Industrial symbiosis: do you know what it is? 

Industrial symbiosis: do you know what it is? Don’t worry, it’s a rather new phrase, but what it means in practice has been around for a while and we would like to encourage more businesses to implement it. This is the aim of the INSET project, where the Regional Development Agency for Podravje – Maribor in cooperation with project partners University of Strasbourg, CETEM Technology Park, Sistemi Formativi Confindustria Industrial Training Centre, IT company SYXIS, and Simbiosy Circular Economy Advisor, is developing teaching materials for fostering the industrial symbiosis.

On 21 January 2025, the partnership gathered in Maribor to evaluate four tools that will be used by the project to promote industrial symbiosis, boost company efficiency, and reduce environmental impact. The stakeholders evaluated how the project will help those who want to gain the knowledge of industrial symbiosis processes with an IS networking manual, learning materials on IS, a handbook of practical examples and the learning app, so they would gain competences to set up and manage the processes of industrial symbiosis, where waste of one company can become a resource of another.

In Maribor, we presented the partners with study cases of companies working together in PCT – Industrial Zone Tezno, where companies lend staff to each other so that they work together and share skills and competences to produce finished products, and an example of how small entrepreneurs come together to form Kooperativa 103, which shares processing equipment, cold storage and warehousing facilities, and other ways of running successful business stories together.

As a leading institution in research and education, the University of Strasbourg leverages its expertise in capacity building and interdisciplinary collaboration to drive the objectives of the INSET project. “Participating in the INSET project reflects the University of Strasbourg’s commitment to addressing global sustainability challenges. By creating tools and methodologies to promote industrial symbiosis, we empower regional actors and support the broader European green transition,” said Samira Khemkhem, INSET project leader at the University of Strasbourg.

“The project helps lifelong learning by providing tools and knowledge to ensure a skilled workforce to meet the demands of a Circular Economy.” says CETEM. Therefore, it aligns with their mission of supporting innovation and industry competitiveness by enhancing workforce capabilities through skill development and promoting collaboration in industrial symbiosis.

SFC sees the project as the action to gap the demands for innovation production systems and opportunities provided by education, thus addressing the increasing need for sustainability expertise in companies by bringing together educational institutions, businesses and government agencies providing academic knowledge with practical implementation needs.

Simbiosy conferms that “as the project develops and offers training materials for industrial symbiosis, it also enhances and expand our training capacity and broadens our reach with a wider audience with developed programmes for specifically enhancing the skills and knowledge about industrial symbiosis.

Undert the Syxis point of view, “INSET allows us to delve into new learning methodologies that support businesses in their economic and social growth, helping to strengthen the importance of circular processes and learning new methods to transfer knowledge and skills in its reference market”.

Final, RRAPM confirms that “as a pilot region of circular cities and regions initiatives, we are building the capacity for circular bioeconomy in Podravje, where skills and knowledge about industrial symbiosis as the advanced step of circular bioeconomy, provides the basis for human resources to foster the transition.

The INSET working group emerges reinvigorated from this workshop in Maribor, enriched by local stakeholders who revealed the wide array of approaches to enacting sustainability.

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