It is sponsored by Aigües de Mataró and the Maresme Waste Treatment Consortium, in addition to the support of Mataró City Council.
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The TecnoCampus presented last Friday, February 5, what is the third university-company chair that has been launched since the inauguration of the park. This is the Chair of Circular Economy and Sustainability, which is in addition to the existing ones: in Aging and Quality of Life and in Social and Cooperative Economy.

The chairs, pointed out the general director of the TecnoCampus, Josep Lluís Checa, are an instrument available to universities to go hand in hand with the private sector and public institutions in research and transfer. On this occasion, the chair was born from the impetus of the two patrons: Aigües de Mataró -public company of the Mataró City Council- and the Consortium for the Treatment of Waste of the Maresme, whose presidency falls to the mayor of Mataró , David Bote. At the end of the presentation, Bote pointed out that the Next Generation funds open doors for investments in areas such as the one that will be studied by the Chair of Circular Economics.

The director of the Chair, Sònia Llorens, pointed out that, if we analyze the data regarding annual consumption and emissions, “it can be concluded that our consumption model is absolutely unsustainable, and requires urgent action towards new forms of production. and consumption ". In this line, the Chair will focus on providing the academic means for research, training, technology transfer and dissemination that allow training and empowering the agents driving change towards this new, more sustainable model." In the implementation of the circular economy, we must reincorporate patterns of behavior from the past and apply new technologies to it, as well as involving society, public entities and industry. "

The President of the Water Board of Mataró and Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Chair, Manuel Mas, remarked that, at the time, the initiative of the Consortium for the Treatment of Waste of the Maresme was a pioneer in Catalonia, and was convinced that the commitment to create the chair responds to an evolution of society to seek new mechanisms of sustainability. "The Aigües de Mataró company thought it would be good to allocate resources to think about the future and promote some initiative in the field of the university," said Mas.

Carles Salesa, technical director of the Consortium for the Treatment of Waste of the Maresme, pointed out for his part that “in the more than 30 years of experience we have achieved that the Mataró-Maresme brand has become a benchmark brand and of prestige in the field of waste ”. It is this "strategic vision", he added, that should allow "the development of an innovative and ambitious circular economy project".

In the inaugural lecture, UAB Professor Emeritus Jordi Batrolí, a member of the Chair's advisory board, emphasized that "there are many indicators of the biocapacity for sustainable land regeneration". But at the same time, he issued this warning: "We cannot exceed this capacity for system regeneration."