Building a Smart and Waste-Free Destination

Co-Initiators:

Building a smart destination

Prior to the Corona pandemic, the tourism sector was not only growing rapidly and consistently, but it was also one of the most important sectors of the economy. About one in ten employees in the world had a job directly related to tourism.

As an employment-intensive industry, tourism offers especially emerging and developing countries great opportunities to build infrastructure, create jobs and thus income opportunities, promote local economic cycles, preserve natural resources and reduce poverty among the population.

After the immense collapse of the sector in the context of the Corona pandemic, it is now even more important to rethink tourism in a sustainable and environmentally friendly way. Digital innovation and opportunities to create smart, safe and healthy tourism destinations can be an important catalyst for this transition by building a smart touristic destination.

And this is where our Challenge with the city of Portoviejo - the capital of the Province of Manabí - in Ecuador comes in.

Challenge

The goal is to use technology to generate an attractive city for tourists with a responsible consumption of resources, reducing the amount of solid waste and improving the quality of life of the population of Portoviejo. In addition, it seeks to promote good practices for the care of tourist sites by citizens and tourists:

How can we build a smart touristic destination and accelerate economic, social and sustainable development?

The scope of potential solutions is deliberately broad, and you have a vast playing field from concrete digital solutions to conceptual solid waste management solutions to answer the key question above. It can be achieved through identifying heat maps, knowing who the target audience is, use of augmented reality, waste separation mechanisms, waste treatment, reuse and recycling.

More inspiring input can be found in the tab “Important details” as well as “Submission”.

Innovate2030 – SDG11

This Challenge is part of the Innovate2030-SDG11 Innovation Program. The program is jointly initialized by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) and its new lab for digital innovations – digilab – in collaboration with the Make-IT Alliance.

Questions or looking for support?

If you want to talk to someone from our team about your approaches, you need more information or questions arise, you are welcome to book a Q&A call with our project manager Nico or write to us anytime via the chat on this platform to your right.