During the partner meeting in September 2024, we organized a sustainability workshop to set the scene with all project partners.
It was an interactive session with the main goal to clearly define the full COUNTLESS value chain. The workshop was led by Miet Van Dael (VITO) in close collaboration with Heiko Keller (IFEU) and Tatjana Schwabe-Marković (CLIB). In preparing the workshop, we had put together the entire value chain from the feedstock through to the different applications. The goal was to map out the different process steps within the value chain, to get more clarity about all steps required, and the partners responsible for each of them. The team from VITO prepared small tiles for the different steps of the COUNTLESS value chain that could be linked to each other. This way of working was inspired by the Biobuilder®1 developed by VITO.
During the workshop, this method to visualize complex processes highly stimulated the interaction between the different project partners and allowed us to have a dynamic workshop. In addition, it helped bring clarity in what the value chain looks like in detail. This clarity is a prerequisite to prepare the data collection step for the sustainability analysis. In addition, the method allowed us to have a discussion across the value chain with all partners together. By asking questions to each other, we identified how the different steps in the value chain influence each other. We were also able to get a better understanding of each partner’s role in the path from feedstock to final product and their expectations. This is important to further develop exploitation strategies and to identify stakeholders beyond the consortium.
By the end of the workshop, we had successfully identified several complete value chain versions, the partners responsible for each step of them, and were even more closely connected to each other thanks to the constructive discussions. Next up is the data collection to start our calculations.
