What works, and what we learned.
Every rule in the book comes from a real exchange: the ones that paid off for decades, and the ones that taught us what to do differently. Each story comes with its numbers, its sources, and the conditions that explain it.
Trash · Trophy
Kalundborg
Fifty years of handshakes in a small Danish town
€24Ma year in bottom-line savings, shared across the partners
Energy · Trophy
OCAP
A disused oil pipe carries the refinery's CO2 to greenhouses
~300,000 tof pure CO2 a year delivered to greenhouses
Energy · Trophy
Stockholm Open District Heating
Waste heat with a price list
30+data centers connected to the city's heat network
Trash · Trophy
NS timetable boards
The railways' yellow boards, sold because they are obsolete
~3,400boards replaced at every annual timetable change
Trash · Trophy
Ecocem: blast-furnace slag
Steelworks waste replaces the dirtiest ingredient of concrete
~16 kgCO2 per tonne of ground slag, versus ~898 kg for Portland cement
Capabilities · Trophy
NASA and the retired engineer
A thirty-five-year problem, solved from a living room
85%accuracy predicting solar particle events, eight hours ahead
Capabilities · Trophy
LEGO Ideas
Ten thousand votes before a single brick is tooled
10,000votes needed before a fan design is even reviewed
Information · Trophy
Catena-X: the 14-car recall
From 1.4 million vehicles to fourteen
1.4M → 14vehicles in one recall, narrowed by component traceability
Trash · Lesson
bio-bean
The best story in the category, and a one-sided machine
50,000 ta year of plant capacity for coffee grounds
Energy · Lesson
Warmtebedrijf Rotterdam
The right idea, the wrong risk allocation
300,000–500,000homes projected in the take-or-pay contract