Case Study: Eco-I North West
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Working Together
Identifying key benefits and opportunities for universities and business to collaborate on sustainability.
Eco-I NW brings together business talent with University research leaders to support businesses in developing innovative solutions to environmental challenges across North-West England.
The Project
Working together, Eco-I NW helps deliver solutions to real-world challenges which help to preserve our planet and bringing added value to business. Eco-I NW know their work brings environmental benefits alongside economic advantages but want to look deeper into the work they do to see what works best and what could be improved. Cathy Olphin, a PhD researcher, is working with Eco-I NW to explore how collaborative partnerships can be maximised to encourage development that moves us closer to a net-zero future.
Cathy is speaking with businesses, academics, researchers and key stakeholders across Eco-I NW to identify what matters most to people across the partnership. Through identifying these priorities, she aims to help develop effective strategies that maximise benefits for everyone. These priorities include: addressing local environmental issues, staying ahead of sustainability regulations, building researcher skills and accessing changing consumer markets. Cathy is developing ways that we can best measure these impacts to identify what’s working best and inform future directions for sustainability partnerships.
“Collaboration brings such a wide range of benefits. Capturing these effectively is so important to show how valuable projects like Eco-I NW are for finding solutions to both local and global challenges.” - Cathy Olphin, Eco-i NW researcher
Cathy’s research highlights the importance of making sure stakeholders are at the centre of project evaluation, making sure that their needs are at the forefront of project targets. Evaluation also needs to really consider the project’s ‘place’; what works ‘here’ may not always work ‘there’.
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