First, we want to thank the organizers of LCM 2017 in Luxembourg last week! Thanks to Enrico Benetto (chair of the conference), Kilian Gericke and Jan Bollen (co-chairs of the conference) as well as your local team creating the friendly atmosphere at the conference. The arrangement was excellent and well organized with many inspiring presentations and key note speeches.

Second, some reflections from Swedish Life Cycle Centers participants. Inspiration, new valuable contacts, faces from e-mail conversations and phone calls are among the things that we gained during these 3 days in September. The conference is growing and this year the conference also reached outside the community; there were representatives from other communities (similar to Swedish Life Cycle Center), investment organizations, innovation centers, software specialists and representatives from governments and the European commission.

Some of the new topics discussed were sustainable investments and circular economy. It was interesting to take part of the speech by Werner Schmith, director at the European Investment Bank describing their role in the   transition to a circular economy and to get an                                                                                                             insight from the investors perspective.

Innovation was also highlighted at the conference and the life cycle community’s role in sustainable innovations. Bertrand Piccard held an inspiring speech on the innovation topic. Piccard is President World Alliance for Efficient Solutions – SolarImpulse and he shared his best advises towards sustainable innovations: “Nothing is impossible, you just need to work on three dimensions and let the ballast of old habits and learnings go.” He also pointed out that new sustainable solutions will not be reached by existing companies. A mix of different technologies and partnerships are needed.

The final reflection from the conference is about partnership and collaboration, something that several speakers stressed as important success factors. Swedish Life Cycle Center has established many efficient collaborations over the years; seminars, working groups, expert groups etcetera. We cannot reach sustainable solutions on our own, it is certainly a question of collaboration! Next step for us is to spread our success stories, our methods and long experience from collaboration to inspire other communities.

The Swedish Life Cycle Centers technical secretariat would like to thank all partner representatives for your work as ambassadors during the conference and for your support in the Swedish Life Cycle Center exhibition booth!