The Circular Innovation Challenge was succesfully held by the collaborative partnerships from Indorama Ventures, SEAMEO, School of Global Studies, SDG Lab Thammasat, UNDP, and UNICEF. There were as many as 174 teams which applied to receive intensive social innovation coaching and submitted their innovative ideas in order to tackle Thailand’s circular economy challenges. The participating teams joined the competition from every region of Thailand, and whose members are mostly youth aged between 16 to 25.
During our continuous event, every team had opportunities to be coached by social-innovation development experts from UNDP in April. From there, each team went on to develop their prototypes and the business models. Among them top 10 finalist teams were selected to deliver their final pitchings on May 8th. This successive online event culminated at the announcements of the Winner from each innovation category; 1.Circular Innovation, and 2.Water and Sanitation.
Team RECYSO from Khon Kaen university whose innovation is a working model to recycle waste from discarded solar panels into nano-silicon batteries, has won the Circular Innovation category. Team จากขยะสู่ขยะ (From-Waste-to-Waste) which came up with prototyped nursery planting pots wholly made from electronics waste and parts, won the Water and Sanitation category. Both Recyso and From-Waste-to-Waste each received the winner’s prize of 100,000THB, sponsored by Indorama Ventures and UNICEF, to continue to develop and make their innovation viable to the market and public.
Last but not least, as strategic partners we are truly optimistic that with this on-going multilateral collaboration, we can start to create deep public awareness, better understanding of the circular economy, and garner collective effort to achieve national, regional and global Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030.
