Webinar on circular bioeconomy in our daily life
On May 27 we organised a regional webinar on bioeconomy in the Emmen region. All partners in Emmen supported this webinar, which happened to be an ideal form for staying in touch with each other during the Corona crisis, and for sharing perspectives on regional development and green chemicals with new partners.
The webinar was organized by the hub coordinator Wageningen Research in collaboration with main partners from the Municipality of Emmen, Higher Educational Institute of Stenden and Noordtij Communication Services. Besides these partners, representatives of the Business Cluster GreenPac and the vocational training institute of Drenthe College also took part in this webinar.
The subject of the webinar was: “What is circular Bioeconomy and what does it mean to the city and the region of Emmen? From the perspectives of science, government, education and business.”
The webinar started with an introduction by the BLOOM project to explain the key concepts of the bioeconomy, the valorisation routes and biobased products. After the introduction much time was reserved for a panel discussion with representatives from the partner organisations. They all gave their input on the different aspects of this presentation.
Participants were asked to write their questions in the chat. After short introductions of the panellists, questions were answered and discussed on the panel, which worked out quite well. Participants were active and there was a lively discussion, which included the following subjects:
- Economic benefits of the bioeconomy for the Emmen region
- Circular bioeconomy production is more sustainable than current production at Emmen industrial sites; developments in Emmen will contribute to replacing fossil-based products and there is a huge potential for specialization in recycling and refinery of plastics
- Pride of the innovation capacity of Emmen
- Bioeconomy will lead to new and interesting career opportunities for the next generation
- Strengthen the profile of Emmen as a centre of circular bioeconomy
- How Emmen as a remote area can be developed
- Possibilities to collaborate with other entities to create larger scale impact, as with other northern provinces of the Netherlands and with Germany
The webinar attracted 70 participants from all sectors as government, research, business, education and civil society and we were delighted to see so many students from Emmen participate – a healthy sign that future generations care about bioeconomy!
