Asker Municipality, in collaboration with14 other municipalities, is developing a digital reuse platform to streamline material reuse and reduce waste. Running through 2024, the project aims to automate processes and increase sustainability by making it easier for employees to report needs and share surplus items across municipalities.
Time frame
Q1 2023 – Q4 2024
Background
Early 2023, Asker Municipality and 14 participating municipalities embarked on an innovative procurement process, culminating in an innovation partnership with Loopfront in June 2024. From August until December 1, Asker Municipality and Loopfront will collaborate to further develop a digital reuse platform tailored to the municipalities' needs identified during the competition.
Three months after the innovation partnership concludes, the participating municipalities can choose to procure the fully developed solution. By 2025, the municipalities aim to implement the reuse platform, enabling employees to report needs, find materials for reuse within Asker, or offer surplus materials to others via the integrated reuse platform.
Problem statement
Existing digital reuse solutions fall short of maximizing reuse, reducing waste, and stimulating green business development. They demand time consuming and costly manual labor for order processing and fullfillment, data retrieval and inventory management. Enhanced functionality and user-friendliness are essential to improve green solutions competitiveness and acheiving these goals.
Objectives
The goal is to develop a user-friendly, automated digital reuse platform. It should simplify the reuse process for municipal employees, making it easier than buying new or used items. The platform must provide comprehensive oversight to facilitate efficient reporting and reuse management.
Challenges
- Improved Environmental Impact Reporting: The platform should provide automated processes for registration, ordering, delivery, and reporting. An employee using the platform should not need knowledge of materials to post or retrieve items for reuse. The platform must be so easy to use that no training is required, considering it will be used by potentially 7,000 employees.
- Logistics for item transport: The platform should enable direct booking of transport for reuse materials, minimizing external communication and administration.
- Sharing surplus materials: Storage space limitations necessitate quick disposal of surplus materials. The platform should facilitate sharing surplus items with other municipalities and organizations efficiently.
Circular approach
Internal workshops, including those with participating municipalities and a supplier conference in 2023, identified procurement needs and feasible goals within budget, resource, and time constraints. User journeys for potential platform users were created to identify needs, which were then validated by participating municipalities.
Asker Municipality aims to enhance sustainability across environmental, economic, and social dimensions. This requires increased reuse, waste reduction, and the stimulation of green business development.
Through the innovation partnership, Asker and 14 participating municipalities will work with Loopfront to make their digital reuse platform more user-friendly and tailored to municipal needs.
Innovation partners
- Asker Municipality
- Aurskog-Høland Municipality
- Bærum Municipality
- Drammen Municipality
- Eidsvoll Municipality
- Hamar Municipality
- Hole Municipality
- Lier Municipality
- Lillestrøm Municipality
- Lørenskog Municipality
- Nesodden Municipality
- Nordre Follo Municipality
- Ringerike Municipality
- Rælingen Municipality
- Ullensaker Municipality
Process and progress
When Asker, Røyken, and Hurum municipalities merged in 2020, reusing old municipal furniture saved approximately 16 million kroner and 90 tons of waste. Building on this success, Asker Municipality hired a furniture manager to continue developing reuse efforts. The current initiative aims to motivate and stimulate employees to increase reuse through a tailored digital platform.
An innovative procurement approach allows participating municipalities to procure the solution developed by the end of the partnership. This has significant potential to increase reuse both within and across municipal borders.
Expected outcomes
Asker Municipality, along with the 14 participating municipalities, can implement a reuse platform. By implementing a reuse platform, Asker Municipality and the 14 participating municipalities aim to promote increased reuse among employees, leading to more efficient resource management, environmental reporting and a reduction in waste.
Conclusion
Leveraging an innovative partnership with Loopfront, Asker Municipality and the participating municipalities aim to create a more sustainable environment through an enhanced digital reuse platform. This initiative is expected to foster increased reuse and efficient resource management, aligning with the municipalities' broader sustainability goals.