Harmen’s commercial background is in media and design, where he developed a major passion for materials and manufacturing. Many products are currently based on a ‘short lifecycle’, where plastic as the cheapest material is maintained as the principal element of the success formula.  

Harmen’s drive is to change this short cycle thinking to a model in which plastic is held in reserve as a high-quality technical material and certainly not for single use products. A transition to alternative materials is key here. He is also on a worldwide search for the best technical solutions for the environmental problems that plastics create.  

Since the 1950’s the worldwide production of plastics has grown to an enormous amount of 311 million tons (2015). Everyone uses plastics in increasing amounts, hence the effect seen in our environment. Plastic waste is extremely complex to handle and permanent, why we need common sense to manage our use of plastics.  

All types of plastics are technically recyclable, but on a global scale only 9 % resulted in recycling. This leads to an extreme number of plastics sinking to the bottom of the ocean. What are the long-term environmental and health effects, and which criteria guide our choices regarding materials?  

Teknik: Trådløst headset samt storskærm med projekter, trådløs mikrofon til Q&A

Sprog: Engelsk 

Varighed: 1 x 45 min, 15 min pause, 1 x 20 min samt 15 min Q&A