Revaluating and Reusing the Plastic

Plastic is an important material in our economy, and modern daily life is unthinkable without them. At the same time however, they can have serious downsides on the environment and health[1]. In the EU, the potential for recycling plastic waste remains largely unexploited. Reuse and recycling of end-of-life plastics is very low, particularly in comparison with other materials such as paper, glass or metals[2]. Around 25.8 million tonnes of plastic waste are generated in Europe every year[3]. Less than 30% of such waste is collected for recycling. Of this amount, a significant share leaves the EU[4] to be treated in third countries, where different environmental standards may apply. In line with the new plastics economy vision, the PTwist Project, funded by European Union’s Horizon 2020 Programme, will twist plastic reuse practices through a collaborative open platform! TAGES is the innovation partner of the project.

PTwist Project (An open platform for plastics lifecycle awareness, monetization, and sustainable innovation) aims to design, deploy, and validate an open platform which will twist plastic reuse practices, by boosting citizens’ awareness, circular economy practices, and sustainable innovation. PTwist consortium involves 9 European partners from 7 different countries such as Greece, Switzerland, Netherlands, Germany, Spain, France and Turkey, who are highly motivated cross-discipline communities in the areas of ICT (gamification, crowdsourcing and blockchain), social innovation, inventors, communities, as well as take up networks of large scale. TAGES from Turkey is the innovation partner of the project.

PTwist Project Consortium, Kick-off Meeting on 30-31 Jan, 2018 in Thessaloniki

The project started with the Kick-off Meeting on 30-31 Jan, 2018 in Thessaloniki where the representatives of all of the partners, Leyla Arsan, Erdem Gulgener and Aslihan Kagnici from TAGES as Turkish partner, attended. During the meeting, the general objectives of the project and the scope of the work packages were discussed by the partners. During the meeting, the partners split into two separate discussion groups as pilots group and technical group and defined the needs and requirements from both sides.

Partners during Kick-off Meeting

In the project there will be 3 pilots across Europe (Switzerland, Greece and Netherlands) and they will intensify all stakeholders (citizens communities, inventors, innovators, and entrepreneurs) involvement and engagement, with emphasis on the social gains and sustainability potential. TAGES will increase the awareness of all stakeholders involved in plastic reuse value chain in Turkey and exploit the PTwist results. PTwist will largely impact: citizens and grassrooted groups co-creation, innovative and trusted collaboration and knowledge transfer by increasing all stakeholders’ awareness; plastics as an asset potential due to increasing its circular economy re-entering; and blockchain based novel routes to markets.

In order to deliver the PTwist Platform requirements, the pilot partners of the Project recently attended Future Forum Lucerne (FFL) Workshop on 21-22 March 2018 in Messe Luzern which was hosted by Hochschule Luzern, the Swiss partner of the Project and organised by Zukunftslabor CreaLab. Leyla Arsan, CEO of TAGES, attended to the workshop too. Future Forum Lucerne was an unusual conference which offered an open context for dialogue and strives for developing answers to questions crucial to our future of society in surprising, innovative and cooperative formats. During the forum, different workshops were organized and one of them was the PTwist workshop focused on Plastic.

Seminars and interesting speakers were opening minds during the event having interesting speeches on like imagining the future by Prof Elmar Schenkel, forming the future by a bio hacker Urs Gaudenz and community celeverness by a neuroscientists Franca Parianen. The event environment was very attractive and enjoyable where it was possible to skate and cycle between workshop tables and seminar place.

PTwist project partners with some students and professors of HCSLU together realized a very interesting workshop in two days where the first day was focused more on understanding the plastic. Participants learned about plastic by categorizing and touching it, by playing with it like melting and burning. The second day was focused on the pilot activities where personas, scenarios were worked and supply chain, stakeholders of the plastic using processes studied well in each PTwist pilot group.