This project proposes a no-waste, reusable packaging approach for networking equipment used in KPN’s business-to-business market. The goal of this project was to create a first proof of concept of reusable packaging in KPN’s logistical and manual processes, and therefore create a stepping stone towards further scaling-up reusable packaging across their operation. KPN, the leading telecom company in the Netherlands, wants to accelerate the journey to become near 100% circular by 2025, in which the reduction of packaging waste plays an important role. To reduce this to virtually zero, a reusable packaging approach is suggested. Additionally, research showed that the return logistics of a number of B2B services are hindered due to a lack of packaging, which causes product damage and a delayed turnaround time. With insight from the research a packaging prototype was designed and developed to be tested in a first pilot. A ‘ reusable messenger bag’ concept was selected, as it is durable, relatively cheap, size efficient and an already known, and valued packaging concept among mechanics and the refurbishment partner. To support the distribution of the packaging in an effective way, a logistic concept is proposed. This mechanic-centred system architecture ensures the availability of packaging at all times, potentially solving the return issues that were found in the research. In the pilot, the accessibility of logistics, workflow of employees and the functionality of the product are tested in an actual order of a popular B2B service of KPN. The pilot resulted in a successful proof of concept and a first stepping stone towards the implementation of a zero-waste, reusable packaging approach for KPN. With a small-scale, technical implementation of this concept, it was shown that reusable packaging has the potential to not only reduce packaging waste, but also increase the workflow of involved stakeholders, improve the return logistics of electronics and therefore also reduce costs. This resulted in a positive and profitable business case for further development of this concept. The biggest limitation was the small and narrow scope of testing (n=1). This made it difficult to actually validate if the return logistics were improved by a reusable packaging, as logistics manifest itself at scale. As a further roll-out of the concept shows to be interesting for KPN, the first next step would be to scale up the testing over the entire VPN service (±1000 orders yearly) to validate the logistic concept and functionality of the product.

In a matter of decades, information technologies have become omni-present in the lives of more than a billion people. Whilst holding many promises for more efficient and therefore seemingly more sustainable practices, this fast-growing industry is expanding its footprint rapidly. Exponential advancements in hardware and software are kept in check by a quickly rising demand for data-driven products and services. With a climate and energy crisis on our hands, now is the time to ask ourselves whether this superfluous consumption of data is really necessary. By investigating the workings of the physical network and the interaction between humans and digital products, an inquiry is made into changing consumer behaviour to benefit sustainability. The resulting design demonstrates how a different approach to the way we interact with the digital world can facilitate new practices that are sustainable in the broadest sense of the word. By actively reflecting on their online behaviour, internet users are enabled to fulfil personal values that benefit people and climate. Research The inquiry into the various stakeholders related to data consumption depicts an infinitely complex network with various players. Together they share a responsibility to for the social impact that the internet has on our society but in the current situation these individual parties mainly act out of self-interest. Digital services providers and their users behave in immoral and unethical ways to satisfy immediate cravings which stands in the way of fulfilling social values. All stakeholders are put under enormous stress by this fast consumption pattern which the project categorises as somewhat uncivilized. This uncivilized behaviour is further defined in three ‘pillars’ that lie at the root of the current value conflicts. Norms & regulation Perverse pleasure seeking, deceptive technologies and social misbehavior threaten the individual on the web.  Moderation & modestyConstant distractions and the acceleration at which we increase productivity lead to an overload of information that humans are not capable of handling. Active involvementThe lack of physicality of data infrastructure combined with a generally apathetic mindset leads to a loss of autonomy and control. Design From experiments with possible interventions it is concluded that to start making a change towards a more civilized behaviour, data consumption needs to be made more concrete in a way that facilitates debate about the topic. A final concept is proposed that embodies this philosophy by encouraging KPN customers to start caring about the impact of data consumption on themselves, their close peers and the environment. It does so through the following set of criteria: 1.Installing awareness about data usage by educating and framing 2.Eliciting a social frame of reference for internet users to adhere to 3.Helping consumers commit to purposeful decisions 4.Affording inconvenience when users want to engage in meaningless behaviour 5.Materialising the benefits of data reduction 6.Making low data use standard in daily practices Besides this intervention targeted at consumers, the design and research also hold various implications for the other stakeholders within the project context.

The Dutch agricultural sector needed to increase its production over the years. Production increased as a result of new technologies, growing amounts of pesticides, and government policies. Although these changes were fruitful, it is currently provoking environmental concerns. This is causing pressure for farmers to be more sustainable in the last few years. Therefore, farmers are embracing technology to produce more efficiently and sustainably. To increase sustainability, farmers need other organizations who help them with achieving more sustainable production. To make the biggest sustainable impact, all stakeholders of the supply chain need to collaborate to make the sector more sustainable. Therefore, it’s needed to create an ecosystem for continual innovation, to eventually be a more sustainable sector. IoT can be applied to automate the horticultural processes, which leads to reduced usage of resources, such as water, electricity, and pesticides, to increase the sustainability potential. Monitoring Service is developed to automatically fulfill the need of the crops. To be able to develop this solution, an ecosystem is needed to realize the Monitoring Service. The most important partner is a current horticultural technology supplier. This partnership has the benefits to easily enter the horticultural market, create more market knowledge, and makes it easy to contact the first prospects. Within the ecosystem, KPN provides the connectivity to connect all technologies with the platform. Besides the connectivity, KPN also sells its service as data safe. This data safe is a service that guaranteed the safety of the data, which keeps the data collected within the ecosystem.

Cities are the centres of communication, commerce, and culture. Although, more than 80% of global GDP is generated in urban districts, the cities consume two-thirds of global resources and produce more than 70% of global CO2 emissions. Rising population, escalating urban pollution, the effects of climate change urge cities to search for innovative solutions that will help mitigating rising urban problems, safeguarding more liveable future for its citizens. Among most pending issues, air pollution and heat stress have been highlighted by significant amount of the scientific research. In the Netherlands, air pollution shortens societal life expectancy by 13 months. Heat stress, on the other side is responsible for the increase in societal morality by 12% during the heat waves. The effects of climate change are predicted to bring more heatwaves in the future creating a significant risk to the vulnerable groups of the society. Recent technological development that embraces more feasible sensing technology, increasing connectivity and advanced computing platforms, creates a vast opportunity to design solutions that will help to map the hotspots of less obvious data like air pollution or heat stress. This report proposes a monitoring solution that helps thoroughly gather, analyse, and report the data which can be used by the policymakers while designing solutions for urban areas. The solution was defined basing on a set of reference studies that display example practice for air quality and temperature monitoring. The reference studies represent four different monitoring initiatives. In Chicago program called Array of Things is being implemented; Barcelona’s smart initiative is called Sentilo; Copenhagen deploys smart solutions through Copenhagen Connecting; Singapore has its Smart Nation Sensor Platform. The reference studies served as an input for identifying a framework that consist of 8 enablers for smart initiative deployment. Further, technology and data analysis and display enablers were explored in detail. The solution composes of four stages namely: Physical infrastructure, cloud, data analysis platform, visualisation, and information hubs. The physical infrastructure includes selection of sensing technology that closely monitors air quality and heat through fixed, mobile, and participatory sensors. The cloud stores and computes data received and sends it to data analysis platform where four engines further analyse and report data to information hubs. City managers and third party can access the information through an application that displays real-time information about air quality and heat, being able to send alerts or predict the most optimal route throughout the city. Further, the information gathered can be envisioned in real time in a 3D model of a city – a Digital Twin. There are other factors that are deemed to be important like partnerships and funding and they are stated in the model, but they were not the focal points of the research and are included in the recommendation section.

Digitalisation pressures the earth's resources, especially critical raw materials (CRMs). The CRMs, are functional materials that meet current challenges and future demands in information and communication technology (ICT). The extraction and processing of CRMs are highly concentrated, mainly outside the European Union (EU). The EU is dependent on import supply. Due to growing demand, an increase in primary CRM mining is expected shortly. Moreover, research showed that primary CRM mining significantly impacts human rights abuse. The increased CRM demand and supply can have an increased effect on human rights challenges. A greater focus is being placed in the EU on preventing and mitigating human rights violations in the global value chain. However, there is limited research in the telecommunication industry on managing human rights in the context of primary CRM supply. The growing demand in CRMs for telecommunication products and technologies highlights the importance of incorporating strategies to secure their business within the telecommunication sector. Therefore, this research aims to answer the following question: What strategies can telecommunication companies deploy in response to human rights challenges in primary critical raw materials supply? The methodology is mainly based on a qualitative approach. The research includes scientific and grey literature reviews, expert interviews, internal documents, and expert workshops. Research data is analysed using the framework on human rights in primary critical raw material supply development. The research provides an overview of human rights in primary CRM supply. It shows the drivers and barriers for KPN in how to deal with this changing environment. The main focus is on human rights in the context of Conflict Mineral (CM) supply instead of the EU CRM list. Companies don’t have a fixed strategy in place to manage human rights challenges in primary CRM supply. Secondly, a case study is performed on cobalt extraction in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). The general finding was that many human rights challenges occur in primary cobalt mining in the DRC. Various human rights challenges occur in artisanal small-scale mining (ASM) as well as in large-scale mining (LSM). Furthermore, among telecommunication companies, there are different levels of advancement in human rights due diligence practices in CRM supply. However KPN has an emergent strategy on the topic, the company is behind their peers in the level of advancement. At last, a strategy is developed for managing the human rights challenges in primary CRM supply. Experts validated the strategy. The thesis concludes that becoming a responsible Mineral Initiative (RMI) member and implementing the OECD framework would be a decent start. The RMI provides tools and resources to advance on the topic. Having limited resources and capacity and dealing with complex mineral supply chains makes that a suitable option for KPN. In the medium term, KPN should explore additional actions, which should be the building blocks to advance on the topic and strengthen the company's position. Further research could focus on exploring case studies CRMs in relation with human rights challenges, and understand the interaction of the system in depth. Moreover, develop schemes and guidelines for responsible supply of all minerals in LSM and ASM sector that are linked to human rights challenges. This is important in order to ensure that companies have a strategy in place. A strategy were human rights challenges are well managed and ensure responsible CRM supply.

The maritime sector will have to deal with various challenges in the time to come, like sustainability and competitiveness. To deal with these challenges, there are several opportunities to improve through the use of data and technology. The first part of this report examines the developments taking place in both the global maritime sector and the Dutch seaports. In general, we see that major changes are afoot within the maritime sector. Data is starting to play an increasingly important role in decision-making. With data, new insights can be generated and specific parts where quick wins can be made can be tackled. By optimising processes, efficiency can be increased, allowing more to be achieved with the same effort. This helps the sector to stay competitive. The sector is facing declining interest from employees and emerging local production, making transport a less important factor. To remain competitive, processes are being automated and cooperation between different companies is increasing. This allows innovations to be applied more widely and ultimately achieve more. The more important role of data also leads to risks concerning security and privacy. Soon, the sector will have to learn to deal with these risks. KPN is a large, Dutch telecommunication company that serves a large part of the Dutch consumer and business market and is one of three companies with a Dutch mobile network. As people’s perception of mobile communications changes, KPN is seeing a decline in revenues from consumers and is having to introduce innovations despite receiving little additional revenue in return. As more companies can deliver connectivity, KPN is focusing on delivering extra services to companies on top of their connectivity. This way, KPN tries to create the financial space to keep their network up to date and to add new functionalities. In addition, KPN distinguishes itself within the Dutch market by operating in a climate-neutral way. KPN is now using the knowledge it has gained to help other companies make their businesses more sustainable. KPN believes that the use of technology can ensure that companies can operate in a climate-neutral way without compromising their business. By deploying KPN’s capabilities within the insights gained from the analysis, the KPN Fleet ecosystem was designed. Within this ecosystem, KPN offers a platform to all kinds of maritime stakeholders, enabling them to make optimal use of the opportunities offered by data and new technologies. By involving all stakeholders in an ecosystem, every one of them can help each other get the most out of their processes and innovations. Data can be shared safely and quickly, allowing all stakeholders involved to use this data to optimise their processes or services. This further increases the quality of all services delivered within the ecosystem, which ultimately benefits all stakeholders involved. It also offers KPN the opportunity to use its capabilities and thus add extra value within the maritime sector. Within this report, more details about KPN Fleet are highlighted. In addition, a roadmap is presented to help KPN implement KPN Fleet and expand it in the future. KPN Fleet helps KPN to expand their position in the maritime sector and increase the value they add to society. This allows them to remain relevant in the future and generate more revenue. In addition, KPN Fleet is fully in line with its vision of using technology to help other companies become more sustainable while improving business. Besides, it could help generate knowledge or experience for KPN to apply in other sectors they are active in, like automation or data spaces. In doing so, KPN can strengthen their strategic advantage in multiple sectors. Furthermore, the concept includes the development to collaborate with various companies that is seen in the market. So, it both fits KPN as the customers it is serving.

The sustainability adoption of sustainability practices is currently low for Small Enterprises, Freelancers and Small-Medium Enterprises (SMEs), while they must do their part to become more environmentally sustainable. SMEs are responsible for many greenhouse gas emissions emitted and as almost all companies in the Netherlands are SMEs, this presents an urgent call for change. However, many SMEs are not prioritising sustainability which is not without cause. Many limitations within SMEs withhold them from taking action. The most significant hurdle for SMEs is their size which comes with limited human, financial and technical resources. Furthermore, the same limitations result in SMEs’ lagging use of digital technologies. This lagging use of digital technologies is unfortunate because ICT can positively contribute to environmental goals if an SME uses ICT in their business. A way to improve environmental sustainability with ICT is through telecommunication (telecom). However, there is still no broadly adopted manner in which SMEs can use current telecom technologies to be less harmful to the environment. The telecom sector is in a position where it can enable its customers to become more sustainable and reduce scope 3 downstream emissions. Nevertheless, as the role of enabler is not yet optimally utilised by telecommunication companies (telcos), customers are not yet decreasing their emissions. Therefore, there is potential for KPN to guide SMEs with their sustainability expertise to transition them towards sustainability through using telecom. SMEs face challenges when open to adopting sustainable telecom practices. The explorative research in this thesis has shown that six different topics influence whether an SME can or is willing to adopt a sustainable telecom practice. These topics are; the right means for an online way of working, collaborative effort, education of digital sustainability, management decisions for sustainability, office building restrictions and reducing physical presence. To enable SMEs to use their telecom more sustainably, telcos should keep these topics in mind while working towards solutions. Furthermore, elements that are valuable to SMEs to adopt sustainable telecom practices are knowledge, inspiration, community and guidance. In this thesis, a platform is designed with which KPN can support SMEs by being the provider that connects telecom to sustainability by facilitating SME customers with inspiration, guidance and education on suited sustainable telecom practices while considering specific context challenges that SMEs face. With the platform, KPN educates its SME customers by communicating sustainability information to provide the customers with sufficient knowledge to start acting. As a result, the SME customers of KPN can be inspired to use telecom more sustainably. Furthermore, the platform includes a community of stakeholders connecting KPN to customers and customers to each other to exchange sustainability knowledge. The development of the platform allows KPN to become a partner in sustainable telecom use for SMEs. To work towards the proposition of being a sustainability partner, KPN should prioritise sustainability in their organisation and introduce it in the SME market. To do so, KPN should educate and teach its employees about sustainable telecom practices KPN conducts. To incorporate sustainability at KPN, a new design principle is designed that communicates sustainability. The design principle summarises information about SME customer values for sustainability so it can be tested on customer journeys. With the new knowledge, the employees can prioritise sustainability more in their work, resulting in its implementation in customer journeys.