Through fermentation, bread scraps can produce chemical compounds for the pharmaceutical and food industries, fuels and enzymes. The starters (which kickstart the fermentation process) obtained by this project confirm the huge economic and technological potential of a growing substrate obtained from low-cost matrices.

The protocol includes homogenisation of the waste bread (leavened bakery products), with the addition of enzymes and final sterilisation.

The culture medium can be liquid (broth), solid (agar) or dehydrated. The substrate can be used for cultivating lactic bacteria, yeasts and moulds (for the food industry).

About 10% of the bread waste produced monthly can be used to yield a culture medium for bacterial starters.

This report connects the potential for resource efficiency, via circular economy and the value-retention processes (VRPs), with a policy-relevant lens. It is one of the first to quantify the current-state and potential impacts associated with the inclusion of VRPs within industrial economic systems.

In order to do that the assessment applies the different VRPs to a series of products within three industrial sectors and quantifies benefits in relation to the original manufactured product, such as the material requirement, the energy used, the waste as well as the costs and the generation of jobs.

The report also highlights the systemic barriers that may inhibit progressive scale-up including regulatory, market, technology and infrastructure barriers, and how they could be overcome.

The International Resource Panel think piece provides policy options to reduce marine plastic litter and achieve the Osaka Blue Ocean Vision, which voluntarily commits G20 countries to “reduce additional pollution by marine plastic litter to zero by 2050 through a comprehensive life-cycle approach”.

The report shows the marine plastic litter trends relevant to 2050, summarizes the current plastic policy landscape and explores policy upstream and downstream interventions to reduce marine plastic litter and to transition to a circular plastic economy. They include, among others, actions to design out waste, incentivise reuse, and exploit market-based instruments.

4 Horizon 2020 projects working on biowaste valorisation have teamed up to promote innovative solutions for the circular bioeconomy. This joint initiative is named ROOTS-circulaR pOlicies for changing the biOwasTe System. The projects - HOOP, ValueWaste, Scalibur and WaysTUP - are piloting new solutions to transform urban biowaste and wastewater into valuable products like Feed, Fertilisers, Bioplastics, Biopesticides, Proteins and Bioethanol.

The promoters have discussed their views and shared their concerns on policy barriers hindering innovations that lead to the Circular Economy for urban biowaste. As a result of the discussion, 4 focus topics have been singled out, accompanied by proposed solutions, that will constitute the key messages and be addressed in future initiatives.

The EESC and CCMI believe that the present/future of critical raw materials resilience is of essential concern to EU's organised civil society. For this reason, and because the CEAP represents a step forward with a clear roadmap for initiatives and actions, the EESC recommends that the Parliament and the Council support this approach.

The EESC position concerns 6 main objectives:

• Supporting sustainable primary sourcing in Europe
• Fostering secondary sourcing from waste and circular reuse
• Maintaining extractive and processing capacities in the EU
• Investing in activities that can foster substitution
• Diversifying trading partners and supporting developing countries
• A more frequent review of the critical raw materials list.

Textiles are an important issue for cities, as people generate more and more textile waste. City authorities are required to provide for separate collection of used textiles but have limited ways of putting the waste generated to good use.

Eurocities’ paper on circular textiles is published ahead of the Commission's new Strategy for Sustainable Textiles, planned for autumn 2021, to help the EU shift to a climate-neutral, circular economy (CE) where products are designed to be more durable, reusable, repairable, recyclable and energy-efficient. It focuses on a sustainable recovery of the textile sector from the Covid-19 crisis by:

• making it more competitive,
• applying CE principles to production, waste management, etc.
• and directing investment, research and innovation.

As an impact leader and frontrunner promoting resource circularity, TOMRA has extensively explored, analysed and collaborated with value chain partners to address the ever-increasing global problem of waste. This white paper presents the challenges, projections and opportunities involved in managing post-consumer waste in developed and developing countries. It describes how society can speed up the transition to a circular economy by collecting and recycling waste, especially plastic packaging and other carbon-intensive materials.

The white paper can be downloaded from TOMRA's website, but this requires registering in a third party's data base and submitting your email address.