Circular Dredging Consortium and Innovation in mowing technology and vessel navigation

Circular Bagger Consortium and Innovation in Mowing Technology and Vessel Navigation won the WOW Prize for Best Collaboration of 2023 on November 2. The jury prize of €10,000 went to the Circulair Bagger Consortium (CBC). Solutions for proliferating aquatic plants: Innovation in mowing technology and vessel navigation, received the Audience Award of €5,000.

The WOW Prize encourages road and water managers to look beyond the boundaries of their own organization and achieve special results by collaborating with other parties. The winners were chosen from the eight nominated projects, which through their will and courage make innovation in the road and water sector possible. The jury, consisting of Willemien Bosch from Royal NLIngenieurs, Els van Grol from the Drents Overijsselse Delta water board, Lindy Molenkamp from the province of North Holland, Eric van Duijn from the municipality of Amersfoort and Wendy Tan from Wageningen University, was very impressed by the collaboration, scalability and innovation of all projects.

Circular Dredging Consortium

The Circular Bagger Consortium (CBC) won the jury prize of €10,000. The consortium wants to transform the millions of cubic meters of dredged material, which are released annually in the South Holland region, into high-quality raw materials for the construction sector. They do this by developing technical and organizational solutions with a powerful network of partners: Waterweg, Blauwe Bagger, Noorderwind, Hollandsche Delta Water Board, Schieland and Krimpenerwaard Water Board, Rijnland Water Board, Municipality of Rotterdam and the Province of South Holland.

Lindy Molenkamp, ​​jury member and board member of Platform WOW: “We praise the self-reflection, the steps to move towards circularity and the flexibility to start over with a new focus. With this approach you are initiating a system change, which we are working hard to achieve in our sector. We would like to support that switch.”

Innovation in mowing technology and vessel navigation

The Audience Award of €5,000 for Best Collaboration went to Solutions for invasive aquatic plants: Innovation in mowing technology and vessel navigation.

In more and more Dutch lakes, the growth of aquatic plants causes major nuisance and unsafety for recreational boaters. This leads to damage to water sports companies and a major loss of social value for athletes and leisure activities. With the support of market and government parties, the Stichting Mowing Waterplanten Randmeren Randmeren and Coöperatie Gastloze Randmeren UA, together with Techmaps Remote Sensing BV, have innovated the mowing technology used and developed a mowing app and a navigation aid for recreational users.
Jury member Lindy Molenkamp: “We know that this issue is not only an issue in your area, but in all areas in the Netherlands. It is great that the public voted for you to further scale up this initiative.”