The challenges in our fields of action are in truth cross-disciplinary but our areas of activity are at the heart of the solutions to be developed and deployed to overcome them on a broader stage, that of society. Chemistry is faced with a threefold challenge: ¾ The challenges linked to climate change; ¾ Vulnerability of access to resources; ¾ Access to energy.
© GreenWin
Limitation to access to resources and impacts of climate change will lead to the emergence of tensions and geopolitical pressures from which no one is able to escape.
Construction is a major sector for environement improvement.
leaning on an effective community that is used to cooperate and work within a collaborative innovation approach. “Union is strength” is the Belgian national motto, and it is not a vain leitmotiv as far as GreenWin is concerned.
The very nature of our planet is circular and finite, and the increasing rarity of resources will pose problems. Green chemistry will therefore be a crucial key to reduce these pressures and risks of tensions. Construction for its part is faced with a twofold challenge: ¾ In the very short term, the digital tidal wave that is washing over the links of the production chain and its impact on the creation of new jobs, all the contours of which it is currently impossible to fully imagine, as well as on employment in this sector with the risk of crisis that this implies; ¾ The calling into question of business models and flexibility, which will increasingly be key factors in the industrial prosperity of the Belgian construction sectors.
What activities are you developing internationally? From the very outburst of the pandemic, GreenWin has been very active in taking part in international, online think tanks in order to facilitate exchanges of information, international partnerships and pragmatic solutions to deal with the urgent needs and cope with material shortages. In this framework, our partnership with the EU networks for European represent other sources of cooperation, expansion and international promotion.
There is also a need to take waste management into consideration, both at industry and consumer level. In this respect, “cradle-tocradle” is increasingly imposing itself as the solution but it implies the changing of the entire sector of recycling which needs to become a partner and not an adversary of “zero waste” by agreeing to call into question its mode and type of functioning according to Lavoisier's universal principle which retains its full force today: nothing is lost, nothing is being created, everything is being transformed…
© GreenWin
© GreenWin
What are the main challenges that have to be overcome in the next few years by players in sustainable chemistry, materials, sustainable construction and environmental technologies? The COVID-19 crisis has highlighted pre-existing challenges we knew we had to face, only with more accuracy and adding a sense of emergency to several of them. Agility, adaptability, keenness to cooperate and reconsider usual production processes will be, more than ever, key factors to be enhanced and encouraged, within our eco-system.
Environmental biotechnologies are leading to solutions.
Green Chemistry is one of the 9 strategic fields of GreenWin.
123
