Green Manufacturing as relevant topic for Europe’s youth

Gen-E 2023 is Europe’s largest entrepreneurship event, where thousands of young entrepreneurs, 15 years old onwards, showcase their cutting–edge business ideas and compete for the titles of best Company and best Start-Up of the year.

Throughout the 2022-23 school year, JA students across Europe engage in online Gen-E activities, build their Virtual Expo stands and apply for prestigious Awards. This year, JA Türkiye is hosting the Gen-E 2023 European Entrepreneurship Event in İstanbul Türkiye between 11-14 July, 2023. EIT Manufacturing Central Director, Christian Bölling, will be one of the jurors for the main awards.

Apart from the Main Awards, there are so-called Online Awards which are provided by different organisations across various topics. This year, EIT Manufacturing recognizes teams who have developed innovative products or services that use fewer natural resources, reduce pollution and waste, recycle and reuse materials, and/or develop new processes to reduce manufacturing resources and moderate emissions in their processes with the Green Manufacturing Award! The EIT Manufacturing Green Manufacturing Award was available for the Upper-Secondary as well as for University level.

In the running school year, the growing online engagement of the JA youth across Europe through the #Gen_E Online Awards and Virtual Expo was clearly visible. In total, more than 1,000 JA businesses applied for Online Awards in 2023 – a new record! The Green Manufacturing Award of EIT Manufacturing was the most popular of all online awards, receiving the highest number of applications, thus making it the most competitive and most difficult award to win this year!

The jury members from EIT Manufacturing Monika Primozic (Education Manager), Silvia Grätz (Business Creation Manager) and Gerhard Russ (Innovation Manager) evaluated all applications according to their level of innovation (to what extend the company uses novel application of materials and resources and/or new manufacturing processes) and sustainability (to what extent the company considers the whole value chain and life cycle of their product or service, such as conception, supply and/or manufacture as well as responsible consumption and/or disposal).

These JA companies are the winners of the Green Manufacturing Award 2023:

Upper-Secondary Level: ReBuild from Denmark

ReBuild aims to facilitate green building in Denmark in an easy and safe way. They provide a platform where buying and selling building materials is brought together, making it easy for users to find the product they are looking for. On the ReBuild website, it is possible to put used building materials up for sale and at the same time find other building materials that others have put up for sale.

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University Level: ADSOL from Spain

ADSOL has designed and internationally patented a sustainable desalination plant model in collaboration with the University of Malage, Spain. Their solution offers versatile water production as well as sustainable waste management that is 100% cost-efficient and solar-powered.

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The popularity of the Green Manufacturing Award showed the relevance of the topic for today’s youth, and is a testimony of the importance today’s young entrepreneurs put on reducing pollution and waste, and using fewer natural resources in their business endeavor.