Industry Project 2025/2026: Kekkilä
- Jul 3
- 4 min read
The IDBM Industry Project Course is a seven-month journey of collaboration, exploration, and innovation, where students addressing real-world challenges in collaboration with our industry partners. This year, we’re inviting you to follow 10 different stories as our teams move through different stages of their project journeys
Our IDBM industry project was carried out in collaboration with Kekkilä and Forum Virium as part of a larger EU-funded TREASoURcE project. The problem our team was set out to tackle was how to decrease plastic contamination in industrial biowaste. The problem was approached through Kekkilä’s Joutseno facility where they turn biowaste into soil via composting process.
At the beginning of the project, the topic felt easy to understand but complex to grasp. On one hand, the challenge was clear: plastic should not end up in soil products. But on the other hand, the reasons why plastics end up in biowaste in the first place were diverse and complicated. We learned that most of the plastic contamination comes from biowaste produced in supermarkets. The reasons they produce contaminated biowaste is connected to food consumption habits, packaging material choices and regulations.
Grocery stores don’t have the resources to separate plastic packaging from food waste so they dispose of food waste in its original packaging which is currently allowed in the regulation. Once the plastics end up in biowaste, removing them becomes difficult and Kekkilä was looking for fresh perspectives on how to approach this issue.
Visible plastic in soil products affect soil quality and lead to customer complaints. Kekkilä meets regulatory standards, but they want to do better. Plastics in soil also raise broader concerns about human and environmental health. Our task was to explore how plastic contamination could be reduced in a way that is technically feasible and financially available.
In the beginning of the project, we spent a lot of time trying to understand the system before jumping into solutions. We looked at the whole biowaste value chain and identified several possible points of intervention: packaging production, grocery store separation practices, and the composting facility itself. Each of these points revealed different constraints.
A key moment in the project was our field visit to Kekkilä’s Joutseno facility. Seeing the process in person helped us understand the realities of industrial composting more clearly than background research alone could have. After seeing the facility, we became more aware of what would actually be realistic in that environment. Our vision would have to meet the working conditions and everyday operations at the Joutseno facility.
Our visit to Kekkilä's Joutseno Facility
Alongside the Finnish fieldwork, we also looked abroad for inspiration. During the project we embarked on a research trip to Seoul. South Korea is known for its high recycling rate and advanced recycling systems. During our visit to Seoul, we explored how food waste is shaped by regulation, financial incentives, and cultural practices. South Korea offered an interesting contrast to the Finnish context. It showed us that waste systems are also social systems, built through habits, policies, responsibilities and shared efforts. This helped us see the Kekkilä challenge in a broader way.
Our visit to Seoul
One of the main learnings from the project was that circular economy challenges are rarely solved by one intervention. The problem of plastic in biowaste is complex and connected to many different points. Because of this, our final proposal did not aim to present a single perfect solution. Instead, we wanted to create a realistic pathway: something that could start with immediate improvements and gradually build toward more ambitious change.
The project also taught us a lot about working with uncertainty. At times, it was difficult to know whether to focus on what Kekkilä could control directly or on the wider system that creates the contamination in the first place. Over time, we learned to balance these perspectives. The most useful contribution we could make was to identify a controllable starting point while still keeping the broader system in view.
This project was a good fit for an interdisciplinary IDBM team. Our team brought together perspectives from business, chemical engineering, and industrial design, which helped us approach the challenge not only as a technology question, but also as a question of long-term sustainable change. For our team, the project was a valuable opportunity to work on a real sustainability challenge with direct industry relevance. It took us from desk research to a composting facility in Joutseno, from stakeholder interviews to international benchmarking in Seoul, and from early-stage ideas to a strategic roadmap.
Most importantly, the project changed the way we think about waste. What started out as a project about plastics in biowaste became something bigger. A question about circular economy, better industrial processes, worker wellbeing and the health of the environment and people.
Our pitch presentation at the Impact Gala, presented by Alina and Valerian.
