Thanks to the collaboration of Nova School of Business & Economics (Nova SBE) and its community with the Bios startup, the Carcavelos campus will be home to a pioneering and innovative environmental and social project.
Nova SBE is collaborating with the Portuguese startup Bios to develop the Bios Urban Farm, an innovative project aimed at using the waste energy generated by buildings to grow fresh, locally produced food. This initiative will involve the Nova SBE community, and it will be inaugurated in September 2021.
Through integrated technologies, Bios – a Portuguese startup using waste energy to grow plants, digitizing the relationship between food and energy – will show how to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and increase the availability of locally produced, green, healthy food.
Knowing how it is to involve the local community to address the widespread challenges they saw across the urban food supply, Bios is currently working with members of the Nova SBE community to identify the existing supply and demand of salads and leafy green vegetables on campus and make the Bios Urban Farm a reality by September 2021.
In addition to supplying plants to service providers and businesses on the Nova SBE campus, the urban farm will be the basis of a brand-new community-owned social food enterprise to be implemented by September 2021. Bios is also working closely with Nova SBE students, staff, and other community members to design and build the social food enterprise, which will offer learning and developmental experiences in both the digital and physical world.
The partnership between Nova SBE and Bios is pioneering this urban building food and energy solution showcasing how digital can bring human value and have a positive impact on the physical world. The project’s engineering plans are finalized, and construction will begin in one of the Carcavelos Campus buildings, namely Cascais Academic Hall.
Updates on the project’s status, new initiatives, events, and how each person can play a role can be found in the school’s Role to Play platform. To learn more about Bios and its initiatives, you can check the startup’s official page.