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Design Challenge 2019 - Terms and conditions
1.    THE PURPOSE AND OBJECTIVES OF THE COMPETITION

The aim of the CIRC4Life Eco Design challenge 2019 is to engage citizens EU and world wide into developing new informative visualizations for sustainable consumer goods. The visualizations created during the competition shall encourage  consumers more sustainable choices, and create awareness over the sustainability factors related to the lifecycle of the products.

 

The most suitable visualizations will be tested in real-life environment in three industrial areas: LED lighting products, meat supply chain, and vegetable farming and food. The testing will be conducted in an online web-store as well as in packaging of physical products.

2.    ORGANIZING PARTY

CIRC4Life is an EU collaborative innovation project supported by the European Commission’s H2020 Circular Economy programme. The project consortium consists of 17 partners across eight EU counties. The total project funding is 7.2 million euros including the grant of 6.3 million Euros from the European Commission, and 0,9 million Euros from the industrial partners. The project aims to develop three business models along the product value chain:

  • co-creation of products/services

  • sustainable consumption

  • collaborative recycling and reuse

The business models are demonstrated in four industrial areas: LED lighting products, computer tablets, meat supply chain, and vegetable farming and food.

3.    THE ECO-PONT APPROACH

One of the key elements of CIRC4Life innovation project is the “eco-point” approach, which is defined as follows:

 

Eco-points are a way of rewarding consumers by accumulating points if they adopt an eco-friendly behavior.  It shows consumers the direct consequences of their choices on the environment when buying, reusing or recycling products or services. By using an app on their smartphones, a consumer will be able to scan a product and find out the impact of buying one product over another one. If they recycle or reuse a purchased product, they will get points (eco-credits) rewarding this behavior.

  • Eco-point is a cumulative value, which accounts for an aggregate of the ecological impacts throughout the product’s whole supply chain. Eco-point, which is an absolute value, is produced via utilizing the method of life cycle impact assessment (LCIA). Each product is associated with an eco-point, which is calculated through the product value chain, in which the use stage is included.

  • Eco-debit shows the customer’s negative ecological impact resulted from the products purchased. Since eco-debit represents a negative impact, it is assigned with a negative sign ‘-‘ to eco-point.

  • Eco-credit is used to credit the customer’s positive behaviour to recycle products which reach their end-of-life (EoL) or end-of-use (EoU) stage. In other words, customer will get the eco-credits when they recycle products. In contrast to the eco-debit, the eco-credit is a positive value, which reflects the positive behaviour of consumers via recycling/reuse activities.

  • Eco-account and Eco-balance enables consumers to track their daily footprints on environment by recording their purchasing (eco-debit) and recycling (eco-credit) activities into single account. Within the eco-account, the product’s eco-debits are traded off by eco-credits; in other words, the eco-debits can be offset with the eco-credits which the consumers earn via recycling their products. The eco-balance is calculated based on the sum of the eco-debits and eco-credits earned, resulting in the value of eco-balance.

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The eco-point approach should be taken into consideration when designing the eco-visualization, as products and consumer goods have an individual eco-point value, which should be displayed on the packaging.

4.    PARTICIPATION AND THE TIMETABLE

Registration is open until 24th September 2019 on the project website www.circ4life.eu/challenge-description. After the registration, the participant will receive an information package via email. The information package will include the following:

  • existing  knowledge about end-user preferences on the topic

  • guidance on conducting the survey, and how to use the results as a basis for the visualisation

  • guidance on concept testing and development

A participant will agree on the terms and conditions by filling in the registration form.

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The deadline for submitting the competition entries is 29th September 2019. Within a week, the jury will conduct a pre-selection based on the evaluation criteria, and 5-10 best competition entries will be displayed on the project website for two weeks, while citizens are encouraged to evaluate and comment the illustrations.

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 The winner will be selected by the jury, and shall be announced on 24th October 2019.

5.    COMPETITION ENTRIES

The deadline for submitting the competition entries is 29th September 2019. The competition entry shall include the following, or it can be disqualified:

  • the individual eco-visualization as .pdf, .jpg, or .png The detailed image requirements can be found on the Design Challenge Participant Guidelines

  • an example of applying the visualisation at least on one of the following templates:

    • ALIA product packaging, displaying 0,43 eco-points for meat product

    • ONA online store, displaying 44 eco-points for a lighting product

    • an application screen, displaying 0,33 eco-points for organic potatoes

  • a report on the design process and end-user feedback (based on a template)

All the templates mentioned in this section can be downloaded from https://www.circ4life.eu/material.

6.    ASSESSMENT CRITERIA

Competition entries will be evaluated based on the following criteria:

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End-user requirements

How well the solution addresses the identified end-used requirements, and how well these requirements are visualized? What kind of feedback the design solution receives when displayed on the competition website?

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Impact

Organizer is looking for solutions that have impact. Impact can be measured by the scale of the change the created potentially could have. In this case, the visualization should be able capture the consumer’s attention and display sustainability information in such a way that would support the consumer to make more sustainable purchasing decisions. 

 

Solution focused

How well can the illustration be applied to different types of consumer goods, packages, labels and online platforms?

 

Eco-points

How well does the illustration reflect eco-point approach?

7.    JURY

The jury is formed by the organizer and will consist project partner representatives. Jury will base their decision on the ranking of the competition entries according to the assessment criteria listed in the section 6.

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  • Person 1: Daizhong Su, Project Coordinator

  • Person 2: Teemu Santonen, Principle lecturer

  • Person 3: Aletta Purola, Service Designer

  • Person 4: ALIA representative

  • Person 5:  Jonathan Smith

  • Person 6:  ONA representative

8.    THE PRIZE AND TERMS FOR AWARDING IT

The winner of the CIRC4Life Design Competition will receive an invitation to a CIRC4Life Innovation Camp, to be held in Spain in 2020.  All travelling and accommodation costs are to be covered. All meals are to be covered during the Open Innovation Camp working days. The prize will be awarded to 1 competition entry. If a competition entry is submitted by a team, the team shall internally make the decision of the person participating in the Innovation Camp. The organizer reserves the right not to declare a winner if the jury finds that none of the competition entries submitted fulfils the assessment criteria. The jury’s decision is not subject to appeal.

9.    THE ORGANISER’S RIGHTS AND RESPONSIBILITIES

During and after the competition, the organizer has the right to publish and communicate on their external and internal websites and other internal and external communication channels, the names of the teams and their members as well as descriptions of the competition entries. For this purpose, each team member hereby grants the aforementioned the right to use the name and pictures of the team and the team members in, among other things, press releases, marketing material, articles, and videos. The team understands that the competition entries shall be presented to the jury, the other participating teams and various third parties.

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By participating in the competition person agrees that the personal data (such as name, nationality, and age) is processed by the organizer in accordance with the privacy policy, which can be accessed through here.

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A participant or a team may at any time withdraw from the competition by notifying the organizer. The organizer retains the right to amend these rules during the competition. Any amendments to the rules will be announced, and the revised rules will be published on the competition website. Any amendment to the rules will enter into force at the time of their publishing.

10.    PROPERTY RIGHTS

Each participant hereby grants to the organizer, CIRC4life research project, free of charge and royalty free, a non-exclusive, worldwide, perpetual right to use and modify the results and materials created in this competition. The rights will be used for research and development purposes by the organizer.

11.    MISCELLANEOUS

To the extent allowed under law, the organizer has no liability whatsoever to the team or a team member for any damage, claim or liability arising out of the competition or the CIRC4Life Design Challenge competition rules.

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