Busy week at Ecomondo for the Transition2BIO and EuBioNet people!

The week started with the speech “Addressing challenges to unlock bio-plastics potential: the contribution of EU-funded projects”, delivered by Susanna Albertini from FVA New Media Research during the Cluster meeting: Horizon 2020 and Horizon Europe projects contributing to the EU Plastics Strategy organized by the European Research Executive Agency (REA), on the 8^th of November, as part of the Glaukos Project and European Bioeconomy Network activities.

Recordings available here.

During the speech two innovative formats were presented:

• Projects2Projects, facilitating collaboration and mutual learning among projects, that was validated in Brussels on the 5^th of October in a workshop organized by the European Bioeconomy Network and the European Commission, involving more than 40 project promoting the circular bioeconomy.
• Projects2Policy format, shortening the gap between EU funded projects and policies, facilitating the awareness and adoption of project’s results. The format is part of a series of workshops organized by Glaukos and Bio-Plastics Europe Projects, involving 49 projects and around 20 Policy Officers from different DGs. The last appointment is foreseen for the next 23th November.

On the 9^th of November, during the conference session “Commit to the Mission Charter to contribute to a healthy “pollution free” MED, organized by Ecomondo Scientific Technical Committee, BlueMed GSOs, Federchimica-PlasticsEurope Italia, Conference of Peripheral Maritime Regions (CPMR), National Research Council of Italy (CNR), Susanna Albertini delivered the speech “Experiences from EU funded projects contributing to the Mission Charter for a healthy “pollution free” MED”. During the speech some good practices from Transition2Bio, Biovoices, the European Bioeconomy Network and Glaukos have been presented.

Recordings available here.

The workshop was an important opportunity to learn how Mediterranean projects and initiatives, but also industrial and policy actors, as well as NGOs and citizens can become active “Missioners”, sharing their activities and ambitions to support the Mission “Restore our Ocean and Waters by 2030” by adhering to the Mission charter. John Bell, European Commission’s ‘Healthy Planet” Director, delivered a very inspirational talk about the vision and objectives of the Mission.

On 11^th November, Serena Fabbrini from APRE presented the recently funded project GenB, aiming at inspiring, educating, involving and supporting the young generations to become the ambassadors of the circular bioeconomy in the European Commission area dedicated to EU funded projects. The book for kids “What’s Bioeconomy”, produced by the projects BIOVOICES and Transition2Bio was promoted as a good practice to engage the primary school students with these topics.

Finally FVA team, representing Transition2Bio and Glaukos, was involved in the expert focus group “Are Bio-based plastics the future for toy applications?”, organized by Alma Mater Studiorum-University of Bologna, in the context of Bio-Plastics Europe project and involving the most relevant stakeholders in bio-plastics and toys, to discuss is Bio-based and biodegradable plastics can be a suitable solution for the toys industry.

The “Projects2Projects” workshop was organised by the European Bioeconomy Network, in collaboration with the European Commission and the projects Transition2Bio, BIOEASTsUP, BIObec and BioGov.net. The event took place on 5 October 2022 at the EC Building CDMA, as satellite event of the High-Level EU Conference “Bioeconomy – Enabling the European Green Deal in Challenging Times”, held in Brussels on the 6 and 7 October 2022.

The workshop reached 76 registered participants and was finally able to reach around 60 attendees and involve 40 projects on stage and additional 9 projects participating. All the participants exploited the opportunity of having for the first time in the same room most of the relevant projects that will support the bioeconomy innovation ecosystem for the next years.

The workshop was a great success. The organisers received positive feedback from the participants highlighting the necessity of similar events to boost the collaborations among projects.

The outcomes of the “Projects2Projects” workshop were to:

• Facilitate the awareness and exchange of inspirational good practices stemming from H2020 projects, as well as maximising the exploitation of lessons learnt and heritage of H2020 bioeconomy projects
• Present the objectives of the newly funded Horizon Europe projects in bioeconomy
• Facilitate collaboration among ongoing, concluded and recently funded projects.
• Define common action plans to improve the quality and impact of projects’ activities for the next months.

In order to facilitate the discussion and map the different projects highlighting their main specificities and core purposes, all the participating projects were grouped according to four macroareas:

Each macroarea was introduced by the European Commission’s policy officers who provided the audience with the EC expectations to trigger the following discussion.
Specifically, Tomasz Calikowski (on behalf of Laura Varpina) introduced the Macroarea 1 and he also introduced the Macroarea 2, while Veera Tahvanainen introduced the Macroarea 3 and, finally, Giuseppe Pellegrino introduced the Macroarea 4.

The workshop was divided into two parts. The first one was specifically dedicated to brief presentations of success stories from H2020 projects, with a special focus on exploitable assets.
This part was followed by a walking brainstorming/networking and four thematic group discussions, during which the Horizon Europe projects had the chance to present their main objectives and expected outcomes through the projects’ fiches, collected in the posters dedicated to the different macroareas.

The thematic sessions, organised in thematic working groups, supported the networking and collaboration among the H2020 and the Horizon Europe projects with the objective of defining a common 2022/2023 action plan.

During the discussion, the following outcomes have been achieved:

• facilitate the identification and connection with similar activities
• enable the overview of who is doing what in the next months
• avoid duplication of efforts (e.g. organisation of a workshop in the same topic in the same period)
• maximise the impact and participants to events by joining efforts (e.g. co-organizing an event addressing similar topics from different perspectives)
• facilitate the match between needs and offer (e.g. I’m organizing a conference, I look for speakers, good practices)

Below you can find useful links, collecting all the materials stemming from the workshop and ready to be downloaded.

Agenda of the workshop.

Key points from the introductory speeches delivered by the EC Policy Officers:

• Veera Tahvanainen
• Giuseppe Pellegrino

PPT presentations from H2020 and Horizon Europe Projects, aggregated per macroarea with useful links:

• Macroarea 1: “enabling the bioeconomy ecosystem at European, National and Regional level (governance perspective)”
• Macroarea 2: “enabling the bioeconomy ecosystem at European, National and Regional level (boost circular bioeconomy and bioeconomy sectors perspective)”
• Macroarea 3: “standardisation, certification, labelling and monitoring”
• Macroarea 4: “bioeconomy communication and education/future skills for the bioeconomy”.

Projects’ fiches aggregated per macroarea, with all the contacts of all projects:

• Macroarea 1: “enabling the bioeconomy ecosystem at European, National and Regional level (governance perspective)”
• Macroarea 2: “enabling the bioeconomy ecosystem at European, National and Regional level (boost circular bioeconomy and bioeconomy sectors perspective)”
• Macroarea 3: “standardisation, certification, labelling and monitoring”
• Macroarea 4: “bioeconomy communication and education/future skills for the bioeconomy”.

Main results of the thematic working group discussions:

• Macroarea 1: “enabling the bioeconomy ecosystem at European, National and Regional level (governance perspective)”
• Macroarea 2: “enabling the bioeconomy ecosystem at European, National and Regional level (boost circular bioeconomy and bioeconomy sectors perspective)”
• Macroarea 3: “standardisation, certification, labelling and monitoring”
• Macroarea 4: “bioeconomy communication and education/future skills for the bioeconomy”.

The BIObec project, funded by BBI JU under Horizon 2020, aims at leveraging education to unlock the full potential of the European bioeconomy, by building bridges between the bio-based industry and the education system.

The project is organising the 1st BIObec Implementation and Replication Working Group workshop which will take place online next 21 October 2022 from 10:00 to 11:30 CET.

You can find here the agenda.
To attend, please register at this link before 20 October at 12.00 pm CET

Additional details

BIObec concept merges the traditional idea of an education centre – such as a university or a vocational education and training centre – with that of a knowledge hub: the Bio-Based Education Centres (BBECs), which will act as multi-level knowledge hubs bridging the gaps between academic institutions, students, innovation entities and policymakers.

BIObec seeks to set the basis for the development of BBECs in six different European regions to answer the needs of the bio-based industry at local, regional, and national levels. These BBECs are expected to ensure a wide geographical coverage in Europe and address a wide range of topics linked to the variety of value chains and the different institutional contexts, paving the way for replication in other regions.

The core nucleus for the future implementation of the BBECs is the Implementation and Replication Working Group (IRWG), that will participate to project initiatives in the role of stakeholders and will facilitate the replication of the BIObec’s experience beyond the project’s efforts.

The IRWG members are local stakeholders, interested in implementing and replicating the BBECs experience in other EU Regions and countries by co-developing a roadmap applicable for potential additional BBECs across Europe.

The first IRWG workshop will:

– stimulate the discussion around bioeconomy education
– define a more integrated, connected and wider approach for the BBECs future implementation
– explore the opportunity to transfer and replicate the BBECs formats into additional territorial bioeconomy ecosystems
– engage additional IRWG members

In the last years, the EC is funding several projects and initiatives to investigate under which conditions biodegradable and bio-based plastics can contribute to reduce pollution in our ecosystems.

These projects can also play a role in providing policy recommendations and supporting policy makers with data, research outcomes and the identification of gaps that should be addressed to actively support the EU’s plastics strategy.

Nevertheless, there is an urgent need to encourage a holistic, collaborative debate, shortening the gap between research projects and decision-makers.

To respond to these needs, a collaboration among  Glaukos project, Bio-Plastics Europe, European Bioplastics Research Network, European Bioeconomy Network led to the organisation of the workshop “Unlock the potential of bio-based and biodegradable plastics: challenges to be addressed”, that will take place online next 3rd November from 9.00 to 12.00 CET.

Join the debate! To participate to the workshop, please register here.
Agenda available at this link.

The objective of the workshop is to involve the most relevant projects related to bio-based plastics, to discuss the most urgent challenges to be addressed to unlock the potential of bio-based and biodegradable plastic, in light of providing policy recommendations to be shared with EC Policy Officers in the context of the incoming 7th EBRN Event (23th November 2022).

These events build on the following activities:

• Glaukos Stakeholder Labs workshop “Tackling microplastics pollution: can biodegradable textile and coating be a solution?” – 20 June 2022
• 6th EBRN EVENT “Insights from 10 Horizon projects: EU policy for bio-based and biodegradable plastics” – 22nd  June 2022.
• Shared online document collecting Questions & Answers from Policy Officers and Projects with regards to important policy and research questions

The discussion will be structured along the following topics:

• Bio-based vs conventional plastics (performance, consumer behaviour, etc.)
• End-of-Life options (biodegradability, ecotoxicity, recyclability, pollution, etc.)
• Raising awareness, stakeholder engagement, collaboration and coordination of efforts
• Support EU policies