"Let's talk about plastics" - under this title, the transfer project InCamS@BI invited Bielefeld's urban society to a conversation about plastics and circular value creation at the beginning of September. Everyday observations about plastics provided the starting point for interesting conversations in the new event format.



Initiating low-threshold transfers between science, society and companies is one of the goals of the InCamS@BI project at Bielefeld University of Applied Sciences (HSBI) together with Bielefeld University. To this end, the team is also testing new formats of science communication such as the Science Bench. The kick-off in this innovative event format for HSBI was held on September 8 by Heike Wulf, who works as a technology scout focusing on circular value creation in the InCamS@BI project. In the good hour and a half of the first Bielefeld Science Bench, five citizens accepted her invitation and took a seat on the science bench on the topic "Let's talk about plastic" at Rathausstraße.



Science Bench means: Dialogue at eye level and topics close to everyday life without preconditions



The Science Bench format, which has so far only been implemented at a few locations in the German university landscape , is about leaving the well-trodden paths of science communication and entering into an exchange at eye level with citizens. Accordingly, the principle is simple and close to everyday life: a scientist sits on a bench in a busy city square and talks to passers-by about a real-life topic. Thus a direct dialog develops in which citizens can contribute their questions, ideas, suggestions, but also fears about the topic. With this simple access, people can also be reached for whom the visit to classic formats of science communication such as lecture series represents a hurdle in terms of time or content.



Social impulses are analyzed from different perspectives in the InCamS@BI project



One of them this afternoon is Karin Hamel, who works as a bookseller and in her day-to-day work repeatedly reflects on the foils that wrap books with hardcover with an additional layer of plastic: "The foils primarily have the purpose of signaling to customers that they are getting an unused, new book for the purchase price. This effect is dispensed with in the case of the usually cheaper paperbacks. After opening , the transparencies are unfortunately waste." Everyday problems such as these form points of contact for the interdisciplinary InCamS@BI team that can serve as an impetus for further work: "What is interesting for me here is the fact that foiling only affects a certain product segment, while customers and customers accept unbound books even without foiling," says Heike Wulf, describing her first impression. "From the perspective of circular value creation, it would be desirable to think about whether consumers want the foils at all or whether they are superfluous?" says the studied environmental scientist, explaining her research group's point of view. Interesting would be the raised question in addition, from economics psychological or material-scientific view - two further research groups in InCamS@BI, which can take up impulses such as this and use in project sketches . Not least for this reason, the Science Bench is to be repeated in a slightly adapted form during the course of the project.



After a good 90 minutes of Science Bench, Heike Wulf draws a positive conclusion of the premiere: "Our goal was to signal: The university goes where the people are . And that science can also deal with everyday problems ."