AICTE organises Webinar on Circular Economy: System thinking and material flows for students
New Delhi : A Project guidance webinar for UG & PG students on “Circular Economy: system thinking and material flows” was held on 19th July 2022 through online mode. This programme was honoured by the Hon’ble Chairman of AICTE, Prof. Anil D. Sahasrabudhe and the Resource person was Ms. Shalini Goyal Bhalla, Director of International Council for Circular Economy, New Delhi. The welcome address was given by Dr. Amit Dutta, Director, Student Development Cell, AICTE. More than 1000 students registered online for this webinar and benefited in various ways with this programme. Dr. Amit Dutta emphasized that Waste has become the new raw material where in Circular Economy life cycle of products is extended by sharing, leasing, reusing, repairing, refurbishing. He outlined the various thesis and researches done on Circular Economy, showing the topic growing attention.
While addressing the gathering, Hon’ble Chairman, AICTE introduced the Resource person, Ms. Shalini Goyla Bhalla as the author of books on Circular Economy, working on Sustainable Development Goals, passionate about innovation, entrepreneurship and empowerment of youth and women. She has been associated with AICTE since long and has done a workshop on Circular Economy in AICTE. He highlighted how materials could be used and re-used in day to day life and in the Industry level as well. He also briefly touched upon the “Waste to Wealth Mission”.
Ms. Shalini Goyla Bhalla, in her key-note explained what is Circular Economy (CE) and why we needed. Unlike linear Economy, where natural resources are turned into products and then thrown away after use, CE employs re-used, sharing, repair, refurbishment, remanufacturing and re-cycling to create a closed loop system, thereby reducing waste, pollution and carbon emissions. She explained the need of economic activity to remain the same but the need to drastically reduce in resource consumption amongst least develop economies, emerging economies developed economies etc. A well balanced optimized material flow for production are needed to achieve some objective of CE. She concluded by talking about the difference between “System Thinking” and “Design thinking”, whereby design thinking is more of a corporate way of thinking. Whereas “System Thinking” is a top-down approach where we give equal weightage to the Business, Technology, People, Social, Economical etc. When taking a decision. However, both form of thinking needs to co-exist. She ended up thanking the participants & to reach out to her organization if one is interested in doing internship on Circular Economy.
