How I applied for the Circular Economy Journey Bengaluru.
It was 1st of May. It was late in midnight, I was trying to get some sleep and had rested for the day. I couldn’t sleep and woke up a little after midnight that day to have some water. I caught hold of my mobile phone and opened LinkedIn, which became a habit of mine to just frequently check social media apps for absolutely no reason. I found the post of Second Muse at the top of my feed, a call for applications. I saved the post and went back to sleep. It felt like a calling of a sort, the entire few minutes of eerie episode of me waking up from sleep to find a call of applications. Thus began my true journey in the field of sustainability.
Over the next few days I was going through the website to gather more information regarding the journey and the history of the organisation in organising such journeys in the past. The Climate-KIC has organised more than 70 of such journeys in the past in Europe and this was their first time organizing such event in India. This added credibility to the program and prompted me further to explore the opportunity to take part in the journey. My focus then was shifted towards the two Q&A sessions that were being organized for the journey. I opted to join the first session on 14
May 2024, which proved to be fruitful, since I had a lot of questions to ask regarding the journey.
It was mentioned on the website that the categories of people they are expecting to intake into the journey. Since I don’t really fall into any certain category, I was sceptical about my eligibility for the program. In addition to the eligibility, I had few other queries about the program. It was made clear that I was indeed eligible to the workshop and the cohort of 30 individuals which were to be selected for the workshop are expected to be climate conscious and possess an entrepreneurial mindset.
https://journey.climate-kic.org/bengaluru
With these clarified, I proceeded to the application. It was a google form with multiple pages to be filled with the penultimate page being the most important. It asks you to list why do you want to participate in the cohort and also to upload a 3 minutes YouTube video to prove your English language skills. These two are the main parts of the application along with the one where you will upload your CV.
Here’s my essay answering why I would like to be part of the journey
“My environmental concern inflated in January 2022, when I was working as a GET at a manufacturing plant and came into the chip recycling unit that burned 1000 Kg of wood every 8 hours to generate steam for recycling chips. The irony of burning wood has weighed heavily on my conscience, so I decided to move, and ended at a start-up. Even at this start-up, a lack of emphasis on sustainability with a prevalence of ROI based business models have limited my efforts to make sustainable ideas a reality.
I saw these limitations as design failures and set out to improve my design talents with a master’s degree. I’ve been attending webinars as I prepare for my impending master’s degree when one webinar introduced me to the concepts of circularity and regenerative design. The relationship between plastic disposal and cement kilns, which I couldn’t realize prior to the webinar, is an example of circularity. The journey at Bengaluru, in my opinion, is a significant, necessary step towards deepening my understanding of the circularity through practical experience. During my master’s degree, I aim to focus on circularity and regenerative design. I’m hoping to obtain first-hand knowledge with the latest circularity trends.”
Coming to the three minute YouTube video, I prepared it in the following way. Firstly I had jotted down the 6 key points I would like to address in my video and then proceeded to build paragraphs around them. The end video did not exactly pan out as planned owing to my last minute extempore improvements, but overall this jotting down game me the framework of my video.
Here are the six points which I wanted touch upon during my video.
1. The burning of wood and desire to understand sustainability
2. The introduction to circular economy in a webinar
3. The familiarity of circular economy with example of plastic disposal and cement kilns
4. The Ellen Macarthur foundation — it’s case studies.
5. My interest in climate change and my personal research about micro plastics and their toxicity.
6. For 3 minutes, I ought to have 700 words. This calculation was from Medium word count and read times relation. Medium helped me there :)
The paragraphs based on these points were as follows.
I am Vamsi Madhav, a mechanical engineer from Vishakhapatnam, India. I studied at Amrita School of Engineering, Coimbatore, and worked for two years. For the first 10 months, I’ve worked as a GET in an alloy wheel manufacturing plant. For the next 15 months, I’ve worked in a robotics start-up in Pune. I was part of a winning team that came all India Second in Altair Start-up challenge. Currently I am a prospective master’s student for the Innovation Design Engineering Program at the Royal College of Art. As a build up towards this degree, I am hoping to be a part of this circular economy journey at Bangalore.
My first interaction with climate change happened during my first job. I was visiting the various facilities in the manufacturing unit, one day, when I came across the chip recycling plant which was supposed to reduce the waste and strengthen the circularity of the company. It burns 1000 kilograms of wood per 8 hours. It runs 3 shifts a day, and throughout the 90% of the year. This shattered my world-view. On introspection, I felt a clear sense of what role should engineering play in the world. With this, I started trying to make my products less carbon positive, with the use of recycled materials and modular design, which enables easy replacement.
Along the way, I was concerned primarily about the micro plastic pollution that plagues the deepest of the oceans along with the pristine and remote heights of mountains. During this reading, I came across some plastic disposal methods that were circular economy models. One of them is the use of plastic in cement kilns as a fuel and also as a raw material. I did not know that this was a circular model until I was introduced to the circular economy concept at a webinar hosted by the RCA. This webinar introduced me to the concept of circular economy, which lead me to the Ellen MacArthur foundation upon further probe.
Today, I want to combine climate change and sustainability. It is well known that microplastics are heating up the ocean and therefore reducing the carbon sequestering capabilities of the ocean. Majority of Bangalore’s 6000-ton daily waste in plastics. I believe to tackle this problem; we need to look for plastic disposing alternatives that are similar to the cement kiln one. From my knowledge, Bengaluru is surrounded by many rural areas with excel in brick manufacturing. If we can explore the alternative of plastic disposal in the brick industry with any substantial reduction in the quality of the bricks, I think we can divert a lot of this daily plastic waste towards those rural areas, and use them as fuel for brick furnaces.
This is my idea based on the problem statement provided for the journey at Bengaluru. Upon going through the Ellen MacArthur foundation, I found many products as a service model. Such a model, in my opinion, would be difficult to implement in India, but I think we can explore the alternatives possible in the Bengaluru setting with an inspiration from the case studies from the Ellen MacArthur foundation.
So, to summarize, my experience in the fields of climate change and circular economy is limited to bookish knowledge with no real hands-on experience. I have a lot of passion and enthusiasm for the fields to improve the planet and safeguard it for future generations. I hope I would get to take part in the journey. Thank you for taking your valuable time to listen to me. Have a great day.
Finally after a two digit number of tries, I got a good video, which I chose to upload on YouTube and add the link in the application. In the end, the video ended up being for 5 minutes instead of the intended 3 minutes.
Initially the deadline was on 30th May 2024. But it was extended till 13 June 2024. That’s because of lack of turn out of applicants I guess. This guess is based on the turn out for the first information session on 14th May, in which only two of us turned up. But on LinkedIn, there was a huge response from Europe towards this journey.
The results were announced on 20th June 2024, following which I received an email stating that I am selected for the journey and asking me to confirm my participation in the journey. After confirmation, the location of the event was declared to be wood rose hotel in Bengaluru.
I am excited to be a part of this journey and to start my real journey in the field of sustainability and circularity. I am planning on updating the details of my 14 day workshop on a day to day basis here.
Looking forward to connecting with fellow circularity enthusiasts.
That’s it from me.
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Be well, Have a great day!