Bornholms Affaldsbehandling (BOFA)

🌟 We are thrilled to announce the launch of the Plastigma Pavilion at Folkemødet! 🌟 Join us from today Thursday, June 13th to Saturday, June 15th, 9:00 AM – 5:00 PM, in the outdoor lounge area at Bornholmerhuset. The Plastigma Pavilion is more than just an exhibition; it's a transformative platform that aims to shift the public’s perception of plastic. Constructed using local plastic waste, the pavilion showcases the potential of plastic when used responsibly. This initiative promotes a deeper understanding of plastic's capabilities and limitations, encouraging everyone to take responsibility for their environmental impact. The project began as a student-led initiative from the Strategic Design and Entrepreneurship master’s program at Copenhagen Business School and Det Kongelige Akademi. It has since grown through a partnership with the Horizon Europe project Hephaestuscraft.eu driving meaningful change and inspiring innovative discussions. Our talented artists and dedicated students behind this project include: Artists: Ann Charlott Skogøy, Bettina Prejsler, Chiara Della Cava, Jessica Rios Gómez, Jinmyung Choi, May Bjørn Riis, Rikke Wulff, Timmi Kromann Students: Inkyong Lee, Patrick Corsame, Valentina Bauer Explore the creative possibilities and join the conversation at Plastigma Pavilion. Let's transform waste, create dialogue, and shift perspectives together! #bornholmerhuset #plastigma #BOFA #fm2024 #Folkemødet

This week is when Bornholm's and Denmarks biggest democracy festival takes place: Folkemødet! And BOFA has a heavy presence. We would be overjoyed to see you at our events. In collaboration with our mother organization Bornholms Regionskommune and other local actors, we will be at Bornholmerhuset in Allinge with exhibitions throughout the festival, and panel debates Friday June 14. We will be showcasing EU projects Hephaestuscraft.eu together with Copenhagen Business School, and Retail Relooped with Coop Danmark. Plastindustrien features in both events. Meanwhile, we have a 3 day plastic and arts and crafts exhibition at the "Plastigma" pavillion with pieces produced by craftmakers from Bornholm. Sneak peak here! https://lnkd.in/deAQuEPF https://lnkd.in/deCHxvWk AND we have "A Brave New World", an exhibition on Friday June 14 which is a thought-provoking piece on how our production and consumption systems might have developed totally differently. Curated by our friends from D20ArtLab. Interreg South Baltic Programme Marta Gasparin Rasmus Grusgaard Morten Riis Jesper Preuss Justesen Adam Engberg Johannsen Christina Busk Inkyong Lee Patrick Corsame Valentina Bauer Looking forward to seeing you!

Today BOFA says farewell to an institution! Jan Paulsen has been with us for 37 YEARS(!) and we are saddened to have to see him off for his retirement. After decades of loyal and dedicated service in managing our recycling centers and transfer and baling facility, Jan leaves a fingerprint at BOFA and big shoes to fill. We wish Jan the best for himself and his close family which he keeps dear.

STUDENTS ENGAGED 🎓 There’s a project out there. It has an acronym that hearkens to Norse mythology, and the deep cultural roots that connect societies throughout the North Sea. Enter FREIIA: F - Facilitating R - Resilience E - Embracing I - Islands I - Innovation A - Approaches The project deals with challenges and governance systems in islands in France 🇫🇷 , the Netherlands 🇳🇱 , Norway 🇳🇴 , Sweden 🇸🇪 , and Denmark 🇩🇰. It’s supported by the Interreg North Sea Programme and BOFA is participating. Bornholm is a circular economy lighthouse in the project. Sometimes you need a fresh perspective on some things, however. So right now, we’re in the midst of being heavily scrutinized by enterprising students, primarily from project partner Østfold University College (HiØ) and their Innovation and Project Management program. They just had their first visit, and they will be visiting us again in a few weeks. Our challenge: Circular economy in the building sector. Their angle: Youth and entrepreneurship. We’re all excited to see how this ends up! Pictures included are from the visit just a few weeks back, with also students from Copenhagen Business School and Aalborg Universitet participating.

FLASHBACK 🕰️ … to just about a month ago. These days, BOFA is in the midst of a once-in-a-generation transition of its waste collection system. We’re moving from a simple 5-fraction system with 1 bin and 1 110liter plastic sack holder per household to a 12-fraction system with 3 bins. Also included in the upcoming system are shared waste collection systems at some locations, with filling level sensors and waste pick-up on-demand. There are lots of moving parts here, and a lot to coordinate among many different parties. Our communication partner PN Kommunikation ApS facilitated a tremendously fruitful workshop with suppliers and service delivery partners in our upcoming waste collection system. Professionalism and team effort all the way through!

THE BALTIC SEA WASTE LAB 🔬 Ingeniørens PRO-Medier has shed some nice warm light at the experimentation taking place on Bornholm in support of Vision 2032: a phase-out of waste incineration, an increase in recycling, etc. Some key takeaways: ➡️ Bornholm raised eyebrows in 2019 with its vision statement, setting the stage for societal scale experiments as a Danish and European test island. ➡️ Described as a green transition outpost, the island’s approximately 40,000 inhabitants are lab rats for new waste solutions in a country with one of the highest per capita consumption rates. ➡️ BOFA’s project officers, 7 in all, operate out of an obscure location and handle a wide array of partnership activities. ➡️ One project provided a shoutout is Retail Relooped which targets circular food packaging solutions with Coop i Danmark and Żabka Polska. ➡️ Another project is Circular Economy Beyond Waste (CEBW) which has helped identify hotspots for interventions in multilayer food and beverage carton waste. The article ends by saying: “The road to the 2032 vision is not paved yet, but placed stone by stone, built by numerous small and large projects which, with a bit of luck, will be able to make the trip from the Sunshine to “yonder”, which the locals from Bornholm call the rest of the country.” Poetic, really. ♻️

PRODUCT LIFETIME EXTENSION ✌ It's one of the most emphasized inner-circle elements of a circular economy in accordance with the Butterfly Model popularized by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, and is part of the "Slowing the Loops" strategy option put forth by Nancy Bocken. For a waste management authority and service provider like BOFA, how on earth does product lifetime extension fit into our scope of operations or our mandate, legal or otherwise? It's a tricky one, but it is something we are trying to navigate through the Circular Economy Beyond Waste (CEBW) project supported by the EU's LIFE instrument, with a fairly large number of partners throughout Denmark participating. In the project, the news broke last week that we have just launched a collection system at our main recycling center in Rønne for white goods that are too good to dispose of as waste. If they function fine or close to it, users can deposit large kitchen appliances at a specially designated container seen in the picture below. Project partner FGU Bornholm (a vocational training school) then integrates the non-waste items into curriculum and skills-training, and a private company called SA-Service then stands ready to take over and be in charge of re-selling the refurbished items. It's a specially designed public-private partnership that is being tested on Bornholm in the CEBW project, where BOFA also has had the invaluable support of Stig Hirsbak and Michael Søgaard Jørgensen, researchers at Aalborg University and also partners in the project. Skills development, repair and refurbish systems, social enterprise development, all for a circular economy and a zero waste Bornholm in 2032. What's not to like?!

SUSTAINABILITY AND CRAFTS 😎 We are extremely pleased to be hosting guest researchers from Copenhagen Business School who are here these days doing ethnographic field work on craft ecosystems on Bornholm. Please meet PhD Fellow Enrico Macciò at the Department of Business Humanities and Law, and Oliver Eskildsen who is working on his master thesis within the Business Administration and Philosophy program. We are lucky to be connected to CBS and these intrepid researchers through CBS’ coordinating role in the Horizon Europe project Hephaestuscraft.eu which seeks to bring together cutting edge technologies with traditional craft to co-create solutions to support sustainability. Principal investigator is Marta Gasparin. BOFA plays a key role in the project as a base for Living Lab activities. It is hoped that by engaging with the local craft ecosystem and craft makers themselves, we can build upon Bornholm’s proud heritage in crafts that has earned the label “World Craft Region” and embed a higher degree of circularity in practices and meanings. The potential of leveraging crafts for a waste-free society in alignment with our Vision 2032 is extremely high, as we see it. Being a researcher on the ground in Bornholm involves making sense of and immersing in the local context, with various other activities such as an online research symposium on the agenda as well.

DTU, IT’S A WRAP! 🎓 The challenge: Provide an innovative energy solution for BOFA’s consideration, and just to make it extra hard, better make the payback time on that investment short. The clock is ticking and 2032 is just around the corner. Our waste incinerator is to be decommissioned by then, which means 8 years max to get a return on investment for anything related to retrofitting, adding to or modifying it. DTU - Technical University of Denmark: That’s no big! A big thank you to the energy engineering students from DTU and the group who took up the BOFA challenge, working for weeks to figure out ways to make it feasible to make an old waste incinerator just a tad more climate-friendly! Today was final presentation day and BOFA was presented with a retromod solution inspired by SEG A/S that brought up energy efficiency up 12% at 2.5 years payback time, and a novel heat storage solution as well. This was all part of the course “Innovative Energy Solutions” which had the students visit us, facilitated and supported by the good folks over at the Baltic Energy Island project “Green Qualifications”. The whole thing was a prototype of sorts for long-term plans for DTU to establish a Residential College on Bornholm for students and researchers alike. João A. B. R. Møller and Janie Dylsing keep doing the magic. 🪄😉

HORIZON EUROPE REVIEW MEETING 🇪🇺 Successfully held in Bucharest, Romania over the past few days. BOFA has a few EU projects in its portfolio, and SYMSITES was up for an 18-month review meeting which passed with very encouraging words along the way. In the project, 4 “Ecosites” around Europe aim to test novel Industrial-Urban Symbiosis solutions for urban biowaste and wastewater. The sites are in Alcoy (Spain 🇪🇸), Achaia (Greece 🇬🇷), Tullnerfeld (Austria 🇦🇹) and Bornholm (Denmark 🇩🇰), and involve various technical configurations of AnMBR demonstrators - Anaerobic Membrane Bioreactors. BOFA is allied with Bornholms Energi & Forsyning for this project, and project officers David Christensen and Daniel Sereth Larsen comprised the Danish contingent. At the Danish Ecosite, brewery mash, urban wastewater and urban biowaste from citizens and restaurants in the town of Svaneke will be dosed into an AnMBR plant to test out some of the project’s solutions in a relevant environment.