Knowledge Transfer Network launched to cut business waste

Mr Jones is to chair the Resource Efficiency Knowledge Transfer Network, an initiative backed by an initial three years' worth of funding from the Department of Trade and Industry's technology programme.

” Three billion people live in China and India – 10 times the number of people in the EU – and all are now aspiring to our lifestyles. This can't be sustained. “
– Peter Jones
Born out of the Mini-waste Faraday programmes, the Knowledge Transfer Network (KTN) will encourage the sharing of knowledge between companies and academics in order to cut the amount of waste produced.

Launching the KTN at the House of Commons last night, Mr Jones said it would effectively become a “knowledge warehouse” for businesses all over the globe.

He said: “The Knowledge Transfer Network is a map, a network to solutions to stop wasted resources and expenditure.”

Explaining the reasoning behind setting up the network, Mr Jones highlighted the Biffaward-funded Mass Balance Movement, launched on Tuesday (see letsrecycle.com story), and its assessment that if the rest of the world had a UK lifestyle, three planets would be needed to support the population.

Mr Jones said: “Three billion people live in China and India – 10 times the number of people in the EU – and all are now aspiring to our lifestyles. This can't be sustained. We have really got to change society, and we don't have much time to achieve it.”

NISP
Managed by consultants C-Tech Innovation, the Resource Efficiency KTN will work nationally and regionally hand-in-hand with the DTI-funded “waste exchange”, the National Industrial Symbiosis Programme (NISP).

Arnold Black, operations director for the KTN, explained to letsrecycle.com that while NISP's role is to allow businesses to make use of other businesses' unwanted outputs, the KTN will provide the expertise and technology to turn unusable wastes into materials that can be used by other businesses.

Related links:

Resource Efficiency KTN NISP Envirowise

Mr Black also explained that the KTN differs from the work of the government's Envirowise service, in that Envirowise works to show businesses the basics in cutting their environmental impacts.

Not all information within the KTN will be fully available to the general public, he said, with companies offered confidentiality for commercially sensitive issues. “But, there is also a public area for the advertising of any information, so anyone can put their work out to the broader spectrum,” Mr Black said.