Birmingham and Solihull Industrial Symbiosis (BASIS)

The project is funded through the European Union’s ESIF framework and is led by Birmingham City Council. International Synergies is the primary delivery partner and will be responsible for the engagement with industry to provide resource efficiency support. The focus of the project will be working with SMEs and identifying opportunities to delivery industrial symbiosis benefits within the network, forming the mechanism for delivering the required project outputs of business assists. The Industrial Symbiosis approach seeks to work closely with SMEs to quantify their wastes and seek resource efficiency improvements that deliver financial savings. These underutilized resources can be process by-products, discarded waste materials, low grade energy, waste water discharges, logistics (empty vehicle movements), capacity (such as warehouse or office space) and shared expertise. Through the project’s delivery of one to one business support and attending business opportunity workshops, the aim is to connect industry in a way that one companies wasted resource becomes another’s valuable process input. These discreet new business opportunities will deliver substantial cost savings, generate sales from new markets and contribute towards creating an environmentally sustainable local economy.