The GO-GRASS project, funded by the EU’s Horizon 2020 programme, has recently published a White Paper for grassland opportunities to guide policy makers and increase opportunities for farmers and rural businesses to enhance the sustainable use of grasslands. Bioeconomy can be supported at the field level through best practices for the development of innovative and replicable business models.
To this end, the GO-GRASS project has analysed data and evidence for policy action and published a list of recommendations in the White Paper in order to promote solutions and sustainable products using grass and green fodder.
The final White Paper will be published at the end of the project (in 2024), supplemented with further findings and inputs from European, local and regional stakeholders.
The World Circular Economy Forum 2023 will be held in Helsinki from 30 May to 2 June 2023. This global collaboration forum is co-organised by Finnish Innovation Fund Sitra and Nordic Innovation, with international partners. It will attract more than 2 000 leading circular economy players in the world to Finland to find circular solutions that can help our economies fit within the boundaries of nature. Part of the programme will also be accessible online.
The Circular Navarre Catalogue 2022 is an update of the showcasing booklet published in 2020 and in 2021. This new edition includes 50 organisations - based on circular business models - in the Spanish Navarre region, looking for international cooperation.
The World Circular Economy Forum 2022 presents circular economy game-changers. Hosted in Kigali and online on 6-8 December 2022, WCEF2022 is co-organised by the African Circular Economy Alliance, the Republic of Rwanda, the African Circular Economy Network (ACEN) and The Finnish Innovation Fund Sitra, with international partners. The title for this year's event is 'From Africa to the World'.
The students' call for Circular Economy Innovative Projects (Navarra Circular Economy Awards 2022) is open until 25 September 2022. It is geared to the textile and plastics sectors as well as food industries. The call seeks to identify vocational education and training final projects, final degree projects, Master's final projects, PhD theses or similar developed by students.
Circular interventions in these sectors can halt biodiversity loss even if no other action is taken. And more than that, the study finds that the world’s biodiversity can recover to 2000 levels by 2035, if the circular interventions are implemented.
Urban agriculture comes with its own share of environmental impacts. Circular strategies promise to reduce these impacts, but not all strategies are resource efficient and environmentally effective.
This paper finds that the most eco-friendly and circular strategies for urban agriculture, taking a Mediterranean tomato crop as a case study, include:
Struvite (phosphate mineral recovered from wastewater treatment) instead of non-renewable phosphate fertiliser to conserve freshwater
Recycled steel and materials for urban agricultural infrastructure to reduce carbon emissions, toxicity and freshwater pollution
Closed-loop irrigation to minimise ocean and freshwater pollution. However, if new infrastructure is required, it could lead to an increase in carbon emissions.
Policies are focusing on halving food waste to help conserve increasingly strained food resources. However, expanding their scope of action to include dietary changes and complement targets with resource footprints has greater potential to save resources while avoiding trade-offs.
This paper shows that in Germany:
Healthy, plant-based diets are more effective at reducing land and biomass use than halving food waste
A combination of more plant-based food consumption and food waste reduction in distribution and consumption is most effective at saving resources
Focusing exclusively on food waste reduction as a policy target can be detrimental to the overarching goal of saving resources because it deflects attention away from more effective alternatives.