Construction waste

CONSTRUCTION WASTE

I looked up information about construction waste which was annonced to be the industry our team would be concentrating on in our case project. Here's few denitions and links to pages where we can find more useful information on this field:

"Responsible management of waste is an essential aspect of sustainable building. In this context, managing waste means eliminating waste where possible; minimizing waste where feasible; and reusing materials which might otherwise become waste. Solid waste management practices have identified the reduction, recycling, and reuse of wastes as essential for sustainable management of resources."

Whole Building Design Guide (US) http://www.wbdg.org/resources/cwmgmt.php

"Construction and demolition waste has been identified as a priority waste stream by the European Union. There is a high potential for recycling and re-use of CDW, since some of its components have a high resource value. In particular, there is a re-use market for aggregates derived from CDW waste in roads, drainage and other construction projects. In addition, technology for the separation and recovery of construction and demolition waste is well established, readily accessible and in general inexpensive."

European Commission http://ec.europa.eu/environment/waste/construction_demolition.htm

Elina

Collection of Creativity and Innovation Tools

One of the assignments for the next class was to find innovation tools that could be used in class to facilitate the idea generation. As I was looking for such tools online, I found this great collection of innovation tools that I wanted to present in the following video.

As I mentioned in the video, I picked Lotus Blossom Technique as a tool I could present for other groups on the next working day. In case I will be the one facilitating the idea generation with my tool, I will tell you how it worked in my next post.

Elina

Field task in Turku

Touring around the nice city of Turku we found some examples of circular economy!

Aleksi, Edward & Elina

Spreading Ideas: Innovation in companies & Marketing and Sales

Spreading Ideas inside the company

Hansen and Birkinshaw (2007) discuss the critical points on spreading ideas inside a company. They divide the "Innovation value chain" into three phases idea generation, conversion, and diffusion and into six activities,
internal, cross-unit, and external sourcing; idea selection and development; and spread of the idea, performed across those phases. Companies can performance can be unsatisfactory for example in generating ideas, realising them or diffusing them. In these case, it is the question of "idea-poor companies, conversion-poor companies and diffusion-poor companies". With the help of the innovation value chain, managers can identify weaknesses a company might have in spreading ideas and choose the right innovation tools and approaches to tackle these weaknesses.

Morten T. Hansen & Julian Birkinshaw. The Innovation value chain. Harvard Business Review, June 2007.

Selling your Ideas to customers

Bernadette Jiwa offers another point of view to spreading ideas in her speech held in TED conference in Perth.

She states that it doesn't matter how good your idea is, if no-one cares it will never work. The most important thing is change the way people think. According to Jiwa, marketeers are wrong when they spend time thinking how to sell when they should think how to find a better way to tell the story and change how people think and how they feel. This will change what they do.

Elina

Defining Resource Wisdom

RESOURCE WISDOM

"The decrease in natural resources, population growth and climate change is forcing global societies to become more efficient and cut emissions. Wiser use of resources is now an asset in international competition.

Investing in regional resource efficiency increases ecological sustainability, but the benefits also manifest themselves in improved financial and social well-being. Energy efficiency increases, there are lower emissions, the local economy is enhanced and self-sufficiency increases."

(Sitra)

Resource wisdom is closely related to circular economy in the sense that it emphaisezes efficient management of scarce resources for the wellbeing of both the environent and economy. These two aspects are visible in Sitra's definition of resource wisdom.

In resource wisdom, the calculation of ecological footprints is essential. For instance, residentail areas can be designed based on the principles of resource wisdom. An example of this is the international One Planet Living initiative which is being applied for the first time in Finland to the planning of the residential areas of Kivistö and Kangas. It aims to make sustainable and resource-wise living comfortable, inexpensive and easy by designing energy-efficient buildings and optimizing local traffic.

http://www.sitra.fi/en/ecology/resource-wisdom

Elina