Insulation and Packaging with Natural Fibres: Contribution to the Smart City and Waste Reduction

Ünsal-Peter, Gamze and Sonnick, Sebastian and Kaufmann, Hans-Rüdiger and Walch, Thomas and Rädle, Matthias (2025) Insulation and Packaging with Natural Fibres: Contribution to the Smart City and Waste Reduction. URBAN INNOVATION: TO BOLDLY GO WHERE NO CITIES HAVE GONE BEFORE. Medium sized cities and towns as a major arena of global urbanisation. Proceedings of REAL CORP 2025, 30th Intl. Conference on Urban Development, Regional Planning and Information Society. pp. 609-619. ISSN 2521-3938

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Abstract

The current discussion in the literature on urban development raises the provocative question: are Smart Cities really sufficiently ecologically sustainable? Literature implies the need to re-define the Smart City concept in this context: A synthesis of the two terms ‘Smart or Intelligent Cities’ and ‘Sustainable Cities as ‘Sustainable Smart Cities’ is suggested(Ahvenniemi et al. 2017). This paper agrees to put the synergy between the smart and intelligent ICT Smart city driven concept and the ecologically sustainable city framework higher on national and urban planning agendas. In this context, based on an experiment on ‘Insulation and packaging with natural fibers’, the authors of this paper suggest an innovative ecologically sustainable solution in the context of reducing plastic waste. The work aims to better establish natural materials in the technical foam sector, which is mainly dominated by plastic foams.The experiment is driven bynatural insulation materials instead of conventional materials such as EPS management with a potential high ecological impact for smart city ecosystems and corporate supply chains. The experiment,based on an innovative foaming process,strongly implies that it is possible to find ecological substitutes for current insulation and packaging materials that leave a significantly lower carbon footprint without compromising on quality. Suggestions for startup, ecosystem and marketing implications are provided.

Item Type:	Article
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Smart City, Natural Fabrics, Insulation Material, Supply Chain, Marketing
Subjects:	T Technology > TA Engineering (General). Civil engineering (General) T Technology > TD Environmental technology. Sanitary engineering T Technology > TH Building construction
Depositing User:	The CORP Team
Date Deposited:	24 May 2025 12:58
Last Modified:	07 Jul 2025 11:10
URI:	http://repository.corp.at/id/eprint/1216

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