For happy vegetables

In September, the NECSTouR fair took place in Alpbach. The department for "Environmental, Process & Energy Engineering" was represented there together with "Agrarmarketing Tirol GmbH". The fair attendees were able to inform themselves for four days around the topic of sustainability, especially in relation to tourism. NECSTouR stands for Network of European Regions for Competitive and Sustainable Tourism. The background of the participation of the Entrepreneurial School® was the ambitious goal of the project VerStraGem.

In this project, sustainable recycling strategies for vegetable residues are developed in a Tyrolean context. In a broader sense, these products should also find a distribution market in local tourism. The central question of the project is therefore to evaluate how much of the cultivated vegetables actually ends up on the market and how much is discarded in the production chain. In the existing surveys - depending on the vegetable variety - mostly only the market conforms products are recorded. Therefore, the project aims to close the gap between cultivation and sale and to create a recycling concept for food and for residues.

The project has a well established consortium with the Entrepreneurial School®, the "Landwirtschaftskammer Tirol", the "Wirtschaftskammer Tirol", the "Verein der Tiroler Gemüsebauern", the "Abfallwirtschaft Tirol Mitte GesmbH", the "Tigas-Erdgas Tirol GmbH" and the "Agrarmarketing Tirol GmbH". At the fair insights were given into this future-oriented project and into the current surveys and strategies. Not only the visitors but also the employees of the project could profit from the lively exchange of ideas and the sharing of personal challenges in the course of the development of sustainable concepts.