Green ideas 2022: Winners announced

On May 31st, ARNO announced the winners of the “Green Ideas” 2022 competition held at the Center for Social Enterprises in Skopje. The jury, in the category of embryonic ideas, chose the ideas “Peli” by Jana Angelovska and “From polluter to beautifier” by Goce Stevanovski, while in the category of green concepts the winner is the idea “Insect pilot room” by Aleksandar Karaviloski from Veg dog food-Prilep.

It is interesting for this year’s competition that all the ideas in the business model have the principle of circularity, i.e. they use the waste (diapers, cardboard, vegetables / farm waste) in the process of new production.

Twenty applications were received at the competition, from which 10 were competing in the Macedonian final competition. The jury that evaluated the received applications was composed of experts from various fields and institutions: Durim Zeqiri from the Economic Chamber of North-West Macedonia, Igor Izotov – United Nations Development Program (UNDP), Robertina Brajanoska from the Macedonian Ecological Society (MED) , Dancho Dimkov from the Association for Management and Consulting-MKA2000, Voislav Ilievski from “Macedonia 2025”. For the national winners, the partners again provided support: vouchers for consulting services from the Association for Management and Consulting “MKA2000”, free registration to the Connect2MK platform and mentoring services and / or participation in the CESO SACO program of “Macedonia 2025”, and free two-year membership in Economic Chamber of North-West Macedonia. The lesson learned (from the pandemic) for digitalization and due to procurement challenges, this year ARNO awarded the winners with 3 laptops.

“The fear and expectations from the pandemic that we will not have many applications, unfortunately, came true this year. We assume that all of the world events, the unstable market, the uncertainty, have taken their toll. But what makes us happy is the fact that this year we notice that the circular economy is getting closer to the Macedonian entrepreneurs and that in the end we had very solid ideas (quality versus quantity). From waste to product is a fascinating concept that must be heard and supported in society if we are to keep abreast of economic transformations and if we want to ease our way forward. Ecological collapse = social collapse, we know this equation, and now, the task for us remains to decide together how to create and support an economy good for humans and the nature “- stated Irina Janevska from ARNO.

“PELI is a green idea focused on diaper waste that has three segments: Raising social responsibility for a cleaner environment through blogs and educational campaigns. Encouraging parents to primarily select diaper waste that currently ends up in landfills and reducing the pressure on using new resources. Implementation and development of circular economy through development of technology for waste reuse and obtaining a new eco product.” – Jana Angelovska, winner in the category of embryonic ideas with the idea “Peli”.

 “Our idea is to use the enormous potential of insects for the good of the global population and to contribute to the protein challenge 2040, to meet protein needs in a way that is accessible, healthy, and environmentally friendly.” The way we feed animals must be changed dramatically. In our idea, biodegradable waste is used as a raw material for feeding the larvae of flies. The production itself does not require a large amount of energy, the by-product is organic fertilizer and we do not produce waste. With all these parameters we start a new business and we confidently claim that we are 100% green- “Aleksandar Karaviloski (Ve Dog Food-Prilep), winner in the category of green ideas with the idea” Insect pilot room”

“The idea is to collect waste paper from all major pollutants (malls, supermarkets) and convert it into durable materials: plate material for carpentry and a second material – artificial leather. From these materials we plan to make high-aesthetic durable products for mass consumption, but also to sell repro-materials. Receiving recognition in the form of ranking among the first three ideas, gave me the joy to take the responsibility to justify the trust of the ARNO team and collaborators, but also to fight for this idea to gain international recognition and acceptance, in order to give the green echo spread as far as possible and positively change the lives of as many people as possible. ”- Goce Stevanovski winner in the category of embryonic ideas with the idea” From polluter to beautifier “