On December 19 and 20, 2017, a staff exchange within the MOVECO project took place at the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Slovenia, Ljubljana/Slovenia (CCIS). CCIS hosted Gabriel Gruber and Christoph Reiss-Schmidt from Business Upper Austria OÖ Wirtschaftsagentur GmbH (Biz-Up) / Austria.

The main topics of this staff exchange were an

• Overview about the activities of Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Slovenia, Ljubljana / Slovenia
• Knowledge exchange in the field of Collaboration tools
• Insights in partners on extended producer responsibility schemes
• Visual inspection and discussion about locations for the mobile exhibition.

CCIS promotes and administers the interests of its members regarding environmental policies and legislation at national and EU level, supports practical initiatives to improve environmental regulation and simplify administrative requirements and assists exchange of best practice and benchmarking through networking opportunities for professionals at conferences, workshops and other training activities.

Biz-Up could learn about the collaboration and matchmaking tools that CCIS uses, one online tool was presented and three face-to-face tools. Experiences were compared with such tools at Biz-Up and their utilisation for MOVECO were discussed.

Since the preparation of the national reports on extended producer responsibility and research and development in circular economy, Slovenia has joined the group of European countries that have defined the transition towards a circular economy and prepared national flagships to improve economic competitiveness and quality of life. A lot of activities for the circular economy are centred around industrial symbiosis and less on new business models and opportunities to support innovation for reuse and repair within extended producer responsibility schemes.

The environmental department at CCIS is strong with regard to environmental legislation knowledge, while Biz-Up has strength in support of innovation, eco-innovation and design for the circular economy. The staff exchange was an excellent opportunity to learn about each other’s strengths for better cross-country collaboration within the MOVECO partnership.

For more information about MOVECO, we invite you to visit our website and follow us on social media.

If you want to share your thoughts about circular economy or if you are interested in receiving the MOVECO newsletter twice a year, let us know and send an email to moveco@bayfor.org.  

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(Photo credits: MOVECO project)