The First EBU Student Journey

As a part of the EBU Label project, the very first EBU student journey took place this year. 30 students from the EBU-Alliance took on a Bioeconomy challenge: “The further valorisation of a side-stream product”. All of it culminated in the students’ week in Bologna at the end of June.

Impressions from the in-person students’ week in Bologna:

Arriving at the Alma Mater university in Bologna on their first day, the students received a warm welcome and went right to work. They participated in 3 different seminars, to receive more input to utilize in their project during this last week of the challenge. To close this very busy first day the students took part in a World Café workshop on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and got the chance to connect with all the other students at the end of it.

To receive a motivational and educational boost with some practical examples of what the Bioeconomy looks like on a big scale, the students enjoyed multiple excursions to companies embedded in a circular Bioeconomy.

On the second day, a first feedback session on the projects the students have been cooking up for the last two months was made by the tutors based on reports they had to hand in. Then, the students visited a plant of Novamont, which is an internationally leading company in the production of bioplastics and biochemicals. They actively engage in the promotion of a Bioeconomy, which also benefits rural areas.

Wednesday the students were greeted to excursions to three more Bioeconomy companies:

To learn what circularity could look like and where it can be found the students first visited Caviro. Caviro is engaged in the recovery of by-products from the wine and agri-food value chain. They turn them into biomethane and other valuable products for the food, pharmaceutical, and agricultural sectors. After a lunch break, the EBU journey continued to visit Bioplanet. They specialised in biological pest control. By using natural predators of unwanted insects Bioplanet helps to reduce the use of chemical pesticides in the agricultural sector. The very last stop on this eventful day was the Hera group, which is mainly focused on the provision of energy and waste management services.

Reaching the penultimate day of their journey the students had the opportunity to reflect on the company visits by engaging in a conversation with experts on the topics of entomology, wastewater and waste utilisation and bioplastics. Afterwards, the students were occupied with improving and tweaking their final presentation, which was to be held on the very next day. An exhausting day that increased the tension and excitement for their final presentations.

The final day of the journey: 2 months of online training with the foci on Economic principles, Consumption, Production, Processing, a team of great tutors and the time the teams spent growing together in this unique program prepared the students for this last day. Before it was their turn though, the EBU journey contestants got to hear the great pitches of their colleagues from the FOEBE program, with whom they had the pleasure of sharing the time in Bologna.

Then it was their time to shine and to present the following projects:

  • Spent Coffee Grounds – Waste opportunities towards circular Bioeconomy
  • Exploring the potential of lignin for the production of 3D printed materials
  • The Urban Wood Marketplace. A digital platform for trading city tree residuals in Vienna, Austria
  • Turning Milan’s urban wood waste into tannin-based coating
  • The freshwater plant Myriophyllum spicatum: plague yet valuable bioresource?
  • Nanocellulose-based Biofilm production from Sorghum for a Compostable Packaging Material

All presentations were excellent, but the team that managed to prevail was the project about “The freshwater plant Myriophyllum spicatum: plague yet valuable bioresource?”.

Winners of the 2022 EBU student journey

The EBU would like to congratulate all the students for finishing the very first EBU student Journey.

The entire journey was well received by the students and the tutors, for the overall organization, the program, its flexibility, the groups and more. It was a good start to a journey, that will still be improved to be even better for the next iterations.

All this would not have been possible without the tutors at the alliance universities and their engagement: Paola Galletti, Timo Tokola, Bernhard Kastner, Brigitte Lubbes, Teppo Hujala, Florent Allais with a special thank you to the central coordinator and tutor Lina Marcela Mayorga Duarte, without whom the program would not have worked as well as it did.

Furthermore, we would like to thank the companies that gave our students an insight into the living Bioeconomy.

The EBU is already looking forward to hosting the next journey, with new challenges and new students. Stay tuned.