Our team part 6: Ane

Hey, my name is Ane. Currently I’m an exchange student at the UTA in the field of Business. Because there’re a lot of exchange contracts between universities in Europe, the exchange possibilities were large. For me the northern countries have attracted me for a long time, partly because of the nature, but also because of their way of handling/organizing certain aspects. The student reports of former exchange students about their stay in Tampere where really positive. Therefore I decided to sign up for this university and so far I don’t regret this choice.

I decided to apply for the Smart waste flow project, because I recognized the problem which each company has with the waste management: wastes cost money, effort, capacity etc. but doesn’t add value for the customers. Finding a proper solution for this problem is really interesting and important, also to raise the environmentally friendliness of the world to a higher level. Right now the project has changed to households as new target group, which is for me personally less interesting because of the lack of business related content. However, also with this project we can have a positive influence on the environment. Within this project my official task is, in addition to the regular activities, updating the playbook (a document in which we record all different kind of information about the project, like for instance the problem, solutions, ideas, planning etc..) However, in practice we often work on this as a group because some consultation with each other is frequently required.

- Ane - 

Our team part 5: Henriikka

Hello!

I'm Henriikka, a 23-year-old student from Tampere University of Technology. Originally I'm not from Tampere but from a smaller town called Lahti (the same town that our Project Manager Mikko is from). I represent the business side of this project because my field is Industrial Engineering and Management. During this Demola project I'm also the Blog Manager.

I have always been into cultural things such as music, art and languages. I play the violin and I have danced ballet when I was younger. Languages are my passion particularly and that's one of the reasons I wanted to take part in this Demola project. Last academic year I spent in Berlin as an exchange student and got used to working in multicultural teams. I found international projects extremely interesting and I decided to take part in international projects here in Finland, too. 

Throughout my studies my technical focus has been on environmental things which is why I selected this Demola project. With our team I want to create an innovative solution that can make waste management easier!

- Henriikka -

JAM #2

Jam #2, held last Saturday 29.10. was the second and last of the full day jams arranged by our Demola facilitators during this project period. It was not a straightforward sequel to Jam #1, but a separate get-together consisting of workshops and presentations. However, it did follow Jam #1's footsteps when it came to the structure and flow of the day.

First we had a wakey-wakey morning excercise moment, which consisted of a few easy exercises to prepare our bodies for the day. After that the actual program started rolling.

Before noon we had five different workshops gathered under the smartly invented name Demolation. The workshops arranged were Business, Green, Design thinking, Managers and lastly, Arts & Media. The first thought could be, that we all attended the Green one, as our project is obviously about green values and sustainability, but this was not the case, but the opposite: all the five of us (we were five present that Saturday) attended a different workshop as was the idea behind Demolation.

I personally attended the Arts & Media workshop. The main idea of the workshop was to hear suggestions from members of other teams and to vice versa suggest ideas for others as we circled ‘idea-papers’ clockwise around the meeting table. I enjoyed the workshop a lot, not just because we got to draw and sketch, but because it was truly beneficial to discuss and process our project problem with others unfamiliar with the project yet still familiar with the Demola process. With the project problem, I mean the questions our group has already circled around regarding our project goals - the whole circle of waste and the recycling circle, and actions, and the lack of actions. New insights are definitely valuable!

Once the Demolation workshops were finished, we gathered again together with our group and briefly went through the ideas and knowledge each of us had gathered.

After lunch break, the workshops and presentations continued. Here is a few notions from the afternoon.

Pitching felt very difficult as after the recent changes we are not yet at the solution stage. However, what we did gather was the importance of inclusion of feelings in a pitch. We also learned about recognizing the stage out target audience at, which can definitely help us work towards a possible solution. Lastly, we learned a great deal about presenting, but I’m not going to share those tips here, but you’ll see what we learned later on when it is the time for presenting.

And the time right now is surely running rapidly! It was surely nice to gain new insights during Jam #2, but as the deadlines are approaching it also becoming clear that we also need to have an effective approach at this stage.

So the day summarized, it was really good to get peer to peer support and ideas from others participating Demola projects. And there's nothing new about the notion that we should recycle, but it's not all clear and sorted out. Pun intended.

Don't sort your biowaste? Feel free to leave your comment below!

- Matilda -

Our team part 4: Kaisa

Hi everyone! I’m Kaisa, 25 years old and I study energy and environmental things. I’m a country girl, well at least I was born and raised in a farm in a small city of Huittinen. I still feel more of a country girl than a city girl even though now I live in the city of Pori. I travel to Tampere to school and back few times a week. I am an outdoor person and I have just lately discovered hiking and geocatching. During this fall, I have been hiking few trips and planning already a new hiking trip. The picture of me is from Koli national park which was a great place, even though a bit foggy… I also spend every summer and autumn a lot of time in the forests picking berries and mushrooms which I use to my other hobby, baking. During my free time, I also go to the gym and jogging.

I applied to this Smart Waste Flow project because the subject is interesting and I wish to work with this kind of problems also in the future. Clean technologies, such as biomass and solar, and green thinking overall is something that I’m really interested in. I also have some work experience in resource wisdom so I can apply that a bit in this project.

- Kaisa -

Changes ahead

During the week 42 our team experienced its first setback of the project. Until now we had been developing a website for small and medium size companies. The initial idea of was to create a website for companies where they could sell and buy reusable leftover materials and these materials would not become waste.

Our project partner Saara had to inform us that the current idea wasn't good enough for Pirkanmaan Jätehuolto. Saara had discussed the idea with the development team of Pirkanmaan Jätehuolto and the team was convinced that we shouldn’t develop our idea further to make it work better for the company. 

For a Demola project is it not uncommon that ideas do not work. In the process we create ideas and test them and if the ideas do not work, we have to develop new ones. For our team it was a small shock to hear that we have to start again with a completely new idea but it is important to remember that you can't fall in love with your idea because it might not work for the project company.

On 25^th of October we had a meeting at the office of Pirkanmaan Jätehuolto. We met Saara and other employees of the company. During the meeting we came up with new guidelines for the project. Many factors were changed: from now on we should focus only on on-site recycling and we should try to find out why people do not separate their waste. What could motivate people to separate the waste? Instead of focusing on small and medium size companies, we have to focus on households and municipal companies.

The group during the meeting. 

Our team was quite satisfied with the meeting and we now have a better and more concrete picture of what we have to create for the company. It was a shame that we heard the bad news in the middle of October but we still have time to restart the project with a new idea.  During the first part of the project our knowledge of waste business has increased and we can use the gained knowledge to create a better solution.

- Henriikka -

Our team part 3: Simone

So, my name is Simone, I am 27 years old and I am from Vienna, Austria. I am doing my exchange semester here in Tampere and I am studying international business at TAMK but in my home country I study management for SME.

I love Finland because of the wonderful nature, the good education system and I also like the finnish mentality.

In my freetime I like to play the flute, go for some hiking trips and meet friends and family. Yoga is also a very important part in my life as I try to live in a minimalist way.

I heard about Demola in the orientation week at TAMK and I really got interested in this kind of innovation work. I chose the smart waste flow project because waste mangement is an important topic all around the world and especially SME's have a huge need in finding cheap and easy ways to handle their waste properly. So I wanted to join this team to create an innovative solution to keep Finland "green" :)

- Simone -

Our team part 2: Mikko

As a person I’ve always considered myself to be laidback. As mentioned in one of our meetings my spirit animal, the Sloth, might tell something about me. I love great food (as you can see in the picture) and I love music so much that I consider it being kind of a lifeline for me. Outside of schoolwork I’m also an active board member in few of TUT’s clubs which in a way I’ve sometimes considered being a hobby for me.

So I’m a third year student at TUT and I’ve found myself to be working in the Smart Waste Flow Demola-project as the Project Manager. Applying for this project wasn’t a difficult choice since I worked for the project company Pirkanmaan Jätehuolto in the past summer in in one of their landfills. The summer job experience has been really useful in the project so far and I think I will draw ideas from the experience throughout the project.

My road to study environmental engineering at TUT hasn’t been the most straightforward. I was born and raised in the windy city of Lahti. After high school and a year of service in the army I moved from Lahti, the Chicago of Finland, to Jyväskylä aka the Athens of Finland to study physics at the University of Jyväskylä. Studying pure physics for little over a year made me realize that I might like more the technical side of things - so in 2013 I found myself in Tampere, the Manchester of Finland, studying automation technology at Tampere University of Technology.

The summer before I began at TUT I worked as a garbage truck driver. The salary was quite good and so as few of my friends also had a little extra in their pocket we decided to go backpacking around South-East Asia and Tanzania. Throughout the experiences I had travelling and working as a garbage man I found out that the World could need some problems solvers in the environmental field. So, as I was sitting on a heap of plastic bottles that had been washed away on the shore on a small island in the coast of Tanzania, I filled out the program exchange application to study environmental engineering. From that point on I’ve been eager to find out new solutions in the way we handle our waste.

- Mikko -