The 4th Network Meeting held on the 30th of January at ITU Taşkışla, continued to play a significant role in extending TMM’s sphere of influence with a program that targets a wider audience including sectoral professionals, institutions and academicians. The meeting attracted considerable attention from companies and created a strong interaction with more than 147 participants.
The meeting started with the opening speech of Ebru Dildar Edin, the President of BCSD Turkey. Mrs. Edin started her speech by underlining the fact that the global population will reach 9,5 billion by 2050. She stated that our world needs innovative and effective solutions, where the circular economy attempts to address the issue of increasing waste. Mrs.Edin emphasized that the TMM project aims to eliminate the concept of waste and provides innovative solutions by applying the principles of circular economy.
Following Mrs. Edin, Hande Islak, EBRD Deputy Head of Turkey, took the stage and stated that TMM achieved a lot more than expected in the last 3 years. She also emphasized that there is no doubt that TMM will successfully meet the objectives even if it takes time to achieve increasing numbers of materials on the platform.
After the opening speeches, Dr. Uygar Özesmi, Founder of Good4Trust, pointed out that as industrialization spread around the globe, so did the problem of pollution. In order to keep the ecological balance, he suggested we take advantage of the Sun, which is the only real source of energy driving Earth’s climate system. Then, he warned us to keep asking ourselves the question; what kind of a future we want to live in? Mr. Özesmi argued that the sun needs to be acknowledged as a potential driving factor for energy instead of fossil fuels.
In the digital synergy workshop, BCSD Turkey External Relations Officer, Mert Güller introduced the newly developed online match-making tool. During this section, participants entered their materials to the system to see their material exchange potential with other companies.
Ministry of Environment and Urbanization, Zero Waste and Packaging Waste Management Branch Manager Oğuzhan Akınç underlined that waste management contributes 3.5 billion TL to the nation’s economy. He expressed that the state will continue to provide incentives to those who set up zero-waste facilities. He also stated that the Ministry has a long-term objective for the prevention of waste and one of the aims is to establish a waste management system in all municipalities by 2023. Click here to download “Zero Waste” presentation.
Ferda Ulutaş İşevi, the Technical Advisor of the Project stated that the majority of the members are from manufacturing industries while the chemical industry stands out among these industries. She emphasized that there are 65 members on the platform with increasing number of materials. She also added that the project gained momentum in the last 6 months with new 3 transactions.
The Project Manager, Münevver Bayhan drew attention to the importance of the Steering Committee while announcing the successful completion of the 1st round of the Circular Vouchers scheme.
She stated that in August 2019, TMM aims to transition to a financially self-sustaining model. She explained that there is ongoing work on the structure of the model which is to be announced by June.
In addition, she also announced the circular economy documentary which will be screened by BCSD Turkey as a local organizer of the Circular Economy Club and she concluded her presentation by informing members that a new user-friendly TMM platform is on the way to resolve technical issues on the existing platform.
Astrid Motta, Principal of EBRD Energy Efficiency and Climate Change Department, explained that the technical and financial support will continue by EBRD for TMM members. She mentioned that these vouchers will cover 90% of the consultancy service costs up to 25,000 EUR. Mrs. Motta stated that in the current call for applications only 6 vouchers in total 150.000 EUR will be available.
In order to provide details on the TurSEFF support mechanism, TurSEFF Project Manager Koray Göytan made a presentation about TurSEFF’s financing mechanisms.
The second part of the meeting began with a movie named “The Story of Stuff”. Following the movie, Lecturer/Senior Researcher, Julie Harboe from Future Laboratory CreaLab at Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts (LUASA) conveyed her opinions related to The Story of Stuff. Then she emphasized the importance of the circular economy approach in finding a solution for the plastic waste.
The parallel sections in the afternoon offered participants the opportunity to have a one to one discussion with sectoral experts from the universities on projects that they would like to invest in the future or get feedback and advice on how to handle their waste material in a more efficient way.
