The 4th UIC Zero Waste Railways Workshop held successfully in Zurich at SBB’s invitation
The event kicked off with a technical visit to SBB-CFF-FFS’s Zurich Central Station and Zurichwerkstadt, and highlighted a range of good practices blending cross-sector collaboration, cross-sector innovation, and systems thinking. Approximately 35 participants representing railway undertakings, consulting firms, and rail suppliers from France, Switzerland, Italy, Korea, Austria, Netherlands, Japan, Finland, and the United Kingdom attended the workshop in person, with another 28 participating online.
The topics addressed were systems thinking, anti fragile, collaborative working, and innovative products based on secondary raw materials and new business models, all of which led to interesting discussions and interactions.
The workshop ended with a call to rail-transport-value-chain stakeholders to:
- Increase collaboration
- Embrace new business models
- Invite strategy leads within organisations to become familiar with the systemic challenges of resources
- Consider asset value and hidden costs of projects right from the start
- Promote material reuse to reduce the need for raw materials
- Use a “learning from the future” approach to make their systems antifragile
- Forge partnerships with local authorities and other industry sectors to close the loop for end-of-life products and propose new products
- Learn from other sectors, such as in construction, where the designer’s role is key for successful circular projects
- Ensure new ideas are endorsed at management level for better integration
- Rely on data to ensure transparency and reliability throughout the entire supply chain
- Take advantage of AI to increase possibilities for innovation
We have to act now as the world is running out of resources!
For further information please see the event information at Save the date and call for speakers for the Zero Waste Railways workshop “Cross sector collaborations and innovations”, Zürich, 24 April 2024.
Or on the shortage of resources see the EU Critical Raw materials list.
