UrbanSymbiosis is a 4-year (2022-2025) research project, that focuses on creating sustainable pathways for cities by increasing the circularity of critical raw materials. The research consortium partners are VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland, Hanken and Finnish Environment Institute.
The project suggests the urban symbiosis logic, with the focus on critical raw materials (CRMs), as a solution to the sustainability challenges and to the preservation of the value of CRMs during their lifecycle. Urban symbiosis can offer a possibility to increase the sustainable circularity of CRMs, even though many of the supply chains are global, and a systemic change is needed on a global level. To boost the change towards urban symbiosis of CRMs, the project aims to explore what kind of new sustainable value creation models in cities would be the most impactful in the selected high technology products. The focus is on three application areas: Medical devices, Smart buildings and Consumer devices.
Work packages
WP1: Sustainable product design and data for circularity, (Kivikytö-Reponen,Päivi /VTT)
WP2: Urban Symbiosis -based ecosystems and business models, (Valkokari, Katri/ VTT)
WP3: Circular supply chains for Urban Symbiosis, (Ayati, Mohammad/ Hanken)
WP4: Policy and regulation, (Turunen, Topi/ SYKE)
WP5: Impact: System level sustainability, (Sorvari, Jaana/ SYKE)
WP6: Pathways towards urban symbiosis of high technology products, (Arnold, Mona/ VTT)
WP7: Management, collaboration and dissemination, (Valkokari, Katri/ VTT)
UrbanSymbiosis in funded by Academy of Finland.