Recently, I took part in Startup Weekend Utrecht, which had Smart Cities as its theme. Together with one teammate, I won third place!
Our concept was called Circular City. Our goal was to solve a problem that we have ourselves: if you live in an inner city, you often don’t have the option to recycle green waste. Even though I, personally, would like to. It turns out that we are not the only ones with this problem—many people who throw away their green waste with the regular trash, only do so because they have no other option.
However, our solution reaches further than just separately picking up green waste in inner cities. We consider this just the beginning. Waste is actually not somehting to throw away and never think about again, it can be a hugely valuable resource. For instance, you can compost it, and that compost offers new possibilities. In this way, one or more cycles are formed, that can sustain themselves and yield valuable products. I made this infographic to explain the project in an easily understandable way:
The jury were enthused and convinced by the quality of our plan, which means they awarded us the third prize!
By now, my role in the project is smaller, but I still think it’s very inspiring, so I wrote a little article on it, explaining in more detail how it works.