The Basque Ecodesign Center driving the Green Economy with 30 ecodesign projects and 45 SMEs involved - 14 June 2012.
The Basque Government's Minister for the Environment, Land Planning, Agriculture and Fisheries, Pilar Unzalu, today unveiled in Bilbao the Ideas Laboratory of the Basque Ecodesign Center, an initiative aimed at driving innovative ideas in the design of cutting-edge environmental products and services in order to detect new business opportunities in ecodesign and ecoinnovation.
The Ideas Laboratory of the Basque Ecodesign Center will
be a place open both to the Center’s member company and to those making up the
Basque production fabric and Basque society in general.
The Ideas Laboratory is part of the Basque Ecodesign
Center (BEdC), a company that was set up in November 2011 with seven founding
members, Euskaltel, Gamesa, Iberdrola, Vicinay Cadenas, Fagor, Ormazabal, and
CIE Automotive, along with Ihobe, the Basque Government’s Environmental
Management Public Corporation.
The center has worked intensively and now has 30
projects up and running. Sixteen are ecodesign projects that the seven member
companies are developing in their own business areas and 14 are collaborative
among the members of the Basque Ecodesign Center. The implementation of those
projects has resulted in 45 SMEs embracing the field of ecodesign, a
methodology that they have integrated into their production process. The target
is to have 80 driven companies by the end of 2012.
In the words of Minister Pilar Unzalu, “the
Basque Ecodesign Center has an important raison d'être. The main
international entities advocate changing the economic growth model, as will be
discussed at the Rio+20 Summit starting next week, where the green economy is
going to play a key role. And that is precisely where the
Sustainable Development Strategy of the Basque Country, EcoEuskadi 2020 comes
into play. And the Basque Ecodesign Center is a further tool serving that
strategy”.
Pilar Unzalu, which referred to the Basque Ecodesign
Center as a “good example of private-public partnership”, explained that
1,190,000 euros had been earmarked as the budget for the Center. “Work
has also begun on accessing new funding challenges that may result in up to a
further 1 million euros being achieved through programmes such as the
ecoinnovation or LIFE Programme of the European Union,” stressed the Minister.
The Basque Ecodesign Center has established with
other similar entities, including Sweden’s Life Cycle Analysis Center (CPM) de
Suecia; or the Swedish Environdec (International EPD System), the leading
Product Environmental Declaration certification body worldwide.
Ideas
Laboratory
Located at Alameda de Urquijo 36, next to the
offices of Ihobe, the Environmental Management Public Corporation, the Ideas
Laboratory has become a benchmark of the Basque Ecodesign Center
and its activity.
This initiative will drive the emergence of
innovative ideas in the design of cutting-edge environmental services and
products that meet the challenges faced by the members of the center and the
companies of the industrial fabric of the Basque Country in the current
economic situation. It will operate as a technology monitor and competitive
surveillance space, capable of detecting trends associated to the use of
environmentally friendly technologies in order to incorporate state-of-art
advances in eco-design worldwide into Basque companies.
It will hold an annual public ideas contest in the
field ecodesign open to any individual or company. The Ideas Laboratory will
then analyse their applicability and practical feasibility, thus supporting and
driving the entrepreneurial attitude of Basque society as a whole.
Expert
Committee
The Ideas Laboratory will be backed and advised by
an Expert Committee made up of leading figures from around the world in the
field of ecodesign. The committee will be coordinated by Joan Rieradevall, a
lecturer at the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB) and will be made up of
specialists from different entities.
Source: www.ihobe.net
14 June, 2012.