The football club is linked to a Dutch city with 180.000 inhabitants, and is playing in the “Keuken Kampioen Divisie” league, which is the second highest football competition in the Netherlands. The club welcomes each match about 14.000 to 19.000 visitors in the stadium and has the highest beer turnover of all football clubs in the Netherlands.

The club has a sustainable ambition. The use of disposable plastics will be phased out in the near future. Alternatives, like drinking glasses is, due to safety, forbidden in the stands. And also drinking beer (and soft drinks) from paper cups is not desirable.

The club is looking for a solution to replace the plastic cups to something more sustainable. The solution should in the meantime also reduce the waste disposal. The solution should also take into account that the product cannot hurt players when thrown from the stands on the field by a visitor and also cannot be used to hurt other visitors accidentally or on purpose in case of a fight. Furthermore, the preference is that the solution may not lead to longer waiting times at the counters.

The football club is looking for partners such as R&D-institutes, universities and SMEs with expertise in circular product design and/or production and subsequent logistics. In the first instance, the cooperation is envisaged within a technical cooperation agreement. When fits the purpose also other agreements, subsequent to a foreseen development program or part of the value chain, can be discussed.

IMPORTANT: This technical cooperation request refers to an innovation challenge published on the internet platform. If an organization expresses interest before closing date, it will be guided towards this open innovation platform. After registration participants can browse free through other submissions and engage in discussions. All submissions will get feedback by the company on this open platform.

The challenge opens on December 13th 2021 and closes on January 17th 2022. Mind that posts on this platform are not confidential. Beside open discussions on the platform, sharing of confidential information will be made possible on demand. After that, the organization will select from the chat active SME's, the SME's with whom they would like to cooperate in the development of a solution. Once the challenge is closed, Expressions of Interest for this technology request will be treated in the traditional way.

The football club is looking for proven solutions that could help them solving this challenge. The following expertise is considered: 

• Creative thinking 

• Product designers 

• Packaging technology 

• Sustainable experts 

• Waste management and logistics 

• Catering industry experts 

• Event safety specialist 

• Crowd management and behavioural change

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