[New Project] Youth Change Makers as Catalysts for a Transition to a Sustainable Circular Economy

Project Objectives

Circular Economy initiative at KTH (CE@KTH) joins hands with Nordic partners in the project “CATALY(C)ST: Youth Change Makers as Catalysts for a Transition to a Sustainable Circular Economy” co-funded by the Nordic Innovation with support from the Nordic Council of Ministers. It involves partners from five Nordic countries: Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland and Iceland. This project is part of the Nordic Prime Ministers vision for Nordic cooperation: The Nordic countries are to become the most integrated, sustainable region in the world by 2030, emphasizing green (circular and biobased), competitive and socially inclusive societies. To speed up the transition to a Sustainable Circular Economy, the CATALY(C)ST project brings together four main elements:

1. Accelerating Nordic companies' transition to a sustainable circular economy by engaging students, manufacturing companies to speed up their circular economy (CE) transition by a collaborative approach for CE development projects by activating resources from; a talent-mass of students, world-class researchers and mentor experts, Nordic innovation hubs and organizations.
2. Impactful minds of tomorrow for circular economy champions and innovations: Competency and experience building of the youth and the industry champions within existing companies to become change-makers.
3. Mobilizing a Nordic change community for CE: Alignment within already existing communities to establish a new Nordic youth community.
4. Industry & research - partnership-based program: Bringing expert knowledge to companies’ CE-development projects.

With this overall ambition, the project will form 25 industry partnerships to accelerate their transition to a sustainable CE-based business. The project will engage 200-300 students, 50 industry representatives in a series of co-creation activities. CE-capacity building initiatives will involve 100-200 companies and 400-500 students.

Project Partners

The project aims to bring best practices from the research world, the maker communities, the youth movements and industry into one strong initiative. This will allow unusual partners to join on one uniform agenda to speed up the development of Nordic sustainable CE impact projects. The project will apply the collective experience, competencies, research, and talent network from excellent research and entrepreneurship institutions from five Nordic countries:

• DTU Skylab (coordinator), Denmark 
• DTU Mechanical Engineering, Denmark
• KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden
• Aalto University Design Factory, Finland
• Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), School of Entrepreneurship, Norway
• EFLA, Iceland

The CATALY(C)ST project provides an excellent example of cooperation not only at the Nordic level but also at the KTH level. It involves 8 Departments from 3 Schools at KTH that are engaged in the CE@KTH initiative:

1. Department of Production Engineering (IIP), ITM School
2. Department of Industrial Economics and Management (INDEK), ITM School
3. Department of Machine Design (MD), ITM School
4. Department of Materials Science and Engineering (MSE), ITM School
5. Department of Energy Technology (ET), ITM School
6. Department of Sustainable Production Development (SPD), ITM School
7. Department of Chemical Engineering (CE), CBH School
8. Department of Sustainable Development, Environmental Science and Engineering (SEED), ABE School

Project Duration

December 2020 -December 2022

Funding Body

Co-funded by Nordic Innovation