Online shopping has a big boost in our country. In Belgium we now make 15% of our purchases online. Driven by convenience and price, e-commerce, just like in neighboring countries, continues to advance, resulting in more and more transport movements and packaging waste.
★ THE WINNERS ★
The winning team 'Rootes' came up with an innovative concept to get more goods to their destination with fewer transport movements. The team aims at crowdsourcing and focuses on the social aspect and "smooth transport". With the help of an app they trace the daily route of consumers. They determine the collection locations strategically based on the data from the app. Courier services take the packages to the pick-up location where the consumer regularly passes by. The consumer receives a signal via his app and picks up his package from the provided smart boxes or at caregivers. Caregivers are people from vulnerable population groups, such as the elderly who are called in to act as a collection point. By involving the caregivers, their concept also acquires a social dimension. During busy buying moments such as the Christmas period, they think about setting up pop-up pick-up locations.
★ PARTNERS ★
The students were assisted in their creative brainstorm by experts from the Flemish Institute for Logistics (VIL), UHasselt, Made, Plan C, UAntwerpen, Erasmushogeschool Brussel and OVAM. 21 teams of students presented their project to a professional jury with members from Colruyt, Google, Fostplus, Montea, Plan C and OVAM.