How can we empower Brisbane residents to tackle climate change by reducing the waste they generate?

Teams are encouraged to develop business ideas, concepts and creations that provide Brisbane resident's with solutions to manage their waste using the top two tiers in the waste hierarchy; Avoid, Reduce and Reuse.

Challenge context

Australia is the world’s second largest producer of waste with the average person producing 2.1kg of waste per day with Queenslanders unfortunately exceeding this figure with the average Queenslander producing 2.3kg of waste each day. Yes these figures are shocking but exactly what do they mean for our environment?

The climate impact from the waste industry comes primarily from methane generated from the breakdown of waste in landfills. And although you may not be familiar with this greenhouse gas you should know that methane is 84 times more potent than CO₂ over a twenty year period which means that every tonne of methane traps as much heat in our atmosphere as 84 tonnes of carbon dioxide. Greenhouse gas emissions are also associated with the production and distribution of the items that we end up throwing away. So reducing waste and using resources more efficiently can also reduce these ‘upstream’ emissions.

So, we now know that Queenslanders produce tonnes of waste and this waste has serious consequences for our climate.

What now?

Well the good news is that where there are large volumes of waste there are economies of scale, and scale is essential in creating a circular economy. A circular economy is an economic performance based model that relies on system wide innovation to create social, environmental and economic capital In a circular economy resources are kept at their highest value at all times and this economic model provides an alternative to the linear ‘take, make, use, dispose’ model that our society currently operates within.

On another postive note, there is a growing demand from Brisbane residents seeking ways to reduce their personal waste. Businesses that have targeted this niche have found great sucsess in our city. So the time is right for novel solutions to thrive.

Looking at household waste, there are a variety of areas to explore. Waste streams to divert from landfill can include, but are not limited to: 

• Green waste
• Organic waste
• Co-mingled recycling
• Paper and cardboard
• E-waste (electronic and electrical)
• Hard rubbish
• Textile waste

The waste cycle begins with generation, then collection and finally disposal. While many people traditionally focus on disposal there are also opportunities to avoid waste by focussing further up the waste cycle. Participants can explore whether they can find business opportunities in avoiding the generation of waste through reuse or by reducing purchases in the first place.

Challenge description

How can we empower Brisbane households to tackle climate change by reducing the waste they generate? This is the hot topic that will form the challenge for the 2018 Brisbane Climathon.

Teams are encouraged to develop business ideas, concepts and creations that provide Brisbane residents with solutions to manage their waste using the top two tiers in the waste hierarchy; Avoid, Reduce and Reuse.

Business ideas generated in response to this challenge should consider the challenges and opportunities unique to Brisbane and seek to reduce waste to landfill and maximise the associated climate benefits.

Circular bio-resources: treatment of food waste, garden waste and sludge from wastewater

Oslo has been developing a waste management system based on circular principles to ensure separate waste collection is maximised and transform waste into secondary raw materials. To do so it has actively engaged with citizens, farmers as well as with
 its city’s public transportation company.


Approach
Oslo owns a biogas plant, transforming food waste into biogas, which is used as fuel by buses and garbage collection trucks in the city. Biofertilisers are also produced at the plant and used by farmers to produce food. This plant is the largest biogas plant in Norway with a capacity for 50,000 tons of biological substances.
Today, citizens in Oslo source separate 46% of their food waste in green bags. Likewise, the city’s recycling stations
collected 15,300 tons – 27 kg per person – of garden waste in the same year. This waste was then composted and returned to citizens as soil so they could use it in their gardens.
Oslo aims to utilise the bio-resources from its municipal sewage system by sending the sludge to farmers for their agricultural activities. To ensure high quality sludge content, Oslo actively works to reduce the inflow of wastewater containing micro-pollutants to the municipal sewage network.
Oslo Norway
Håkon Jentoft hakon.jentoft@ren.oslo.kommune.no

Challenges
Changing citizens’ behaviours remains a challenge, specifically correctly separating their household waste. The bulk of food waste - 64% - is not source separated by citizens, which means this waste ends up in the residual waste stream. In turn, the unseparated waste can only be used for energy recovery purposes.
The national definition of household and commercial waste makes it difficult for Norwegian municipalities to invest in infrastructure for waste treatment that could be used by other municipalities or the private industry. The city’s public treatment plant has unused, free capacity, and the city lacks the necessary capacity for treatment of different waste streams like food waste, residual waste and hazardous waste. For this reason, Oslo’s biogas plant is not utilised to its full capacity, which results in higher cost for citizens.
Impact
Since Oslo started source separating household food waste and plastic in 2012, rates of material recovery of the household waste increased significantly. In 2016, 40% of household waste was either reused or recycled, and only 3% ended in landfills.
More than 150 buses in Oslo now run on biogas produced from food waste and wastewater, which helps reduce the city’s overall carbon-dioxide emissions. The
liquid fertilisers used by local farmers reduce the demand for mineral fertilisers. This is beneficial because producing synthetic fertilisers involves mining limited resources such as phosphate rock.
Compost and soil qualities from composting garden waste are very popular with both citizens and professional gardeners and reduce the use of other soil and compost resources based on peat. The success of the Oslo circle of garden waste has inspired the city to invite our neighbouring municipalities to further develop the production and quality of different soil products. The success has also influenced other producers and retailers to replace peat in soil products.
Lessons
It is important to have a good dialogue with the future users when developing new products from waste resources. Oslo’s experience was dependent on having a good and constant dialogue with farmers, professional gardeners and the public transport company to produce a product that meets important quality requirements. The dialogue was organised through research and development projects to produce the right quality, understand the effects from the use of the fertiliser and develop guidelines for its use.
It is crucial to involve citizens and be open about the processes of handling their source separated waste. The more
the citizens know about the end product of their waste and the processes that transform the waste into new products, the more likely they are to source separate their waste. The city has done this through information campaigns and open days at the different sorting and treatment plants. The citizens deliver garden waste and buy soil products directly at the city’s recycling stations.

Challenge 4

How to limit the flow of commuters on the A1 motorway between Lausanne and Geneva
The A1 motorway between Lausanne and Geneva is one of the busiest highways in Switzerland and this creates not only economic costs but also frustration among commuters and a high environmental pollution rate.

Challenge context

The costs of road congestion are multiple. Its impacts are experienced on a daily basis by thousands of motorists trapped in endless traffic jama, and by companies suffering from increased delivery times or emplyee delays. Road congestion also increases greenhouse gaz (GHG) emissions due to the excess fuel consumed in traffic jams, and this also has health implication since car pollution increases the risk of asthma, high blood pressure, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, stress, etc. 

The A1 motorway between Lausanne and Geneva is one of the busiest highway in Switzerland and this creates not only economic costs but also frustration among commuters and a high environmental pollution rate. That might also add a loss of productivity and impact the Swiss economy.

Projections show today that traffic to the part of the A1 will continue to grow.

Challenge description

Today, thanks to the anonymous and aggregated mobility profiles of mobile phones (while respecting and preserving privacy) , it is possible to analyse mobility flows and to find new solutions to motivate commuters to use alternative modes of transportation to reduce the pollution, or even to opt for other solutions, such as home office working.

Swisscom, as part of the Climathon 2018, wants to understand how it could be possible to encourage commuters who live between Lausanne and Geneva to use alternative modes of transportation such as public transportation, carpooling, cycling, etc., even to opt for home office working.

Two working hypothesis could be verified:

1. Commuters use their cars during rush hours to go to their place of work. They are therefore responsible for the excessive traffic on the motorway. Is the number of vehicles responsible for the congestion? Are there other factors that justify traffic jams?
2. Is it a personal preference to use private vehicles because commuters think that it will be faster this way?

To meet this challenge, Swisscom, as part of its Smart City and Corporate Responsability programs, provides population anonymous and aggregated mobility data that can be leveraged. These data allow a representation of a large part of the mobiliy. In addition, Swisscom encourages the use of its open data that can be found on the following website: https://opendata.swisscom.com/pages/home/

The data analysis could notably make it possible to:

• Notify travelers when the highway is overloaded ;
• Plan efficiently public transportation or other modes of transportation such as carpooling, bike-sharing, etc.
• Reduce the impact of mobility on the environment.

Instructions to participants:

• Participants will find solutions to analyze and exploit data made available by Swisscom and its partners to reduce the impact of mobility on the environment.
• Participants will use and integrate the data in their solutions.
• Solutions will reduce the environmental impact of commuters' flows.

Challenge 3

How to limit the environmental impacts of researchers' mobility ?

The University of Lausanne has included in its plan of intention the will to be a pioneering institution on sustainability, notably by promoting the research and teaching of this problem, but also by developing a model management of the campus and the environment.

Challenge description

It is often pointed out that the success of researchers is due to frequently traveling abroad to participate in conferences or workshops. This mobility generates strong CO2 impacts, especially since the fastest means of transport are often preferred. The University of Lausanne is now considering what professional mobility policy should be put in place taking into account the issue of sustainability and scientific excellence.

The question of the mobility of researchers has been identified and there is a real interest from the University of Lausanne to think and find solutions to address it.

Participants will determine:

• Tools to minimize researchers' travel ;
• Means or criteria to be used to define the relevance of a trip ;
• Ways to promote the transfer to greener modes of transport ;
• Proposals to manage the consequences that this implies for researchers' schedules.

Challenge 2

How to make the transition to electric mobility collaborative and shared ?

A transition to electric mobility seems inevitable and desirable. That being said, simply replacing the petrol / diesel engine with an electric motor will not be enough to meet energy and climate challenges.

Challenge context

The electric car brings undeniable advantages compared to conventional cars: almost no pollution or CO2 emission when used, less noise at low speeds. There are environmental problems with production in other countries, but the overall ecological balance is largely positive, particularly in the case of Switzerland, because of the predominantly renewable source electricity consumed in that country. Indeed, the source of production of electricity consumed is a key factor at the environmental level. That being said, all the other problems related to the quantity of cars in circulation will not be solved by this substitution of engine in cars (territorial grip, traffic jams, cost of diplacement, road accidents, depletion of natural resources, pollution in producing countries, etc.).

Challenge description

Based on the observation that replacing a petrol / diesel engine with an electric motor will not be enough to meet the energy and climate challenges, the challenge is to think of collaborative and shared mobility solutions dedicated to electric mobility.

Beyond the bicycle and conventional public transport (not the subject here), the modes of movement and use of vehicles must be redesigned and evolve towards including car sharing and large-scale carpooling.

The scope of solutions should concern the inhabitants of the Canton de Vaud, taking into account the specificities of urban areas and peripheral regions. On the other hand, even if electric 2-wheelers are not necessarily excluded from the reflection, the emphasis should be on 4-wheeled vehicles, because it is the current fleet of cars that must be replaced, with a search for seating optimization. This therefore concerns passenger cars, ranging from a cart to a minibus.

The proposed solutions can be operated by any type of actors; this may be the responsability of either a public transport operator or a municipal administration, or private people wishing to share their private car with neighbours. We can also imagine intermediate models of the cooperative type of neighborhood association that offer a mobility service, more or less locally, or other ideas...

Instructions to participants:

• Participants will consider the advantages and disadvantages of electric mobility versus traditional individual mobility, as well as synergies with shared modes of use.
• The solutions proposed by the participants will have to take into consideration and use existing and mature technologies or close to being. For exemple, a driverless shuttle is at the crossroads of what can be envisaged, as pilot projects have in part proved their worth.
• Proposed solutions must be linked to service offerings allowing pooling and the emergence of solutions.

Challange 1

How to reduce the impacts of products transportation inside the city and among the inhabitants?

Urban logistics are gaining importance as more and more people live in towns and cities, and because they are increasingly placing orders on the internet. Innovative solutions must make it possible to efficiently organize logistics in urban areas.

Challenge context

Logistics is essential to any business because it aims to meet the demands of its customers.

Today our urban environment faces many challenges which are responsible for the traffic congestion in the city:

• An increase in the population
• An increase in the number of sales outlets
• Major efforts to increase inventory turnover
• The multiplication of references in stores reducing the storage capacity
• The development of e-commerce
• Direct deliveries to private individuals

These factors lead to many negative consequences including: pollution, noise, quality of life for city dwellers, etc.

Challenge description

Faced with this situation, it is necessary to rethink how items in cities are delivered. Lausanne is looking for solutions and measures to improve the comfort of its residents and the environmental nuisances.

Instructions to participants:

• Participants determine the needs and constraints of urban logistics in Lausanne ;
• Participants propose solutions allowing a better efficiency of the logistics chain and a reduction of the nuisances ;
• The behavior change aspect does not have to be addressed. The challenge is focused on infrastructures and technical solutions ;
• The solutions will include 2 aspects: 1. Purchases made on the internet (e-commerce) that are more and more frequent, and their delivery. 2. Purchases made in urban areas (in shops, etc.) and transported to the homes of the purchasers.
• Participants highlight what could be done by the private sector and what, eventually, is the responsability of the public sector to facilitate or frame the transition towards a more efficient logistics (accompanying measures, management of the public space, regulation of developement, infrastructures, etc.).
• Finally, the ensure that the proposed measures are energy efficient.

Useful material for participants:

https://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/halshs-01727795/document

https://www.alexandria.unisg.ch/246581/1/Kurzversion_LMS%202016_FRZ.pdf

https://www.fti.geneva.ch/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/20170703_CR_atelier_GenieN2_EXT_v.pdf