WeMed Award 2021

GREEN FASHION

Egypt

GreenFashion-Stores.com

Green fashion, with its motto "green environment-upcycle fashion" struck as a sustainable idea for managing the vast amount of cut-offs and secondhand pieces with the efforts of their hardworking team, made up of women fighters who refused to give up to their hard circumstances such as unemployment, violence and marginalization.

THE ILLUMINE INITIATIVE

Jordan

TII.world

The first venture to be established by TII, has been developed with the objective of offsetting the negative environmental, social, and financial impacts of the growing e-waste challenge facing the world by harnessing the overlooked potential within this waste problem and transforming it into a visionary, circular economy model.

REFOREST

Israel

ReForestEarth.net

ReForest is a professional organization that brings together practical ecology, sustainable agriculture, education and community activists who promote the field of edible forests in the private and public sectors.

LIVE LOVE RECYCLE

Lebanon

LiveLoveRecycle.com

Lebanon's waste problem persists. It presents a real threat to our environment. We can all act to help lessen the damage. Live Love Recycle believe that together, we can seriously reduce the amount of waste going to landfills, simply by recycling. With the Live Love Recycle app, recycling is easy, fast, and FREE!

AGRONA

Egypt

Agrona.net

Agrona is an innovative company working on sustainable composites. Agrona is offering its new technology for manufacturing chipboard. Their new technology is a result of more than 6 years of R&D in the field of engineering woods. Agrona's new solution reduces the manufacturing cost by more than 30% of the current process and solves most of the problems that face local manufacturers such as seasonality, high energy consumption and low quality.

FABRIC AID

Lebanon

FabricAid.me

FabricAID is a Lebanese social enterprise that aims to establish a socially and environmentally conscious value-chain for the apparel industry. Their circular model increases the efficiency of second-hand clothes collection, sorting and distribution while reducing fabric waste predominantly by offering decent clothing at extremely affordable prices to marginalized communities.

AKYAS SANITATION

Jordan

akyas-sanitation.com

AKYAS Sanitation provides an innovative low tech solution for a decentralised sanitation system, which can be used by communities with no access to sewage networks. AKYAS solution is a “toilet in a bag”, which is compostable, and can be used by vulnerable populations, in refugee camps or other areas which don’t have access to the needed infrastructure. This represents millions of people in the MENA region and elsewhere.

JIHEN BOUTIBA

General Secretary

Union of Mediterranean Confederations of Enterprises - BUSINESSMED

Mrs. Boutiba is the General Secretary of the Union of Mediterranean Confederations of Enterprises- BUSINESSMED since 2014 representing 25 employers of the regional organizations from Europe & Mediterranean. She is also the Executive Director of the EU-project Enhancing Business Support Organizations “EBSOMed”, Deputy Director of the South Mediterranean Social Dialogue Project “SOLiD” and Director of the ENI CBC Med project "InvestMed". She is board member of the MENA-OECD Business Advisory Board, Board member of “Policy For development” of EU Capacity4dev and Board member of “Instituto Eurispes”. She is certified as an expert on Diplomatic & International cooperation, fundraising, program management and Social Dialogue. In addition, she is an entrepreneur and stakeholder of a Tunisian/Irish company within the Sand Silica export field in Tunisia and Africa since 2006. Mrs. Boutiba holds a Master 2 in Financial Engineering and a General University Diploma from the National Institute of Work & Socials Studies specialized in SME’s. She is a mother of two.

ZOÉ LUÇON

Senior Expert in sustainable investment and impact measurement

ANIMA Investment Network

Zoé Luçon is an expert in sustainable economic development and innovation in the Mediterranean region. She has 15 years of experience in an international environmental consultancy - including 2 years in Morocco, a Paris-based think tank and then ANIMA Investment Network, which she joined in 2009. She coordinated several projects and studies on public and private sustainable investment strategies. Zoé currently leads the technology transfer operations of THE NEXT SOCIETY, an initiative co-funded by the European Union, supporting innovation ecosystems in Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Egypt, Palestine, Jordan and Lebanon. She also coordinates ANIMA's activities related to sustainable investment and impact measurement. Zoé holds a master’s degree in International affairs of Sciences Po Paris and is an Engineer in Environment.

RAMON FARRENY

Circular Economy and Green Entrepreneurship specialist

Inèdit

Ramon Farreny is an expert on circular economy and green entrepreneurship. With a background on environmental sciences and a PhD in Environmental Sciences and Technology, all his professional career has been related to sustainability and circular economy.

Ramon is co-founder of Inèdit, a strategical eco-innovation studio working towards the transition to a smart, prosperous and sustainable future. As Chief Technical Officer at inèdit, Ramon has participated and learnt from a wide range of projects with both the public and the private (SME and big companies) sectors. Among these projects, the collaboration with the SwitchMed project needs to be highlighted: Ramon has participated as external expert from its beginning. Among others, he has coordinated the team of experts to develop the green entrepreneurship methodologies, he has acted as jury member to select green entrepreneurs for incubation programmes, has contributed to the development of the eco-design tool within the Switchers Platform and has been training local trainers and entrepreneurs in the set of methodologies.

MOUNIR TEMMAM

Senior expert in evaluation of public policies in the environmental field

Enviro Consulting International

Dr Mounir Temmam has over 22 years of professional experience in the field of environment and climate change. He acts as a senior Expert-Consultant for international donors, public sector and private companies within the framework of internationally funded environmental and climate change programmes and projects (e.g., World Bank, UNDP, UNIDO, AFD, UN Environment, FAO, GGGI, GIZ, UNWOMEN, EU, etc.). Through the consulting firm ECI based in Rabat, Morocco, he provides various environmental and climate change advisory services including policy formulation, mitigation and adaptation planning, strengthening of transparency frameworks, climate finance development and capacity building to different countries in the MENA and West African Regions.

He is often involved at different levels, from policy formulation, project design and implementation, to review and monitoring. He has so far carried out several major strategic and operational projects, covering a wide range of environmental (e.g, waste management, air pollution, environmental fiscal reform, environmental evaluation and due diligence, contaminated sites assessment and rehabilitation, etc.) and climate change issues (e.g., governance, mitigation and adaptation planning, climate finance and capacity building). He holds a Ph.D. degree from McGill University (Canada) and has been certified in 2005 by the Canadian Federal Ministry of Environment as a verifier and validator of GHG projects, among others.

MAYA KARKOUR

Environmental & Circular Economy Specialist

EcoConsulting & The Circular Hub

Maya Karkour is an Environmental and Circular Economy Specialist, an Eco-Entrepreneur and the director of EcoConsulting which she co-founded in 2003 in London, UK, and established in Beirut, Lebanon in 2008. She oversees or has directly worked on numerous projects aiming at reducing their environmental footprint –including the eco-renovation of Casa Batroun, first project in the Middle-East to achieve the British BREEAM “Excellent” green building certificate in 2014 and the Lebanese Architects Sustainability Award in 2017.

Maya has developed content and conducted numerous circular economy, environmental and green building seminars & workshops. Additionally, Maya has been coaching environmental start-ups with innovative entrepreneurial solutions to help them establish themselves and is currently facilitating the creation of the EcoSwitch Coalition for supporting eco-entrepreneurs under the SwitchMed program, locally led by Fondation Diane. She is also actively promoting the Circular Economy and sustainable practices in Lebanon through workshops, as the local representative of the Circular Economy Club in Beirut, and more recently by launching the Circular Hub of EcoConsulting. Maya was the President of the Lebanon Mountain Trail Association (2018-2020), also in charge of developing and helping implement Environmental Education programs along the Trail, working with public schools.

Maya holds an MSc (hons) in Environment & Sustainable Policies from the London School of Economics & Political Science, is a LEED Accredited Professional, a BREEAM Licensed Assessor, and a Low Carbon Energy Assessor. She is a Circular Economy Specialist of the Circular Economy Institute, and has obtained the Permaculture Design Certificate, first level.

GIORGIO MOSANGINI

Team Leader - Green Entrepreneurship & Civil Society

Regional Activity Centre for Sustainable Consumption and Production (SCP/RAC)

Giorgio Mosangini holds master’s degrees in Political Sciences (Université Libre de Bruxelles) and in Development Studies (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona) as well as a Specialization in Impact Assessment of Development Programmes. He has more than 20 years’ experience in the International Development Sector in the Mediterranean and Latin America. He has been responsible of programmes related to sustainable entrepreneurship, civil society strengthening, gender and women rights, local and rural development, sustainable development and food security. He’s author of several publications and methodological guides on Sustainability, Circular Business Models, Evaluation, Decentralised Cooperation and Social Communication. He is currently the Team Leader of Green Entrepreneurship & Civil Society at UN Environment MAP – Regional Activity Centre for Sustainable Consumption and Production (SCP/RAC).

PILAR CHIVA RODRÍGUEZ

Head of Circular Economy

Waste Agency of Catalonia

Pilar Chiva holds a Degree in Chemical Sciences from the University of Barcelona. More than twenty years of professional experience in the Catalan public administration, initially at the Catalan Energy Institute and later at the Waste Agency of Catalonia, where she has held various positions. She is currently the director of the Circular Economy Area.