ERP Eco Sustainability Award Winners

ERP Portugal in partnership with the Portuguese Environment Agency, Blue Flag of Europe Association | Eco-Schools / EcoCampus, the Directorate-General for Economic Activities and the Young Professionals Group by APESB launched the ERP Eco Sustainability Award challenge to Higher Education students with the aim of challenging participants to develop an innovative and tamper-resistant Depositrão (anti-theft) built with recycled or recyclable materials for waste collection, with three compartments: one for electrical and electronic equipment without the potential to be reused, another for equipment that can still be reused and a third for batteries. In addition to the Depositrão, candidates had to present a communication poster for its promotion to citizens.

The three great ex-aequo winners of this edition are already known, all of them belonging to the Eco-Schools network and in the application process for FEE EcoCampus: Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia da Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Escola Superior Agrária do Instituto Politécnico de Viana do Castelo and Instituto Superior de Engenharia da Universidade do Algarve. Each of the groups of the winning projects will receive a monetary prize in the amount of 3000 €.

According to Teacher Maria Gabriela Dias, from Escola Superior Agrária do Instituto Politécnico de Viana do Castelo “This was an interesting challenge that allowed us to debate a pertinent subject and develop ideas around a real problem. Our team could not be more satisfied with the recognition of the proposal submitted and the prize awarded.”

For Raphael Jório, a student at thenstituto Superior de Engenharia da Universidade do Algarve “By adhering to this idea, we saw that it was not only to perform a simple selective collection of electrical waste, but also to help manage it, reducing the impacts on the environment. We believe that the union of design, color, creativity and technology will encourage people to do the right thing, recycle electrical waste.”

Gonçalo Sousa Santos, from the Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia da Universidade Nova concludes that "The idea of ​​redesigning the future of the sustainable use of electronic equipment brought us together in this project. We believe that the future involves an innovation in the existing recycling system."