Business Challenge "Recycling – The Need and Opportunity" - Ekopak as supporter of Third National Competition
Recycling - The Need and Opportunity is the main topic of the Third National Competition of high school students in entrepreneurship "Business Challenge 2015", which takes place on 7th and 8th April in Sarajevo. It is organized by the incubator of social innovation "Munja" whose supporter is Ekopak.
This was a two-day competition in which participated 100 high school students from 31 city of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The goal of the project is to encourage the development of healthy entrepreneurship of young people, raise awareness about business and entrepreneurship and thereby influence the increase in youth employment through self-employment, or entry into entrepreneurial activity.
As a supporter of the competition, through the
theme of recycling, Ekopak opened a large area in which it is possible to
devise a number of entrepreneurial activities, and also learn about the need of
separate collection and disposal of packaging waste and its recycling process.
"Recycling and reuse of packaging waste in our
country is an industry that is established by adopting adequate laws and
bylaws. Since we are, by some segments of solid waste management, at the
beginning of the adoption of European practices and experiences and their
application in our country, young people have two important challenges:
Raising awareness of the importance of separate collection
and recycling of packaging waste. This is targeted on a group of children of preschool
and school age which itself speaks about the long life of the process that
begins with the arrival of Ekopak. Now we educate generations to which separate
collection of waste should become a culture of living when those generations
start running their households.
"The development of recycling capacities for particular
types of packaging waste entrepreneurs should recognize as an opportunity for
investment. It is well known that our country has no facilities for
the recycling of glass packaging waste, multilayer packaging waste, for example
Tetra Pak and similar. This is the area that provides opportunities for
starting a new business. On the other hand, significant amounts of these types
of packaging is disposed of in landfills, and those collected selectively are exported
to recycling facilities to countries in the region. When we look at all that -
we have a new business challenge, preservation of natural resources and a clean
environment, " said director of Ekopak, Amela Hrbat.
The winning teams of the competition will represent
Bosnia and Herzegovina at the regional competition in late April in Montenegro.