March 2006
Resource Efficiency Knowledge Transfer Network Is Launched
The Resource Efficiency Knowledge Transfer Network was launched in Parliament on 1 March as a successor to Mini-Waste Faraday to stimulate more efficient use of resources to the commercial benefit of UK businesses.
DTI Knowledge Transfer Networks (KTNs) seek to stimulate innovation in the UK’s key technology sectors by promoting collaboration, best practice and knowledge sharing between industry and academia. Stringent new and future environmental regulations, increasing world-wide demand for raw material and energy and the realities of climate change, make innovation enabling efficient use of resources critical for any business that wants to be sustainable.
KTN Bigger and Better than Mini-Waste Faraday
The DTI-funded Mini-Waste Faraday Partnership was started in 2002 with the intention of helping UK businesses in a number of industry sectors to use their resources more efficiently and so reduce their waste. Three years on and the Partnership represents around 210 organisations with more than 70 of these directly participating in collaborative science and technology projects with a value of over £6M.
With this record, the Mini-Waste Faraday Partnership was successful in its application to the DTI to be migrated from a Faraday Partnership to a Knowledge Transfer Network. The Resource Efficiency KTN broadens Mini-Waste Faraday's existing multi-sectoral scope to cover resource efficiency and waste minimisation in all areas of industry and commerce. It will feature a new level of service supported by a state of the art web portal platform.
Partnership Director Andrew Rowley becomes the Director of the Resource Efficiency KTN. In a message to all Mini-Waste members, he wrote, "at the heart of the new KTN is a very powerful web-based platform that has several knowledge transfer tools built into it. This web-portal, and the powerful tools within it, will be available for all network members to use."
The new Network will be much larger than the Faraday Partnership with thousands rather than hundreds of organisations participating. The new network will also allow multiple individuals from a single organisation to access the Network and its services - indeed this will be encouraged.
Resource Efficiency KTN is part of the Government’s £370 million Technology Programme designed to maximise UK competitiveness in the growing global economy. Given the increased funding, membership of this network "will be free to all (for the foreseeable future)," according to Rowley.
Resource Efficiency KTN Aims and Approach
The Resource Efficiency KTN aims to help UK industry and commerce minimise waste through the development and implementation of innovative technologies and processes. At the parliamentary launch on 1 March, Barry Sheerman MP, Co-Chair of the Associate parliamentary Sustainable Waste Group, presented the philosophy behind the approach.
With many businesses in the industrial and commercial sectors wasting over 50% of their resources according to their website, the Resource Efficiency Network will help UK companies reduce their waste by:
- Showing businesses how to make better use of materials and energy
- Using industrial wastes as a source of new products
- Processing recovered material into value-added resource
Alongside the advanced web-portal, services will be delivered by a nationwide team of Knowledge Transfer Managers. The ambition is to foster interaction between network members, enabling successful initiatives and ideas to propagate quickly through the business community.
The Resource Efficiency KTN is part-funded by the National Industrial Symbiosis Programme (NISP), in a strategic partnership whereby the Network will provide technology support to NISP, explained Peter Laybourn, Programme Director, NISP.
"Resource efficiency is an environmental imperative," says Andrew Rowley, "but it's also a challenge and an opportunity for the UK's innovators."
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