The German and Chilean lecturers covered a broad variety of topics, ranging from Wastewater Management (Vanessa Bolivar and Witold Poganietz, KIT), Bioeconomy (Alex Berg, UdeC and Andreas Rudi, KIT), Geothermal Energy (Diego Morata, UChile), to Urban Circularity (Danny Tröger, Renzo Vallebuona, KIT, and Leonardo Agurto, UACh) and Sustainable Land Use (Andreas Braun, KIT and Antonio Lara, UACh). As the IECO director, Andreas Braun, emphasized, “the purpose of the Summer School was to discuss with the students a relatively new approach to the development of industrial ecology, which aims to improve the sustainability within the industry by copying ecosystemic principles or mechanisms that are very useful to reduce the environmental impact”.

During various field trips the students learned about applied sustainable solutions: At Liquen Austral, a start-up company in Mafil, the young entrepreneurs of the company presented an innovative way of producing natural fertilizer for the development of sustainable agriculture. During a full-day trip to the Andes, the students visited a geothermal Greenhouse Project near the Villarrica volcano in which subsurface heat sources are used to grow vegetables. At an excursion at the cellulose plant of ARAUCO the students learned about the company’s environmental impact management and waste water treatment. A last highlight was a trip to the Valdivian Coastal Reserve which got everyone soaking wet due to heavy rains common in that region: Here the students explored the impact of forest recovery (done by Nature Conservancy), and were able to compare near native forests to commercial industrial forest plantations.