Young educated people with innovative “green” ideas are willing to change their fellow citizens’ lives. They are not afraid of competition; on the contrary, they seek it, stating that they are determined not to abandon Greece, even now, during the difficult period of crisis.
Giannis Mourgis, 24 years old, with studies in the Athens University of Economics and Business, the winner of the contest Call to Innovation -An Idea for 1,000,000 Greeks (a parallel action of TedxAcademy) and his main partner, Hippocrates Papadimitrakos, 27 years old, who has studied in the Department of Production and Management Engineering of Xanthi and is continuing his PhD.
They come from Kalamata, and given a major problem of their city, as well as of most Greek cities, that of waste management, they had the idea of Organery, in order to solve the problem of organic waste management.
Their proposal which won the competition, concerns the complete neighborhood composting with “smart” containers which digitally recognize the organic DNA of waste. Citizens are provided with incentives to participate in the process, as the system rewards in practice with multiple benefits every participant who follows the rules, for example, with discount coupons for supermarkets.
As Giannis Mourgis explained to AMNA, “The problem of organic waste management is particularly acute in the Greek territory because nowhere is there applied any composting system, despite the fact that the 51% of our organic waste is compostable. We support smart composting by placing intelligent management containers, which digitally recognize the organic DNA of each user’s waste, providing incentive for participation.”
“The novelty of our idea isn’t only the controlled composting process, but also the promotion of a new trend of creation of incentives through “gaming though”, interaction between the product and the citizen, known as Gamification”, notes Hippocrates Papadimitrakos, speaking to AMNA.
Regarding the benefits citizens derive from the application of this idea, Giannis Mourgis pointed out that “For the first time, Greek scientists have proves in such a specific way, how an economy can take advantage of its waste in order to produce value for every citizen individually. Therefore, the citizen has a direct contributory benefit. This benefit will be economic, social and moral. Behind this idea, we see a cleaner environment, a modern interactive city, a rapid saving of public funds. And for the first time Greeks will be ahead of northern Europeans regarding the production of urban innovation, by taking advantage of the Modern Greek specificity of throwing garbage in our neighborhood.”
“The percentage of organic waste found in the garbage of a family on a daily basis ranges from 30% to 60%. Don’t you think that reducing the volume of landfills and giving value to waste, does not change people’s lives?” wondered Hippocrates Papadimitrakos.
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