GREENS Project wins Sustainability award

The GREENS project, a pioneering initiative driven by the University of Barcelona and funded by the Horizon Europe programme, which aims to connect the world of small-scale robotics with environmental sustainability, has been recognized as one of the best sustainability actions of the year at Sustainability Day 2025, which took place on 21 October at the Reina Sofía Museum in Madrid.

The award-winning project is led by Maria Guix, a researcher in the Chemistry in Flow and Nanomaterials Synthesis (ChemInFlow) research group, headed by Professor Josep Puigmartí, from the Department of Materials Science and Physical Chemistry at the UB’s Faculty of Chemistry and the Institute of Theoretical and Computational Chemistry (IQTCUB).

As part of Sustainability Day 2025, now in its fifth year, more than 60 sustainability initiatives and projects were awarded in the categories of public administrations, companies, academic institutions, NGOs and foundations, organizations, and start-ups. More than 800 professionals attended the event, coming together to share the best initiatives, success stories, and challenges in environmental and social sustainability.

Reducing the environmental impact of small-scale robotics

GREENS (training programme on the implementation of the 5 Rs in the design, manufacture, and application of micro- and nanorobotic platforms) responds to concerns about preventing small-scale robotic technologies from generating new forms of pollution or causing harmful ecological effects on the environment.

Therefore, from February 2025 to January 2029, the project will integrate sustainability into the design, manufacturing, and application processes in the field of small-scale robotics in order to minimize its environmental impact. The initiative is aligned with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) established by the European Commission (EC) and is of great importance to the EC’s Environmental Action Programme. Thus, GREENS contributes to the goal of making Europe the first circular, sustainable, and climate-neutral economy.

In addition to the UB, other collaborating institutions include Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, the School of International Business (ESCI) – Pompeu Fabra University; the University of Zaragoza; the University of Alcalá; Movic Weare, SL; the Aldo Moro University of Bari, Italy; the HUN-REN Wigner Research Centre for Physics, Hungary; the Medical University of Graz, Austria; the Ruprecht Karl University of Heidelberg in Germany, and the University of Gothenburg and the Swedish Algae Factory in Sweden, among other institutions.

​​​​​​​Among the attendees at the award ceremony was Maria Guix, UB professor, together with Carlos Franco, from ETH Zurich, and Pere Fullana, from ESCI-UPF.