Student ideas
As was the case last year, students were specifically invited to take part in 2024, as a student prize is also up for grabs alongside the three main prizes and the audience prize. Two proposals from students at the HSRW made it through to the final round. The theme is sustainable consumption: the duo Abdul Rahman El Sibai and Danial Shargi want to develop an app to promote local products and services. Arash Sagi’s focus is on inclusion and participation. His idea: to use an algorithm to convert images that people with normal vision can perceive visually into tactile images for blind and visually impaired people.
Green classroom and hands-on experience in Kleve schools
This year, two comprehensive schools from the Kleve school district have submitted their own ideas. The Gesamtschule am Forstgarten aims to automatically water the greenhouse in the school garden using collected rainwater. There is a great deal of technology behind this. It provides a practical application for pupils on technology courses and in the gardening club. The Joseph Beuys Comprehensive School is hoping to create ‘green classrooms’: planters on the walls are intended to act as vertical gardens in the classrooms, creating a better indoor environment and learning atmosphere.
Turning old into new
Under the motto ‘upcycling’, two further entrants have qualified for the final round. For the past three years, the Kleve Vocational Training Centre (BBZ) has been using wood – which is actually a waste product from the Kässbohrer company in Goch – in various projects to create nesting boxes, seating and more. The plan now is to use the wood to build 17 raised beds and design them in line with the 17 Sustainable Development Goals. The Kleve-based concept store Très Chig Studio also wishes to explore the theme of upcycling in greater depth and offer workshops on upcycling, sustainable fashion and DIY. To this end, the workshop space needs to be expanded and the technical equipment upgraded.
Sharing rather than owning
Philip Weykamp envisages a neighbourhood car-sharing scheme to encourage more frequent use of vehicles and, in the long term, reduce the number of vehicles in Kleve and the surrounding area. Community-oriented living is the idea behind the EcoParkKleve initiative. The plans of the group – comprising around 30 people who wish to put sustainable living into practice in a small, communal space – are already very concrete.
That leaves the Arenacum Kleve Museum and the question posed by Tim Werken. The Arenacum Museum, based in Rindern, aims to encourage people to perceive their everyday surroundings in Kleve in a new way through its SOUND TREE project. To this end, stone pyramids are to be erected near trees. When the QR codes embedded there are scanned by a smartphone app, the respective environmental parameters are transformed into a musical soundscape. Tim Werken, on the other hand, asks: “What happens to the waste heat from biogas plants?” It’s a good question, because what many people probably don’t realise is that biogas plants produce not only electricity but also waste heat. This is often left unused due to high financial costs. That is set to change. To this end, Tim Werken is now seeking to get in touch with biogas plant operators to highlight untapped potential and find efficient solutions.
The task now for the ten teams of entrants is to create a poster and presentation to impress and win over the audience at the public presentation on 12 September at the HSRW’s Kleve campus. HSRW and the City of Kleve are already inviting anyone interested to attend the event. Visitors’ votes will be decisive in determining the winner of the audience award. The award ceremony will take place immediately after the presentations.
Background
The ‘Klever Birne’ ideas competition is a collaboration between the TransRegINT project at Rhine-Waal University of Applied Sciences and the City of Kleve. The sustainability prize was awarded for the first time in 2023. One of the aims is to raise awareness of sustainability issues amongst people in Kleve and the surrounding area and to identify areas for innovation.
Through the ‘TransRegINT – Transformation of the Lower Rhine Region: Innovation, Sustainability, Participation’ project, Rhine-Waal University of Applied Sciences has set itself the goal of helping to shape sustainable change in the region on a science-based foundation. The project is funded by the ‘Innovative University’ programme of the Federal Ministry of Education and Research. This funding initiative supports universities in finding creative solutions to the pressing challenges of our time based on research findings. ‘TransRegINT’ will receive funding totalling just under ten million euros until the end of 2027. This will enable the development of solutions to shape the region’s future in line with the United Nations’ 17 Sustainable Development Goals.
Contact
Christina Martens
‘Interaction Hub’ Coordinator, TransRegINT
Project, Centre for Research, Innovation and Transfer
Tel.: +49 (0)2821 806 73-9637
Email: christina.martens@hochschule-rhein-waal.de
