The interdisciplinary team of 16 academicians and students from BMS, ET, and ITC Faculties and the GreenHub Twente, led by Devrim Yazan, achieved to be one of the winners of the UT Climate Centre call for proposals by the project entitled: Circular Economy Platform Twente (CEP TWENTE). The core leading team is the Sustainable Circular Economy team from the IEBIS section/HBE department.
This project aims to establish the Circular Economy Platform Twente (CEP Twente) as a collaborative initiative between the academicians and students of the five faculties of the University of Twente (UT) including Green Hub Twente within 2023. The primary goal of the CEP Twente is to accelerate the transition towards a sustainable circular economy by fostering interdisciplinary research, education, and knowledge exchange. Starting in 2024, we aim to act as a regional platform that provides room for collaboration among regional stakeholders, including municipalities, companies, and NGOs. The platform will serve as an umbrella association, bringing together diverse stakeholders from academia, industry, and (local) government to build a community that shares a common vision and creates societal, environmental, and economic impact in the Twente region.
In addition, as a digital challenge-based and experiential learning environment, the Sustainable and Resilient Circular Economy Laboratory (SCR Lab) will support the CEP Twente in a virtual setting where teachers can incorporate other specific challenge-based game modules and students can experience tackling these challenges from the lenses of multi-stakeholders.
The CEP Twente envisions various activities such as knowledge-sharing events, research collaboration, grant application support, company tours for students, policy scenario projections, workshops for sustainable and circular technology diffusion, provision of challenge-based cases as real-life learning practices to different courses in our various teaching programs and experiential online learning activities. The project seeks to make the Twente region a sustainability exemplar for a climate-crisis-free future and connect with global circular economy initiatives.
The CEP Twente will organize two workshops in 2023 as starting events: First (late September / early October) in order to implement a roadmap-blueprint and collect interests of our colleagues and students for joining Working Groups on specific sub-fields. Second (in the UT Sustainability Week, 27 November – 2 December) in order to form the Working Groups, implement an organizational schema of the CEP Twente, and create a portfolio of regional stakeholders. Please stay tuned with upcoming announcements to join us. Let’s work together for a sustainable future!
The CEP TWENTE team: Devrim Murat Yazan, Yifei Yu, Daniela Guericke, Alessio Trivella, Abhishta Abhishta, Patricia Rogetzer, Marcos Machado, Mahak Sharma, Letizia Alvino, Canan Acar, Marc van den Berg, Mila Koeva, Efia Boakye Addo, Dan Hartenberg, Amalia Bălan, Tamas Szecsei.
