Ecoembes and Logroño City Council announce the five winners of the European competition Circular Urban Challenge

TheCircularLab’s hub hosted the final event of the competition for its fifteen finalists, from seven different countries. Five of them have been the winners, after being evaluated by a mixed professional jury formed by specialists from TheCircularLab and Logroño City Council.

Innovation, entrepreneurship, sustainability and development of smart cities are some of the keys that have guided the final event of the Circular Urban Challenge programme, the European competition between companies linked to the field of a circular economy that has received more than 100 applications, organised by TheCircularLab – Ecoembes’hub for open innovation in the circular economy – in collaboration with the Logroño City Council.

During the European Week for Waste Reduction, the TheCircularLab installations, located in Logroño, hosted the fifteen finalists of the competition, who came from seven different countries. After this competition, which was broadcast via streaming and in which the finalists had to present their projects, the winners were announced as BeFC (France), Relearn (Italy), Lixo (France), Recycleye (United Kingdom) and Spectralgeo (Spain, La Rioja).

During the act, moderated by the journalist Marta del Amo, there were also several presentations by relevant experts in the sector, Boyd Cohen, PhD in Strategy and Entrepreneurship from the University of Colorado and Jaime Rodríguez de Santiago, general director of FREENOW in Spain, director of Kaizen and TEDx Speaker. The event was also attended by the Mayor of Logroño, Pablo Hermoso de Mendoza, and Esmeralda Campos, Councillor for Economy and Finance of Logroño City Council.

Challenges like this that combine technology and modernisation, promote the circular economy and innovation and also allow Logroño to contribute to research on sustainability.

Pablo Hermoso de Mendoza, Mayor of Logroño

The five winning start-ups have received a prize of €5K each. These companies have been selected for presenting the most effective and innovative solutions, mainly based on new technologies or business models and solving three specific challenges faced by cities in terms of circularity and waste recycling: urban citizen science and circular economy, innovative technologies for urban waste management and the commitment to the second life and innovative applications of recycled materials for urban use.

All the applications were evaluated by a mixed professional jury, made up of specialists from TheCircularLab and Logroño City Council, which followed criteria such as the maturity of the projects, the level of innovation used in the development of the proposed solution or the effectiveness in solving the problems framed in one of the three proposed challenges.

This initiative, the result of an Ecoembes and Logroño City Council agreement, once again demonstrates the importance of collaboration in moving towards a circular model.

At Ecoembes, we feel enormously proud not only of the fifteen finalists who have made it this far, but also of the more than one hundred participants who have thrown themselves into wanting to be part of the solution, committing to technology and innovation as a way of building a more sustainable and circular future.

said Jorge Serrano, manager of Ecoembes in La Rioja.

If you are particularly interested in personally meeting any of the startups, please fill in the following form and TheCircular Lab will connect you as soon as possible.