Post Term: Business/industry/investors

Environmental Sustainability Assessment of Bioeconomy Products and Processes

This document provides an overview of the structure and content of the product and process environmental factsheets available on the Bioeconomy Observatory web pages. These factsheets are divided into three groups that reflect the three pillars of the bioeconomy: (1) food & feed, (2) industrial bioproducts and (3) bioenergy. Compiled based on publicly available data/information collected from studies using life cycle assessment (LCA), they describe different bioeconomy value chains and their environmental performance.

Guidebook on engagement and co-creation methodologies.

This guidebook starts with an introduction on the concept of outreach and engagement methodologies and activities. Besides, giving this general overview it presents three exemplary engagement models, outlines how BLOOM’s engagement activities can be aligned to the Grand Societal Challenge of Food security, sustainable agriculture and forestry, or marine and maritime and inland water research, and highlights activities that are considered to be both engaging and relevant to BLOOM’s approach of empowering citizens and raising awareness for bioeconomy.

Co-creation processes will be at the heart of BLOOM’s five regional hub activities because co-creation follows an approach of involving different perspectives and collaboratively designing tools, materials, processes, activities or strategies. A variety of targeted creative methods and creative tools feed into this guideline support the hub leaders designing the most appropriate suitable workshops and to choose most fitting methodologies to reach their goals. Therefore, besides background information on co-creation, its potential and general information about organising such workshops, this section provides also as practical support a selection of co-creation methods and an example of a co-creation workshop moderation sheet, to be adapted and used by the BLOOM hubs.

All in all this guidebook is set up to encourage the BLOOM partners and hubs to structure, plan, and implement an engagement model tailored to the specific needs, drivers and barriers of each hub and thus should serve as a pool of engagement methods, activities and background information and offers assistance with planning the BLOOM co-creation workshops.

BIOPEN PLATFORM

BIOPEN is the European Open-innovation Platform that will help your companies. Support action include matchmaking among project ideas and stakeholders for joint development, funding opportunities, sharing of information and offering a semantic search engine to perform searches over millions of patents, scientific papers. Discover what BIOPEN can offer and join the BIOPEN community today!

The Macro-environment Surrounding BE-Rural’s Open Innovation Platforms

With the recent update of its Bioeconomy Strategy, the guidance of its advisory bodies and the engagement of regional groups and representatives, Europe has found a new track towards a sustainable bioeconomy, building on the notion that regions are the most appropriate territorial level at which to implement bioeconomy strategies. The BE-Rural project incorporates this regional focus into its core vision, putting its regional Open Innovation Platforms (OIPs) front and centre in the process of studying the potential for regional bioeconomies, and articulating and implementing strategies to make them a reality.

In providing an outline of the macro-environment at each of the OIP regions, this task has also served to shed light on key points of collaboration between them, confirming previous notions of potential synergies and revealing new areas where the regional bioeconomies of BE-Rural could complement each other and contribute to the vision of a sustainable EU-wide bioeconomy.

STAR4BBI Regulation action plan

Standards play a crucial role in supporting the growth of the bio-based products market. They can help to increase market transparency by providing common reference methods and requirements that enable the verification of claims and certification regarding the bio-based content, biodegradability or environmental sustainability of different products. However, inadequate standards can also act as barriers for certain products. So, what are the current EU standards or other related issues that hamper the growth of bio-based products? STAR4BBI (“Developing standards for bio-based industries”) analysed these barriers and proposed actions towards overcoming these.

The STAR4BBI document Regulation action plan (D4.4) contains specific proposals for regulations that are most in need of revision or demonstrate a high likelihood of adaptation with the ultimate objective of accelerating the transition to a bioeconomy. The report discusses solutions to overcome existing regulatory hurdles across sectors. The aim is to stimulate investments into existing and new value chains, products and applications as well as establish a level playing field for bio-based products. Solutions covered concern respectively:

  • Introduce a fossil carbon tax levied on the fossil carbon of fossil resources
  • Update of the Compostability standard
  • Develop a new policy specific for bio-based materials
  • Develop an effective End of Life (EOL) scheme

STAR4BBI Report on implementation for creation of new or revised standards

Standards play a crucial role in supporting the growth of the bio-based products market. They can help to increase market transparency by providing common reference methods and requirements that enable the verification of claims and certification regarding the bio-based content, biodegradability or environmental sustainability of different products. However, inadequate standards can also act as barriers for certain products. So, what are the current EU standards or other related issues that hamper the growth of bio-based products? STAR4BBI (“Developing standards for bio-based industries”) analysed these barriers and proposed actions towards overcoming these.

The STAR4BBI Report on implementation for creation of new or revised standards (D4.3) aims to identify standards or other initiatives that hamper the growth of bio-based producers in the market. The goal is to remove these identified and shortlisted barriers preferably before the end of the project. The main barriers include:

  • Non-functional specifications
  • Biodegradability
  • Compostability
  • Multiple certificates in the market
  • Double testing