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From 8. till 10. September 2021 the 20th European Roundtable on Sustainable Consumption and Production (ERSCP) Conference took place in Graz.

Katharina Berger was awarded with the best student paper award for her contribution about "Sustainable and circular battery management - Conceptualization of an information model". The conference paper of Katharina and her co-authors Magdalena Rusch, Josef Schöggl and Rupert J. Baumgarter is available in the proceedings of the ERSCP here.

In 2019 the award was given to CD-Lab researcher Lukas Stumpf for the best research submitted and presented at the ERSCP by PhD students. He contributed to the conference with an analysis of 131 circular economy business cases from a scientific and policy perspective. Read the abstract here.

Over 100 master's and diploma theses were submitted to the WKO Styria by students to win one of the coveted research grants for young scientists. One of the awards was given to Magdalena Rusch for her master thesis on "Social Life Cycle Assessment in a Circular Economy context" which was written in cooperation with the CD-Laboratory for Sustainable Product Management enabling a Circular Economy at the Institute for Systems Science, Innovation and Sustainability Research at the University of Graz.

The research scholarships were awarded under the title "Economy meets Science" by WKO Styria President Josef Herk for business-related diploma and master theses. In total, the WKO has already distributed 310,000 euros to young scientists within the framework of this program - the scholarships were awarded for the seventh time this year.

More about the thesis can be found here.

Anna is Spanish, Tomas is from Chile. Both are researching for their doctoral thesis at the University of Graz on issues related to the concept of the Circular Economy. This is of great interest if we want to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Their goal: to find ways to use resources as efficiently as possible and minimise waste. As scholarship holders of the EU-funded international PhD network “Circular Economy: Sustainability implications and guiding progress (CRESTING)” Anna Diaz Tena and Tomas Santa Maria Gonzalez have chosen the University of Graz because of its excellent research environment. Read more here.

At the 9^th science congress of the German association for waste management (DGAW e.V.), CD Lab member Lukas was given a scholarship to support the acquisition of a real time Delphi software. The software will be used for a study on organizational requirements for circular practices in the packaging industry across the whole supply chain. A more detailed understanding of how organizations need to structure their resources for a circular transition is an expected outcome of the study, which will be carried out early 2020.

The DGAW press release can be found here.

The European Roundtable for Sustainable Consumption and Production (ERSCP), founded in 1994, supports the development of a European (but also worldwide) community of research and practice in sustainable consumption and production. The main goal of the ERSCP is to encourage discussion amongst stakeholders such as businesses, public institutions, universities, institutes and research centres, NGOs, SMEs, professional associations, decision-makers, etc. involved in such areas.

In 2019, the ERSCP was hosted by the polytechnic University of Barcelona and was dedicated to the topic ‘Circular Europe for Sustainability’. This year’s award was given to CDLab researcher Lukas Stumpf for the best research submitted and presented at the ERSCP by PhD students. He contributed to the conference with an analysis of 131 circular economy business cases from a scientific and policy perspective.

Read the abstract of the paper here.

On the 4^th of October the CD-Lab for Sustainable Product Management enabling a Circular Economy invited their “Letter of intent” (LOI) partners to a first welcome meeting at the University of Graz. To ensure the practical relevance of the research in the CD-Lab, experts from industry are integrated into the research activities. Especially the data collection for the empirical research steps will be organized together with the corporate partners iPoint and ARA AG and the LOI partners. 

In this first meeting the CD-Lab Team welcomed the LOI partners with a workshop about Sustainable Product Management in a Circular Economy context. The emphasis was on the experiences and current practices of the participants regarding sustainable and circular data management. Thank you very much for providing us with such interesting insights from practice! 

A special thanks to our participants from Magna Steyer, Saubermacher, Ronal Group, Attribui, Cleantech Cluster, AC Styria, AVL and ipoint. As well as for the support from the SIS colleagues and CRESTING network. 

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This year’s 25th conference of the International Sustainable Development Research Society (ISDRS) took place at Nanjing University, China. Within the topic ‘sustaining resources for the future’, the conference explored the fundamental question of how to sustain current development without stripping the resources needed for future generations, while embracing a multi-disciplinary approach.
The Christian Doppler Laboratory was represented at the conference with two presentations: Anna Díaz talked about possibilities of “enabling data-driven sustainable product development in a circular economy”. You can find the conference paper here. Additionally, Lukas Stumpf presented a bibliometric, network, and semantic analysis of “the narrative of circular economy and sustainability”.

For further information see the website of ISDRS 2019.
Conference Proceeding & Presentation