We are still in pre-donation phase. We have made great success to help both people and the planet. We have presented and participated in several in-person events along with speaking engagements that have produced positive exposure to the areas that relate to our mission. We participated on the advisory board for Thought Labs, Future Ready Cities research with 200 city leaders and 2000 citizens. (For reference: https://thoughtlabgroup.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/Building-a-Future-Ready-City-ebook_Final-November-2022.pdf)
Ecosystem Development
We have met with over 100 contact leads and 30 different Accountable Organizations (AOs) and potential sponsors. Several have asked us for proposals which we have submitted.
We gained six new advisors with expertise that span: circular economy, sustainability, community projects, data analytics, technical architecture, and textile waste. Along with our advisors and six founders we’ve engaged several innovators working in waste textiles, farming (food growing, production, traditional & vertical, IoT and energy management).
Operations
We set up our instance and have been using the Salesforce platform for nonprofits. We have entered over 100 contacts.
Positive Exposure
Web & Social Success
Web 243 unique visitors spanning Europe, Asia, and USA
LinkedIn 92 followers
Non Monetary Contributions
Volunteer hours contributed to the OSC: 5,000+
Projects
We launched an exciting project with an innovator in the Miami area collecting and upcycling hotel towel and linen waste as well as school and other uniforms. Please see the write up below.
The Open Sustainability Collaborative (OSC) is an activator and facilitator of sustainable projects that create economic value for communities around the globe.
There is ample momentum and enthusiasm for sustainability across the market. However, stakeholder groups who are eager to drive change are largely siloed and disconnected.
Organizations: Sustainable / circular / regenerative ambitions. Would like to partner.
Innovators: Sustainable solutions, need access to resources, implementation and scale.
Investors: Have capital to invest in purposeful projects, need guidance and vetting.
OSC brings these groups together to leverage collective power as a force for good. Our advisors help identify local innovators and donate advisory services to develop the innovator’s business models. Our engagements provide ongoing due diligence and align potential investors. We engage Accountable Organizations (AOs) to provide scale while also helping achieve their own sustainability objectives.
Our OSC advisors help organizations and innovators to distill their objectives and ideas into a well-defined, mutually validated business solution that demonstrates investable commercial viability and the potential to drive meaningful change. We cultivate a focused network of changemakers who leverage their capital, connections and creativity to maximize each project’s impact. Together, the collaborative iterates, accelerates and scales solutions to create impactful outcomes that can be replicated across communities worldwide.
We strongly believe that great ideas can come from anyone, anywhere—so we seek to amplify the work of organizations, innovators and investors with diverse perspectives and backgrounds to build truly globalized solutions. Please join us to learn about the design challenge and discover how bold ideas can disrupt “business as usual” as part of our transformative global platform.
Collaborative Circularity in Action
Upcycle Project’s Miami-based founder, Gabriella Smith, uncovered a significant opportunity to divert textile waste generated within the city’s large tourism sector from landfill and give it a second life through recycling or upcycling. With about 55,000 hotel rooms in Miami Dade and each room requiring about 15lbs of linens (bedding and towels) even a small percentage of discards adds up quickly. We estimate that nearly 300,000 lbs. of this textile waste go to landfills or are incinerated annually, based on a conservative 3% monthly discard rate. When looking at the entire state of Florida and its nearly 500,000 hotel rooms, the annual waste approximation comes out to 2.7 million pounds of textiles.
OSC is working with Upcycle Project to build a scalable and replicable business model to collect, sort, and recycle or upcycle these materials from hotels and other textile heavy industries (e.g., healthcare). We are connecting the Upcycle Project with other innovators, recyclers, designers, manufacturers, transporters, investors and corporate sponsors to create a robust supply chain and support network that will result in new products and new jobs in the community.
The Open Sustainability Collaborative recognizes that innovation can occur at multiple points in the supply chain and scale often comes from iterative collaboration. Please see the supply chain reverse logistics example from the Upcycle Project below and consider becoming a part of our eco-system on this or other OSC projects.
