LocationsUnlocking Progress: Navigating the potential of biowaste circulatory within the City of Skopje using sensemaking
July 22, 2024
Part 1
Making sense of biowaste since 2021
In the ever-evolving landscape of global development, navigating complex challenges requires more than just traditional problem-solving approaches such as linear thinking. The UNDP’s Strategic Plan for 2022 – 2025 outlines that there is no silver bullet for whole-of-society puzzles and action is required via collective efforts and integrated approaches. To accommodate this action, the UNDP Administrator recently announced a shift to go ‘beyond projects’ and embrace portfolios as a modus operandi. He also stressed that UNDP North Macedonia, through its participation in the City Experiment Fund, was among the early adopters of the portfolio approach.1 The dynamic portfolio on biowaste not only helped us learn about how we can tackle wicked challenges, but also served a great source of knowledge and innovation on what and how we activate the change.
Contextual Awareness (deep listening)
The first iteration of the biowaste portfolio began with a deep dive into the contextual nuances of why biowaste matters. By exploring the Skopje’s waste ecosystem, we realized that biowaste had significant potential to generate new jobs, enhance environmental practices, and provide a space for experimenting with circular economy approaches that could potentially benefit all of Skopje’s residents and private sector players.
Despite the presence of many stakeholders within Skopje’s waste management ecosystem, little was being done to transform biowaste or improve the system. The portfolio’s design phase relied heavily on data to demonstrate the availability of biowaste in the city. It showed that common biowaste from products such as tea, citrus and coffee can be transformed into valuable products, adding value to the system. In a nutshell, we aimed to determine the optimal amount of biowaste needed to transform into specific products to maximize the value for the system. For example, we found out that 10kg of citrus waste is worth $0.29-0.43 if processed into essential oils.
The success of this data-driven approach showcased the potential of biowaste and paved the way for further exploration and innovation in transforming biowaste into valuable resources, which also promises new and greener job opportunities, especially for youth.
Expanding Horizons: Biotechnologies and New Opportunities
The second iteration of the portfolio saw us dig deeper in understanding the potential of biowaste, particularly exploring emerging biotechnologies. This effort focused on creating new, greener and well-paid jobs. To that end, and as one of the winners of the prestigious Green Shark Challenge award, we worked jointly with City of Skopje, UNICEF to establish the first biohacking laboratory in the country. The lab, now owned by the City of Skopje and the public enterprise Landfill Drisla, aims to empower entrepreneurs and innovators to start new businesses, create employment, drive economic development, and foster growth opportunities out of biowaste, making science fun for future innovators.
Soon after, the first programs and products emerged. The Biohack My world startup challenge brought together 11 startups, each exploring the potential of biowaste to create products and minimum viable products. One of the teams later managed to secure funding, totaling $50k+, for their innovation in creating artificial skin from kombucha waste. On the other hand, scientists also experimented with a wide range of biowaste applications, even creating bioplastic out of potato waste in the process.
The activations of the various portfolio options had one goal at hand – to probe the system and introduce disruptive change. Through various activations, we aimed to identify opportunities for systemic transformation. While this approach limits us to the activation of a few options, it also empowers other players in the ecosystem to act and own specific elements.
In the two iterations of the portfolio, we activated nine options in total, however, the crown jewel and the most rewarding one was the establishing of the open biohacking laboratory. The biohacking lab was showcased at the COP28 Local Summit for Climate Action by the Mayor of Skopje as a public sector innovation to tackle climate change. It also gained international recognition at the World Cities Summit in Singapore. Additionally, the City of Skopje was recognized by Bloomberg Philanthropies’s Youth Climate Action Fund for the success of the first public biotechnology laboratory in the region, receiving an additional $50,000 in funding.
The success of Skopje's biowaste initiatives has shown the power of collaborative, innovative approaches in tackling urban challenges. As we look to the future, the next phase will delve deeper into leveraging biotechnologies and community engagement to further leverage biowaste. Stay tuned for Part 2 of this series, where we will explore the next steps in our journey toward a greener, more sustainable Skopje.
Part 2
Using sensemaking to sale engagement
From the establishment of the biohacking laboratory, we understood that without a strong buy-in from various stakeholders, the process might proceed more slowly than expected. To address this, in addition to providing the City of Skopje with catalytic funding for innovation and experimentation, we aimed to co-develop our options using sensemaking. Thus, we combined methods and tools from sensemaking, futures thinking, and institutional engagement to explore how these elements could contribute to optimizing efforts and fostering innovation within our dynamic learning portfolio on the transformational power of biowaste.
Recognizing the complexity of biowaste management, we used sensemaking to zoom out and see the broader picture of interconnected elements within the system. By stepping back, we identified key leverage points , partnerships and opportunity areas where small changes could lead to significant impacts. This broader perspective allowed us to see patterns and relationships that were not immediately apparent, facilitating more strategic and effective interventions in a holistic manner. We engaged with multiple stakeholders, encouraged unusual partnerships, including with government agencies, private sector entities, and community groups. This process highlighted the importance of integrating various initiatives and aligning them towards a common goal, ultimately fostering a more cohesive and impactful biowaste management strategy.
At the end of 2023, we convened a Skopje Waste Circularity and Opportunity: Sensemaking Session, gathering over 40 experts in the field, representatives from the City of Skopje, and government representatives working on the topic. During this session, we recognized that biowaste is a complex challenge that rarely fits neatly into one domain. We encouraged collaboration across disciplines, bringing together experts, stakeholders, and community representatives to provide diverse perspectives.
We relied heavily on sensemaking to better tease out the interconnections between these key agents and ongoing initiatives in Skopje related to biowaste, as well as ongoing projects at different levels within both the Country Office and the City of Skopje. Most importantly, we explored how these initiatives interact with each other.
Today, due to our portfolio work, the circular and biowaste economy is at the forefront of efforts to increase cooperation among various stakeholders in the ecosystem.
Futures Thinking: Envisioning Tomorrow
Sensemaking proved to be a pivotal moment in advancing Skopje's commitment to biowaste circularity and a more sustainable future. The review of stakeholders' circularity initiatives led to the creation of a stakeholder map and identification of needs. During the sessions, we shifted the focus towards empowering action with modules that included envisioning Skopje's waste-free future and establishing working groups related to waste collection, transformation, business, education, and governance.
In our heads, scaling of the portfolio at this stage turned to be not just about adding new activities and options, but about engaging new stakeholders and creating a deep commitment in other actors than those that started the portfolio. This is one of the key risks to portfolios - that they are too closely linked / owned by one stakeholder, and over time they just fail to live on their own. Exponential growth happens when many actors start doing things in the direction of the portfolio intent, without too tight orchestration, but using sensemaking from time to time to stay coherent.
That beeing said, we urged participants in all sensemaking session to craft action plans and prioritized initiatives for the next 6-12 months. The event culminated in the presentation of a manifesto, expressing commitment and gratitude, and outlining the roadmap for Skopje's waste transformation for the next years. This process laid the foundation for the next steps in our portfolio:
Creating a Biowaste Souvenir: To produce a product from transformed biowaste generated by the City of Skopje and its public enterprises. This biowaste souvenir aims to raise awareness that biowaste is a resource and can be turned into art. A multidisciplinary team has already been formed to work with the City of Skopje on creating a souvenir representing one of the city's landmarks. The hack is that it will not only be the first official souvenir produced by using biowaste, but it will be produced in the biohacking lab with the support of students from the chemical high school. (some early designs of the biowaste souvenir that will be created out of biowaste from risk husk waste and eggshells
- Combining Waste Streams: The City of Skopje is working on a project involving construction and demolition (C&D) waste. We aim to explore how to combine C&D waste and biowaste and how these two waste streams can be merged in order to create new sustainable products that the City can use in the near future, such as eco-pavements and bio bricks.
- Skills Development Program: We are developing and implementing a program to develop skills in biotechnologies and circularity for private sector companies in the country. The program, which will be launched in September 2024, is targeted at least 10 major companies working with biowaste. We hope that, through a dedicated program, these companies can use some of the already developed processes in the biohacking laboratory.
- Legislative Exploration: We will explore changes in legislation around waste management due to EU accession and their implications for cities, with a special emphasis on the City of Skopje. This includes reviewing the legal framework in the country to understand existing legislation that supports or prohibits mechanisms for paying for either damage either compensating damage or incentivizing positive impacts on the waste ecosystem, as well as determining jurisdiction. We need to understand what local municipalities can currently do in waste monetization and what policies need to be created to enable more freedom for municipalities.
- Tokenizing Biowaste: We asked the question how can we tokenize biowaste. This option is now focused on green token development to tackle biowaste management and recycling challenges. The initiative, supported by IRH UNDP through the CEF project, aims to create a comprehensive solution involving all relevant institutions regarding the green tokenization and implementation of proper biowaste management. Sensemaking is not a one-time activity; it's an ongoing, iterative process. Throughout the three iterations of our biowaste portfolio, new information emerged, forcing us to steer actions and adapt our methodology numerous times. However, we always ensured that our strategy and interventions remained relevant and effective, with the goal of transforming biowaste into a resource for a new industry.
Stay tuned as we continue to drive Skopje's sustainable transformation forward!
***The whole portfolio has been developed with the unselfish dedication of the following people: Armen Grigoryan, RR CO MKD, Sanja Bojanic, DRR CO MKD, UNDP Acceleration lab team Lazar Pop Ivanov, Ardita Zekiri, Vancho Naunov, Mariela Atanassova and Chora Foundations, Istanbul Regional Hub all involved from the City of Skopje, especially the Mayor Danela Arsovska and her team, Public Enterprise Drisla, all the experts that were engaged in the journey with a special mention to prof. Vesna Rafajlovska and prof. Jana Klopchevska, Bore Pucoski from UNICEF, UNICEF-UNDP Green Shark Tank Challenge team of Eleonora Gatti and Reina Otsuka, the Slovak Ministry of Finance as the main donor of the City Experiment Fund, the comms wizardry of Svetla Baeva and comms team of UNDP CO MKD.
***We aimed to make our portfolio speak through stories as much as possible. In sensemaking, stories play a powerful role. By constructing narratives that capture the experiences and voices of those affected by our portfolio, we created a scrollytelling web page that provides story telling context and potential solutions for biowaste.
