Development of integral systems for circularity – a talk about innovations, living labs and circular economy, 21 March 2018
The urgency of the global sustainability challenges to secure a clean, healthy, safe, and prosperous world for everyone and the necessity to improve material, water, land, and energy efficiency by several factors is widely acknowledged. The complexity of these challenges calls for integral, innovative, and systematic approaches. WElcome to a seminar with guestspeaker Leendert Verhoef, Sustainability Innovation Program Developer at TU Delft
Development of integral systems for circularity – a talk about innovations, living labs and circular economy
To reduce the cost of this transition and to improve the speed, success rate and efficiency of innovations it is crucial to connect, combine, and demonstrate technologies from across disciplines. Delivery of services (water, light, energy, information) is still characterized by low overall efficiencies and losses during conversion and transport. Other inefficiencies are caused by lack of systems integration between technological systems and lack of combination of emerging technological and social developments.
A paradigm shift is needed, another way of looking at our technological systems. They should fulfill consumer needs, be very efficient, be participatory and be interconnected commodity- and good cycles of material, water, air, and energy to realize fully circular systems. Systems tend to be stuck in their own ways of thinking. As an example, organisations have purchase departments and waste collection and disposal departments, But in ‘circular procurement’, both departments and processes are two sides of the same coin, and should be connected or merged.
To achieve that, only technological innovations are needed, also the innovation systems themselves should be progressed. A very promising approach emerging, are Living Labs. Another concept which will be touched upon is System readiness Level, an extension of technological readiness levels, to appreciate the complexity of launching a product in an highly dynamic marketplace.