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After our last group meeting we had another team building exercise. Playing Gartic Phone is super easy and is a lot of fun. First you write a quote, the next team member tries to express it in a drawing and the next one has to describe the drawing again in a quote. It goes on like this for a few rounds. It's amazing how well some of the rounds went. Take a look at two of our results.

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Today’s topic is the EU Taxonomy!

As you already know, transition to the circular economy is crucial to achieve Paris Agreement goals and mitigate the effects of climate change.

We already introduced you to some examples of successful circular businesses. However, we need our whole economy to adopt the circular approach to their businesses. You may wonder how?

Here is one of the answers. The EU just introduced the EU Taxonomy which helps to navigate the transition to a low-carbon, resilient and resource-efficient economy. It established performance thresholds for economic activities which: - make a substantive contribution to one of six environmental objectives, - do no significant harm to the other five, - meet minimum safeguards.

The performance thresholds will assist businesses, project developers, and issuers in gaining access to green funding in order to increase their environmental performance, as well as in identifying which practices are already environmentally friendly. As a result, it would continue to expand low-carbon sectors while decarbonizing high-carbon ones. The EU Taxonomy is one of the most significant breakthroughs in sustainable finance, with far-reaching consequences for investors and issuers in the EU and elsewhere.

If you are interested in this topic, you can find more extensive information in the latest EU Technical Report EU Taxonomy.

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The next circular business model we want to share with you is the business case of Emma Safety Footwear.

Emma is one of the customers of Cirmar, our project client. The company is located in Kerkade, the Netherlands, about 45 km from Maastricht. Emma offers circular safety footwear.  As part of a pilot project, they tested a "shoes as a service" model in collaboration with one of their customers. The goals are better fit for workers, better maintenance and cleaning, and a higher return rate of used shoes for recycling. The fashion industry, including footwear, is one of the most polluting industries in the world (Allwood et al., 2006). By exploring how shoes can be offered as a service, EMMA is pioneering the testing of the circular economy in this industry - working towards longer product life and higher recycling rates. The key idea is to extend the useful life of a shoe by providing workers with a maintenance kit, and to close the loop by designing the shoes so that they can be easily disassembled, and the parts recovered for recycling. FBBasic and Cirmar are supporting Emma in this process to replace input materials for easy recyclability and improve product design for easy disassembly.

Each circular shoe has its own material passport (c_passport), the materials used have a particularly long service life and all raw materials are recycled after use. For proper recycling, it is of particular importance to already find a future use case that closes the cycle of material consumption. All shoes are individually labelled so that they can be tracked through the chain.

What is your opinion on a shoe-as-a-service business model? Would you be interested in buying your shoes as a service?

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#BackToBasics and Back to our project!

During the midterm presentation we talked about the preliminary phases of our process and we outlined the following steps that are required to ultimate the project! Let's now dive deeper into that by dividing our next steps into three main sections:

1)  Target customers

- What is the typical customer that our cliemt is aiming to reach?

- What are the characteristics of these potential customers?

- How can these clients fit in the overall FBBbasic's business strategy?

2) Value identification

- What are the data commonalities that all circular businesses share?

- How can be found a common nomenclature for recycled materials?

3) Value communication

- How can our client communicate value to the target customers identified in section 1?

- How can the cliemr improve its platforms to have a greater reach?

- How can the business look more attractive to all those companies that see no value in the CE business model

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Nobody would like to receive such a message. This is especially true for a group of motivated students with high hopes for the future like Premium! This is why we now welcome you to our new series: Successful Circular Business! Our project’s core topic is Circular Economy and every team member of BackToBasics is highly committed to make our world a better place trough a shift to a new economical model! Therefore, we feel the urge to spread some knowledge and awareness about the topic by giving our followers some virtuous examples of circular businesses that will help making our future brighter! Today’s business is Thread! Thread is Pittsburgh-based company that transforms plastic bottles from the streets and canals of Haiti and Honduras into "responsible fabric" used in consumer products. What we believe is particularly interesting about this business is that in addition to helping to reduce trash in Haiti and Honduras by creating upcycled alternatives to waste, the company also strives to provide quality to locals in impoverished communities. Finally, Thread recently partnered with Timberland to provide upcycled materials for use in the apparel brand's footwear. To add another level of transparency, each yard of Thread fabric is traced and tracked at every step of the upcycling process, from bottle collection to fabric creation to the delivery of the fabric bolt to the manufacturer.

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Meet our client - FBBasic and Cirmar!

Founded by FBBasic, Cirmar provides concepts, products and IT-applications to support and grow a circular economy. With the goal to create a circular economy and contribute to the achievement of the UN Sustainable Development Goals, Cirmar’s tools help its customers to establish circular products, components and (secondary) raw materials. Moreover,Cirmar facilitates a circular design as well as product identification through a full supply cycle: production – use stage – end of use – dismantling – reverse logistics – reuse, repare, refurbishment, recycling – next use application

To achieve these goals, recuperated raw materials will have to be recognizable and available for the market through a uniform nomenclature. This requires product identification, tracking and an insight in the positive, circular impact. Cirmar enables this through three of its products C_passport, C_bank and C_dashboard.

C_passport supports product identification and tracking. It provides a detailed overview about many aspects of the product such as the product composition up to the raw materials, the defined use of the product, refurbishment and recycling options as well as next use applications. 

C_bank is a collection of C_passports through which customers can track, trace and harbor valuable products in a supply cycle. It provides insights from sourcing to distribution. Moreover, customers can follow reverse logistics, the disassembly and decomposition of their products in order to recycle them.

C_Dashboard is an interactive monitor about the circularity of a product. Aligned with the UN Sustainable Development Goals, the positive impact of circular products such as energy consumption can be observed. Moreover, it provides information about costs and the revenue. Customers which are in the circular transition process can set targets and follow their progress and achievements. 

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Today we are presenting a quick overview about Circular Economy: the main topic around which our #premium project is revolving! 

We all heard about the externalities stemming from the traditional “take-make-waste” economic model, as well as we know how dangerous they can be for our environment.

Changes are disruptive processes, especially if they imply the shift to a completely new and different economic model. For this reason, together with FBBasic and Cirmar, we believe that it would be crucial for everyone to focus on providing alternative sustainable solutions to the status-quo. 

We will give our contribute by developing the proper tools to overcome the barriers that are preventing companies to embrace #circular_economy. Supporting our clients' #mission, our team will extract valuable insights from their dataset enabling them to comunicate the incredible benefits of a shift toward a circular business model.

Stay tuned!

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Karl  | 24 | Entrepreneurship and Business Development

Hello together,

I am Karl. I was born and raised in Dortmund, Germany. In 2016, I started my Bachelor in International Business in Cologne, majoring in Financial Management. During my semester abroad in Sydney I discovered my new passion, surfing. Alongside my studies, I got involved in a start-up in the fashion industry in Cologne. After a gap year, I moved to Maastricht in September 2020 to study Entrepreneurship and Business Development. 

My interest in sustainability started when I was a little boy. During sailing trips and beach days, I was saddened by the pollution of the sea and beaches. From this experience, I developed the ambition to make a difference and help the environment through my entrepreneurial actions.

This PREMIUM project with the project partners FFBasic and Cirmar gives me the opportunity to combine my academic skills with my personal ambition, for which I am very grateful.  

In my free time I enjoy surfing, kitesurfing, sailing and snowboarding. You can tell I am an avid water sports enthusiast and my happy place is somewhere in the world by the sea. I enjoy teaching the kids at my sailing club to sail as well and have joined the coaching team. I furthermore love to travel to new countries and explore foreign cultures.

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Matteo | 22 | Strategic Corporate Finance

Hello everyone! I am Matteo and I am from Genova, Italy. I grew up in Italy: this is my first experience abroad and I am really enthusiastic about it! Regarding my background, even though in high school I studied ancient Greek and Latin, I then switched to economics for my Bachelor. Overall I can say that I have a stronger business and economic background and I am currently studying Strategic Corporate Finance. I am really fascinated by data analysis and particularly interested in IT applications an innovations for businesses. Premium will give me the chance of having a better understanding of team dynamics and will help me figuring out my preferences for my future job.

Moreover another reason why I chose Premium is that it will help me to develop my skills and will provide me with some hands-on work experience in the field that I like the most. 

In my free time I work as a DJ and as such music is my biggest passion. Together with music another great interest of mine is sport/fitness. I always played beach volley and indoor volleyball at competitive levels and I am currently discovery the discipline of calisthenics at an amatorial level.

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Daniel | 23 | Data Science for Decision Making

Hey all,

My name is Daniel, I am 23 and grew up new Wiesbaden in Germany. In 2015, I started my Bachelor in Maastricht in Data Science and Knowledge Engineering. After graduating, I stayed in Maastricht and enrolled in the Masters programme of Data Science for Decision Making where I expect to graduate this year. 

While my studies are not directly linked to sustainability, I think there is a huge potential to apply data science, artificial intelligence and machine learning techniques to improve the state of the art and to utilise the data generated by companies such as Cirmar and FBBasic. 

I really enjoy the diversity of my PREMIUM group as I am used to work in groups of engineers. I think that I can learn a lot during this project!

Next to my studies, I have a broad variety of interests and engage in a multifold of projects. I am a big fan of the Open Source culture and think knowledge should be shared and freely accessible. Moreover, I especially enjoy endurance sports such as running but in principle I am happy to try out all kinds of new things.

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Joscha | 25 | Public Policy and Human Development

Hi everyone! I’m Joscha, born and raised in Germany. Prior to moving to Maastricht I got a Bachelor in International Politics and Global Development from Aberystwyth University in Wales. During my semester abroad in Washington D.C. I first became interested in sustainability and social entrepreneurship which motivated me to shift my focus for the Master degree.

I spend most of my adult life working with and for people who got the short end of our economic systems in both Ireland and the Caribbean. Since then my focus has been to find ways to motivate economic actors to participate in humanitarian innovation. 

The PREMIUM project therefore gives me a great opportunity to combine my academic interests and personal values in the cooperation with FBBasic and find business orientated pathways to sustainable future. 

In my freetime you can normally find me near the water, either kitesurfing, swimming, kayaking or potentially getting a horrible sunburn after having fallen asleep on the beach. I rarely turn down the opportunity to explore new country and can’t wait to buy my next interrail pass. 

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Weronika | 23 | Sustainability Science, Policy and Society

Hey everyone!

I am Weronika. I was born and lived most of my life in Poland. At age of 18, I moved to Maastricht where I started a bachelor in European Law School. After that, I did a master in Energy and Climate Law at Groningen University. Now I am back in Maastricht studying Sustainability Science, Policy and Society and part-time International and European Tax Law.

As you can tell I am very passionate about sustainability and the environment. My interest in sustainability started during one of my sailing trips where I saw how polluted water and coasts are. 

Since then my ambition is to do my best to help our Planet. I participated in many conferences, hackathons and research trips related to sustainability topic. 

This PREMIUM project is very important for me as it gives me an opportunity to support FBBasic and Cirmar which aim to make the world more sustainable and circular.

If I am not studying or working, you can find me going for long walks, painting, cooking or doing yoga. I also love to travel and meet new cultures. My favourite way of travelling is on a sailboat as it is a very sustainable way of transportation and allows you to fully connect with nature.