires the implementation of efficient urban collection technologies, where waste collection companies collaborate with manufacturers, urban waste treatment specialists, and city logistics service providers supported by digital solutions for visibility and planning. On the other hand, it also requires implementing urban and regional ecosystems connected by innovative CO2-neutral circular city logistics systems. These systems must smoothly and sustainably manage the urban and regional flow of resources and data, often at a large scale and with interfaces between industrial processes, private, and public actors. This paper presents future research questions from a city logistics perspective based on a European project aimed at developing a blueprint for systemic solutions for the circularity of plastics from applications of rigid PU foams used as insulation material in refrigerators.
MULTIFILE
Sustainability and economic growth—the integration and balance of social, environmental, and economic needs—is a salient concern for sustainable development and social well-being. By focusing on a sustainable innovation project, we explore how entrepreneurial ecosystems become sustainable entrepreneurial ecosystems and investigate the interactions of entrepreneurial actors. We conducted an inductive, single-case study of a specific collaborative innovation project in the denim industry specialized in a specific geographic location. From our data, we show that the presence of four conditional aspects foster sustainable entrepreneurial ecosystems. These include sustainability orientation of actors, recognition of sustainable opportunities and resource mobilization, collaborative innovation of sustainability opportunities, and markets for sustainable products. We make two observations that contribute to the literature. First, we see that in a sustainable entrepreneurial ecosystem, entrepreneurial experimentation is a highly interdependent and interactive process. Second, we see that recognition of sustainable opportunities is distributed among different actors in the ecosystem. Our findings also have implications for practitioners and policy-makers.
The SPRONG-collaboration “Collective process development for an innovative chemical industry” (CONNECT) aims to accelerate the chemical industry’s climate/sustainability transition by process development of innovative chemical processes. The CONNECT SPRONG-group integrates the expertise of the research groups “Material Sciences” (Zuyd Hogeschool), “Making Industry Sustainable” (Hogeschool Rotterdam), “Innovative Testing in Life Sciences & Chemistry” and “Circular Water” (both Hogeschool Utrecht) and affiliated knowledge centres (Centres of Expertise CHILL [affiliated to Zuyd] and HRTech, and Utrecht Science Park InnovationLab). The combined CONNECT-expertise generates critical mass to facilitate process development of necessary energy-/material-efficient processes for the 2050 goals of the Knowledge and Innovation Agenda (KIA) Climate and Energy (mission C) using Chemical Key Technologies. CONNECT focuses on process development/chemical engineering. We will collaborate with SPRONG-groups centred on chemistry and other non-SPRONG initiatives. The CONNECT-consortium will generate a Learning Community of the core group (universities of applied science and knowledge centres), companies (high-tech equipment, engineering and chemical end-users), secondary vocational training, universities, sustainability institutes and regional network organizations that will facilitate research, demand articulation and professionalization of students and professionals. In the CONNECT-trajectory, four field labs will be integrated and strengthened with necessary coordination, organisation, expertise and equipment to facilitate chemical innovations to bridge the innovation valley-of-death between feasibility studies and high technology-readiness-level pilot plant infrastructure. The CONNECT-field labs will combine experimental and theoretical approaches to generate high-quality data that can be used for modelling and predict the impact of flow chemical technologies. The CONNECT-trajectory will optimize research quality systems (e.g. PDCA, data management, impact). At the end of the CONNECT-trajectory, the SPRONG-group will have become the process development/chemical engineering SPRONG-group in the Netherlands. We can then meaningfully contribute to further integrate the (inter)national research ecosystem to valorise innovative chemical processes for the KIA Climate and Energy.
Client: COST (European Cooperation in Science and Technology) Funder: COST is an intergovernmental framework for European Cooperation in Science and Technology, allowing the coordination of nationally-funded research on a European level This project is based on bringing together principles of ecosystem services (ES), which focus on life support systems, with more non-material services such as culture, health and wellbeing through tourism. It aims to link research on wellbeing provided by ecosystems and their use via tourism, leisure and recreation activities. The underpinning issue of this proposal is to produce new and collaborative research on how and in what way can tourism be a catalyst for improving human health and wellbeing, by using in a symbiotic and sustainable way natural resources and services provided by ecosystems, as well as exploring the challenges of (e)valuation of such services. This will be achieved by creating a collaborative European network of research centres based around four key working groups, namely (a) theoretical relationships between tourism, wellbeing and ES ; (b) empirical and methodological research challenges and approaches; (c) interrelations between ageing, wellbeing and ES; and (d) policy frameworks' analysis and research-informed policy making