Green and sustainable business models for undertakings

URBANREC has implemented an eco-innovative and integral bulky waste management system (enhancing prevention and reuse, improving logistics and allowing new waste treatments to obtain high added value recycled products) and demonstrate its effectiveness in different EU regions: Northern, Mediterranean, Eastern and South-eastern areas in Europe, represented in URBANREC by 3 EU-28 countries and Turkey. These countries currently have very different urban waste recycling rates, from around a 70% in Belgium, 25-30% in Spain, 20% in Poland, to less than 5% in Turkey, thus being representatives of the different scenarios at European level for the evaluation of different activities proposed in URBANREC project.
The FP7 URBAREC project, coordinated by the plastic’s technological centre AIMPLAS (Spain), with 21 partners and EUR 10 Million budget was awarded by the EU with a grant of EUR 8.6 million. Qi participated in the project structuring and design of the business model associated to the technical solution. The impact section of the file was fully prepared and redacted by Qi.

CARBOMART, www.carbomart.com , is an online carbon-trading platform which brings together carbon credit buyers and carbon credit sellers. Managed by the Turkish company Green Consult and Finance, CARBOMART allows the carbon credit buyers to evaluate the carbon emission reduction projects by performing line by line project comparisons according to the social, environmental and economic sustainability criteria.
Moreover, the buyers can directly access the emission reduction projects with their sales prices directly set by the project developers/owners (sellers). This allows both buyers and sellers to get reference carbon credit prices and reference sustainability benchmarks for the emission-reduction projects. Green Consult and Finance was assessed. The company was advised in the development of the online platform and the user-friendly interface, in addition to strengthening its business plan with strategic alliances with other actors in the IT sector.

The Institute of Energy Technology of Valencia (ITE), hired Qi to reorganize its third-party services and identify the lines of strategic interest aligned with the new trends in European research programmes; specifically, identification of strategic research lines and related collaborative projects, internal reorganization associated with the new lines, identification of topics of interest in the European R&D framework programmes (Horizon2020 and HorizonEurope) and preparation of proposals including business models for the associated emerging technologies (impact section).

Sorbos ORIGINAL inspired designers to come up with a straw made of water, gelatine, sugar and a stabilizing ingredient or thickener, but with the sturdiness and functionality of plastic. However, Qi was contracted to elaborate the business plan and the feasibility study for a new ZERO sugar version in its pre-commercial pilot phase which completely modifies the formulation with fewer calories. This modification has offered the possibility of adding nutrients and vitamins and has made for a healthier version than the predecessor as it has no sugar content. The project was granted as well with an H2020 SME EU aid