Meet & Learn: The Circular Economy
As part of its Meet & Learn Series, the QOOT Cluster brought together Lebanese enterprises and SMEs, knowledge providers, and support institutions in a networking event focusing on the circular economy, its importance, and how it can impact a certain business.
Businesses in the agriculture and food sector also had the opportunity to discover the support programs, grants, and funding possibilities happening in Lebanon, and got a chance to understand where to apply and get the right needed support.
QOOT’s Role in Promoting Circularity
The Meet & Learn event, hosted at the Loubnani Initiative by arcenciel – Galaxy Complex, emphasized the importance of clustering in one part and shed the light on concepts of circular economy and how the Lebanese crisis is affecting people’s mindset on adopting more sustainable measures in their businesses.
Valerie Zakka, QOOT Cluster Board Member and CEO at Zakka Technologies, welcomed the guests: “QOOT Cluster focuses on collaboration – a spirit that can’t be found in other entities or organizations. We also focus on networking and encouraging innovation and sustainability and work on bringing Lebanese Agri-Food stakeholders together to work and develop the sector in Lebanon.”
In his intervention, Ramy Boujawdeh, QOOT board member and COO at Berytech, discussed the many programs that are a potential for the Lebanese SMEs to join and benefit from through QOOT and benefit from. He added: “QOOT collaborated with several donors to design programs that create opportunities for innovators through different pillars including valorizing Lebanese research to commercialization and industry advancement. Through these programs, grants will be available for projects innovating in the agri-food sector.”
Marc Bouzeidan, QOOT Cluster Manager, discussed the upcoming activities which will benefit the stakeholders in showcasing their products at international fairs. He also focused on sustainability and circularity and the possibility of applying to programs that provide technical assistance to help in applying concepts of the circular economy in an agri-food business.
“Everyone will be communicated with details related to QOOT’s upcoming activities, whether they are members or potential members, we are focusing on facilitating trade missions in collaboration with European chambers of commerce, to help QOOTers enter the European markets,” detailed Bouzeidan.
Michele Saroufim, introduced Loubnani by Arc-En-Ciel and its scope of work and pointed to the collaboration with QOOT to help people in difficult times and create job opportunities: “Loubnani by Arc-En-Ciel would be a common ground for different institutions, through their mission in Lebanon which is to promote diversity, integration and development through 5 core programs: Agriculture & Environment, Mobility & Health, Responsible Tourism, Youth Empowerment, and Social Support.”
Insights on Circular Economy
The Meet & Learn event invited John Rbeiz, Environmental Sustainability Consultant, to introduce the concepts of Circular Economy. Rbeiz is an engineer, entrepreneur, and coach, passionate about all things related to people, the planet and projects that accelerate the transition to a circular economy.
“Circular Economy can be defined as having a product and transforming it into something new, that could be sold again and could be used again. This is how we go back to the idea of circulating materials as much as possible within the circular loop, where we take resources once, make something out of them, consume them, use them and instead of dumping them into land fields, we transform them into something new and give them a new life,” explained Rbeiz.
The event concluded with a networking session between stakeholders and QOOT members, sharing testimonials and success stories, and working on future collaborations.
