Circular operations management – Facility management and ecology in balance

Creating an action based protocol voor the facility professional to stimulate sustainable behavior, to make the waste and raw material flows more sustainable and thereby contribute to the circular business operations.

With the government-wide program ‘The Netherlands Circular by 2050’, the Dutch government wants to transition towards a circular economy. In their leading role towards businesses and consumers.

The Dutch government has set themselves the goal to reduce the production of waste within their business operations to a minimum. The department of facility management can be a key player to achieve this goal. But the questions is how? Facility professionals experience bottlenecks which hinder them to achieve their goals. They don’t always have the right tools and knowledge at their disposal. This project therefore conducts action-oriented research around the question: “Which action based protocol gives the facility professionals the tools and knowledge to stimulate sustainable behavior, to make the waste and raw material flows more sustainable and thereby contribute to the circular business operations.”

Within two years, The Hague University of applied sciences will create this action based protocol together with its partners (Custodial agency and FM Haaglanden). The activities within the project are aimed at

1. stimulating sustainable behavior of the consumer,
2. stimulating sustainable behavior of the facility professional,
3. develop and implement the practical action based protocol and
4. disseminate the lessons learned in education, research and in practice.

Current situation

This project, financed by RAAK-publiek in combination with the efforts of our project partners, anticipates on the current shyness of actions of our facility professionals. Professionals who have to achieve ambitious goals within a short period of time. Goals such as using 50% less primary raw materials. The project is divided into different work packages.

You can easily throw it in the bin, right?

We are analyzing the automatic behavior of space users in relation to the creation and waste of trash. In an open innovative system, by using a living lab, we are observing and analyzing the behavior of the user. We are investigating how the physical space can be used to improve the automatic behavior concerning waste creation and disposal. Topics of research are the design of recycling bins, the position of facilities within the space and the use of gamification and nudging in practice.

PMD in jail

There is a lot to gain within the setting of the custodial institutions when it comes to (un)sustainable behavior of the users. By conducting practical research on the waste streams, we are testing different action perspectives within the walls of the prisons and analyzing how the sustainable behavior of the building users can be improved. Among other things we are executing base measurements on the residual waste of different prisons, we gain insight in the raw materials which are available within a prison and we analyze the potential sustainable behavior can have.

Garbage doesn’t exist

To investigate the full potential of waste, we include the entire chain of the process. So besides looking at the end of the process, we also include the beginning. We are investigating how sustainable behavior can be stimulated during the procurement process. By analyzing current tenders, conducting interviews with professionals from the field and by analyzing current procurement procedures we create a clear image of the process and identify the possibilities.