Category: Stakeholders engagment and co-creation

 HOOP project

 HOOP project

Posted on by Louis Ferrini
Project concluded

HOOP: Hub of circular cities boosting platform to foster investments for the valorisation of urban biowaste and wastewater

The HOOP project supports 8 lighthouse cities and regions in developing large-scale urban circular bioeconomy initiatives that will focus on making bio-based products from urban biowaste and wastewater. Specifically, HOOP will provide Project Development Assistance (PDA) to Albano-Laziale (Italy), Almere (The Netherlands), Bergen (Norway), Kuopio (Finland), Münster (Germany), Murcia (Spain), Greater Porto (Portugal), and Western Macedonia (Greece).

The HOOP Urban Circular Bioeconomy Hub will create an online platform to foster knowledge exchange and replication in cities and regions across Europe.

Contacts:

Coordination
Gemma Castejón, CETENMA: gemma.castejon@cetenma.es

Martín Soriano, CETENMA: martin.soriano@cetenma.es

Communication
James Ling, Greenovate! Europe: j.ling@greenovate-europe.eu

Founding source: Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme

Website

 Biovalley Finland project

 Biovalley Finland project

Posted on by Louis Ferrini
Project concluded

Biovalley Finland consolidates and integrates diverse primary production, industrial applications and high-quality wide-ranging expertise in order to create common prosperity.

Biovalley is a region of strong expertise in the natural resource sector and bioeconomy in the Kalajokilaakso, Lestijokilaakso, and Perhonjokilaakso river valley areas as well as in the sub-region areas of Kokkola and Pietarsaari. The region lives strongly and diversely from the bioeconomy.

In addition to agriculture and forestry, there is strong natural resource sector business activity in food industry, wood processing industry, building carpentry industry, bioenergy and in the manufacture of equipment, as well as in chemical industry. The diverse business activities are supported by research- and development organizations and educational organizations, which provide companies with the latest research information and skilled personnel.

Contacts:

Jouni Kaipainen PhD, Senior Researcher, University of Jyväskylä: jouni.p.kaipainen@jyu.fi

Founding source: ERDF European Regional Development Fund, React-EU (2014-2023) (Funding programs)

Website

 Preserve project

 Preserve project

Posted on by Louis Ferrini
Project concluded

Preserve: High performance sustainable bio-based packaging with tailored end of life and upcycled secondary use

Bio-based plastics, made in whole or partially from renewable biological resources, are mostly used in packaging applications. Growing concerns around single-use packaging waste is putting pressure on companies to improve the sustainability of their packaging. In this context, the EU-funded PRESERVE project will boost the circular use of bio-based packaging. Specifically, it will work to enhance the performance of primary food packaging. It will leverage the compounding of enzymes in bioplastics to stimulate biodegradation. The entire process that is required to produce at least 10 packaging demonstrators will be upscaled. Project results will benefit Europe’s plastic packaging market by creating jobs and growth.

Contacts:

Aldo Ramirez Reyes – IRIS (Coordinator) aramirez@iris-eng.com
Mara Menella – Kneia (WP Leader Communication and Dissemination) mara@kneia.com
Christian Schulz – European Bioplastics (Dissemination Manager) schulz@european-bioplastics.org
Natalia Grzomba – Crowdhelix (Clustering Lead) natalia.grzomba@crowdhelix.com

Founding source: Horizon2020

 

 UrBIOfuture project

 UrBIOfuture project

Posted on by Louis Ferrini
Project concluded

UrBIOfuture’s main goal is to bring Europe to the forefront of the bio-based industry, a sector in full growth that requires a high number of experts in its workforce. However, one of the challenges for its development is the educational gap between the professional profiles demanded by the sector and the existing educational offer. To bridge this gap is one of the main purposes of UrBIOfuture, which started on May 1st with the goal of boosting careers, new educational programmes and research activities. Since then, this initiative carried out research to map European educational programmes involving bio-based activities and to identify the skills mismatch between them and the bioindustry needs. In addition, it involved stakeholders from the education sector, academia and industry, it organised a series of events, and it elaborated a set of materials, all with the aim of setting the path for the industry to attract qualified talent.

Contacts: info@urbiofuture.eu and Ana Martinez: anamartinez@sustainableinnovations.eu

Website

 Transition to Green Economy project

 Transition to Green Economy project

Posted on by Louis Ferrini
Project concluded

Objective

The main objective of the project was to contribute to a transition towards a green economy in Europe through organization of the international conference “Transition to a green economy” (T2gE). This international conference was an event of major strategic nature during the Slovak Presidency of the European Council. Conference brought together a broad spectrum of stakeholders. Its ambition was to improve understanding of the green economy concept, identify conclusions and pathways for transition as well as to involve and mobilise various actors and stakeholders in the discussions of possible future actions. The conference also aimed to strengthen synergy among various recent initiatives and programmes launched by the European Commission (i.e 7EAP, Circular economy package, Energy Union, Juncker Commission’s priorities etc) and by the Member States, to the benefit of the overall coherence.

The conference aimed to bring together policymakers from various EU countries, as well as a range of stakeholders from international organizations, academia, business, and civil society and encourage an open debate around key green economy issues. At the end of the conference, draft conclusions, for both the national and the European level, were approved in order to be useful tool for implementation of policy in the field of green economy. Parallel breakout sessions were devoted to various relevant subjects with the involvement of representatives from civil society, policymakers, business, science and innovations, and regional and local authorities. The participants presented examples of the green economy approaches from successful countries, which were discussed and reflected in the conclusions to ensure that green economy policy conclusions are relevant to countries’ needs. Part of the conference was oriented on practical demonstration of Slovak examples of green/circular economy – field trip.

Contacts: Robert Miskuf: r.miskuf@pedal-consulting.eu

Website

 SCALIBUR project

 SCALIBUR project

Posted on by Louis Ferrini
Project concluded

Challenge

In the EU over 100 million tonnes of biowaste are thrown away each year. Currently 75% of this goes to landfill or is incinerated, causing major environmental problems: biowaste produces greenhouse gases when it decomposes and contaminates soil and groundwater. Landfilling of biowaste goes against the principle of a circular economy and is a waste of nutrients, energy and potential resources for biobased products.

Solution

In the SCALIBUR project, leading waste management companies, technology developers and research organisations have teamed up with four European cities to demonstrate innovative solutions to transform urban food waste and sewage sludge into high value-added products, helping cities to increase their recycling rate and creating new circular economy business opportunities.

Contacts: James Ling: j.ling@greenovate-europe.eu

Capucine Pineau c.pineau@greenovate-europe.eu

Website

 POWER4BIO project

 POWER4BIO project

Posted on by Louis Ferrini
Project concluded

POWER4BIO project aims at empowering regional stakeholders to boost the transition towards bioeconomy regions in Europe by providing them with the necessary tools, instruments and guidance to develop and implement sound sustainable bioeconomy strategies. In particular, POWER4BIO will define a methodology based on a 3-steps approach (stakeholders engagement, regional analysis and strategy development) to guide European regions when preparing and reviewing their regional bioeconomy strategy and its associated implementation plan (roadmap), and which will be ultimately integrated in a Bioregional Strategy Accelerator Toolkit.

POWER4BIO will also develop a catalogue of bio-based business models, including best practice examples, to support regions understand, identify and select the most adequate bio-based solutions for developing their bioeconomy and; POWER4BIO will issue recommendations to use and align the main funding instruments and policies in Europe to support bioeconomy business models.

Moreover, POWER4BIO will rely on a comprehensive programme to foster mutual learning and intra- and interregional collaboration and networking among regional stakeholders to ensure knowledge transfer across sectors and regions and to jointly develop and complement different sustainable bioeconomy value chains within 10 participant regions member of the consortium (5 of which coming from Central and Eastern Europe) from 9 different countries.

Finally, POWER4BIO will design and deliver an ambitious training programme to increase the skills and capacity of the regional stakeholders in several important aspects of the bioeconomy (sustainability in the bio-based value chains, synergies in funding instruments, technology transfer and entrepreneurship, etc.). All in all, the potential brought in the project is huge, considering that the 10 participant regions represent a population of around 88 million people, a GDP of 2460 billion EUR and an area of almost 450,000 km2.

Contacts: Ignacio Martin: imartin@fcirce.es 
Christine Beusch: beusch@e-p-c.de

Website

 NUTRIMAN project

 NUTRIMAN project

Posted on by Louis Ferrini
Project concluded

Objective

Agriculture and food industry having a high dependence on resources in their production and striving for long-term sustainability. In this context there is an urgent need to optimise resource use and smooth the transition to a knowledgedriven agriculture. The NUTRIMAN is a Nitrogen and Phosphorus thematic network compiling knowledge “ready for practice” for such recovered product applications, practices and technologies, interconnecting applied science and industrial practice, for the user interest and benefits of the agricultural practitioners. There is an urgent need to spread knowledge and network information towards agricultural practitioners about the insufficiently exploited N/P recovery innovative research results (technologies, products, practices). The project objective is to improve the exploitation of the N/P nutrient management/recovery potential for the ready for practice cases not sufficiently known by practitioners. Our action will open new opportunities for farmers to develop connections between applied researches with practical usefulness results and farming practice in the priority area of nutrient management and nutrient recovery. Uses a bottom-up approach to identify incentives and bottlenecks for adoption and to prioritise between technologies/products and will ensure larger willingness to adopt innovations and improve multiplicator effects. Large scale take up of the recovered N/P innovative fertilisers targeted, produced from un-exploited resources of organic or secondary raw materials in line with the circular economy model, and economical/environmental efficiently used by farmers. Effective dissemination and exploitation promoted by multilingual web platform, other communications and best practice field demonstrations for farmers. This action is contributing to the successful deployment of the vast reservoir of existing scientific/practical knowledge on the N/P recovery theme, including multi lingual abstracts in EIP-AGRI format.

Contacts: Edward Someus: edward@terrenum.net

Website

 MPowerBIO project

 MPowerBIO project

Posted on by Louis Ferrini
Project concluded

Europe’s bioeconomy strategy addresses the production of renewable biological resources and their conversion into vital products and bioenergy. The industry is leading in innovative and sustainable solutions, but SMEs face challenges as regards investments. To address this issue, the EU-funded MPowerBIO will create an online platform with digital tools for evaluating and training skills, enabling SME readiness for investment. It will hold 10 train-the-trainer sessions for 90 European bioeconomy clusters. The aim is to improve capacity to support SMEs in the high-quality preparation process of presenting their projects to investors. The best SMEs will be selected to compete in two final events. In addition, 72 ready-for-investment SMEs will be selected and rewarded during the European Bioeconomy Venture Forum.

Contacts: Britt Sandvad (coordinator) Food & Bio Cluster Denmark: bs@foodbiocluster.dk

Website

 Interreg MED Green Growth community

 Interreg MED Green Growth community

Posted on by Louis Ferrini
Project concluded

Within the framework of the Interreg MED Programme, Green Growth is a thematic community promoting green and circular economy in the Mediterranean region by enhancing cross-sectoral innovation practices through an integrated and territorially-based cooperation approach. Since 2016, the Green Growth Community (GGC) have involved 165 partners from 13 Euro-Mediterranean countries in 14 innovation projects working on four focus areas:

  • food systems
  • eco-innovation
  • smart cities
  • waste management

The GGC supports its projects in knowledge sharing, communication and capitalisation efforts in order to increase their impact at market and policy levels. The GGC produces unified results and knowledge that are transferred and capitalized to key stakeholders in the Mediterranean region and beyond. It is thereby contributing to achieve the targets of the EU Green Deal and the EU Circular Economy Action Plan, as well as the Sustainable Development Goals.

The Union for the Mediterranean (UfM) labelled the community in October 2019, acknowledging its potential to support the transition to a green and circular economy and to deliver concrete benefits to the citizens of the Mediterranean region. Since November 2020, the GGC is a member of the Coordination Group of the European Circular Economy Stakeholder Platform (ECESP).

 

Contacts: Mercè Boy Roura, merce.boy@uvic.cat

Green Growth website 

Capitalisation platform