Meet the partner: Layla Filiciotto from egen

Layla Filiciotto is a consultant at EGEN. EGEN is a company that supports different organisations in accelerating their green innovation through grant consultancy, impact assessments and other innovation services. 

Can you shortly introduce your role in the INCREACE project?

I have a PhD and research experience in chemistry where I focused on bio-based and circular economy topics. Within INCREACE, I lead work package 8 on Communication, Dissemination and Exploitation.

How did EGEN get involved in the INCREACE project?

We were contacted by Gergana and Anton from the Frauenhofer Institute, who were developing the INCREACE proposal. We had been in contact before in the context of the COLLECTORS-project. COLLECTORS was a Horizon-2020 project that aimed to identify and highlight existing good practices of waste collection and sorting. Also, Gergana and Anton were aware of the broader expertise of PNO Group of which EGEN is part of. In this way, we got involved with our green innovation consultants from EGEN and the communication experts from our sister company Cloudselling (part of PNO Group) as affiliated entity.

How do you see the added value of INCREACE for EGEN?

INCREACE is an exciting project that really wants to implement a circular value chain for recycled plastics in different sectors – which can be quite challenging. For this, INCREACE offers a nice challenge that we at EGEN can support with our expertise in the field and services in exploitation and stakeholder & value chain analysis. INCREACE also becomes an opportunity to improve and test new ways of our services in the field of circular economy. At the same time, we can learn a lot from INCREACE as a project and the partners of the consortium in terms of technical advancements, understanding better the barriers and enablers of different business cases in the recycled plastic value chain and the solutions that need to be implemented to accelerate this much needed green transition.

What is the role of EGEN in the INCREACE project?

EGEN is involved as work package 8 leader that includes Communication & Dissemination, Stakeholder & Value Chain Analysis, Exploitation and Circular Design Sprints. Particularly, we lead the tasks on Stakeholder & Value chain analysis and Exploitation thanks to our expertise related to both commercialisation and business development and in-depth knowledge of the recycled plastics field. As such, we support the consortium during the project and for future activities involving external stakeholders. With these activities, we aim to ensure that we increase the market uptake of the project results and successful innovations, create a positive impact in society and facilitate the business development and commercialisation processes for market-ready‑INCREACE business cases.

What do you hope to achieve by the end of the project?

I hope to first of all have a joyful collaboration with all the project partners as I believe that only together we can really make INCREACE a successful project where we can then see recycled plastics used in food-contact applications or electronics (among others). Secondly, I hope that with our work we will be able to give essential insights for the project partners to accelerate the commercialization pathways of their green innovations and making the circular plastic value chain a reality.

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